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2008D33Gerben

Not Just “Waiting on the World to Change”: Research that Matters in Required Writing Courses
Reviewed by Chris Gerben
cgerben@umich.edu

Riffing on a line from John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change,” instructors from Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric presented a panel on student writing with “real world” implications in this panel. Over 40 attendants filled the cavernous ballroom as the four presenters eschewed podiums and microphones in favor of chairs that were on the same level, and only a few feet away, from the audience. It provided a nice metaphor by extension of the types of papers that each presented. The overall goal was to show how student writing in a required course such as Stanford’s PWR 1 (a first-year, rhetoric- and argument-based writing course grounded in research and rigorous revision) can extend beyond the classroom walls—and the socio-economic bubble of the Farm at Stanford—to impact and/or reflect issues that are literally changing the world. Clyde Moneyhun, also the director of Stanford’s Hume Writing Center, presented his work from a community learning-based course, but the other two instructors, Kimberly Moekle and Donna Hunter, demonstrated how even in a class confined to campus, it is possible to teach students to consider external consequences of their writing.

After an introduction by PWR Associate Director and chair Marvin Diogenes—who returned to the room later in the evening to perform original and hilarious songs with Moneyhun and the Composition Blues Band—the three instructors took turns reading prepared papers about their courses at Stanford, and discussed implications for students and instructors interested in this type of work. Moekle’s “A Planet on the Edge: The Rhetoric of Social Movements” course was the first to be presented to the interested audience. Moekle described how the class engaged students in economic and environmentally aware discourse on the issue of sustainable energy while simultaneously avoiding the polemic (or counter-Green movement) that many students may bring to the classroom. She described how her students, even if sympathetic to the perceived “cause,” were often confused as they entered the course not knowing what global facts to believe. Dozens of attendants nodded in agreement as Moekle posed rhetorical questions pondering whether or not alternative fuels or Global Warming are issues that are actually real and relevant, or alarming and trivial. She described the success she had in class of bringing students of all political and environmental leanings to understand the more nuanced issues addressed in class. As the next two presenters did as well, Moekle also gave examples of student research and writing in the class that actually did change the world, as in the case of a student who was able to use his research and writing as a catalyst to providing alternative energy to his African village.

Next, Hunter presented her PWR 1 course, “The Virtue of Vice and the Vice of Virtue: The Rhetoric of Criminality.” The course is an often gritty, yet sincere, exploration of views of criminality in culture and society ranging from racial profiling to casting in popular media. Hunter offered a great visual activity where in the first day of class she asks students to get out of their chairs and go to one side of the room if they consider themselves criminals, and to the other if they do not. The resulting conversation of why the students marked themselves as they did provides the basis for the course’s deep exploration of how students think of criminality in their lives, and in the lives beyond the campus boundaries. To supplement this, Hunter described instances of bringing in formerly incarcerated individuals to speak to her class to tell their side of their story. The audience was amused and amazed as Hunter recalled students saying things like, “he wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought he’d be” or other realizations that criminals are human too. Though not overly stressed in her presentation, the issue of race was also present as a subtext throughout the talk, which undoubtedly factors into how students are able to relate to their research and writing beyond the classroom.

Finally, Moneyhun presented the panel’s sole community-based course, “’Dude Look Like a Lady’: The Rhetoric of Gender Activism.” In his presentation, Moneyhun described the same type of awareness practices used in the previous instructors’ classes to force students to explore issues that they may have never examined before. In this case, Moneyhun asks students to take second looks at how gender is constructed on campus, in the popular media, and ultimately beyond the campus. Moneyhun, who delivered his presentation without the use of a prepared paper, scored interest points with the audience when he explained the performative aspect of gender. He described making students realize that they are brought up to “act” as either a male or female, and that for the most part, all of them do it with great ease. The course, then, aims to make students more aware of these gender-based decisions on audience, and the implications that these decisions have on people’s personal lives. Moneyhun outlined partnerships with campus groups like the LGBT-CRC and Bridge Peer Counseling Center to give students the opportunity to present their research and writing to a great audience. Like all of the presenters, he also described many instances where students were recognized by scholars or community members beyond the classroom, and how much that fueled the students’ desire to be conscious of audience.

Although a lot of the following discussion for the panelists was geared towards community-based relationships with service groups, all of the attendants appeared impressed and inspired to construct their own courses that made better use of audience awareness beyond the confines of the classroom walls. If nothing else, the panel was an inspiration to those who consider required writing courses as a sentence to boring and mundane writing tasks. These Stanford panelists clearly showed that not only is this not the case, but that with enough encouragement it’s not just empty rhetoric either. Their stories really did demonstrate how writing can change the world.