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Articles Conference Reviews |
Research Network ForumResearch Network Forum A cliché, a truism, a chestnut—if I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard Kenneth Burke’s parlor metaphor used to describe “our work.” You also know the metaphor well: arriving late to a “parlor,” you find guests already engaged in “heated discussion.” No one stops to catch you up to speed, but eventually you begin to interrupt, insert you own thoughts, provoke, cajole, extend. Fellow party-goers align with you or contest your point, and when you leave, deep into the night, the conversation is not at all exhausted. (This is where I imagine scholars staggering into the dark like aristocrats of the London ton—fresh from the Bedford/St. Martin’s open bar?—drunk on the sexy-hunt for knowledge and tenure. But I digress.) A chestnut becomes a chestnut in large part because it is just too apt not to use. So even while I cringe every time I hear Burke’s metaphor of the parlor deployed, the cliché of scholarship as an on-going dialog in someone’s fancy living room largely holds true. The success of the Research Network Forum (RNF) at the Cs is a case in point. This year, the 22nd RNF at the Cs, 169 qualitative-researchers met to discuss works in progress with fellow researchers and discussion leaders. Anyone dropping into the midst of a morning or afternoon session would have encountered Burke’s parlor in action—animated research-oriented conversations in a relaxed and fairly social setting. For those unfamiliar with the format of the RNF: qualitative researchers are grouped at tables of three to five fellow researchers with similar interests. Table attendees discuss each-other’s projects, offering resources, frameworks, and feedback. There are two sessions—morning and afternoon. After a lunch break, researchers are reseated at a new table of interlocutors, maximizing the attendee’s opportunity to professionally network, present, and gather feedback on projects. While some sessions at the Cs are indeed followed by lively and interesting exchanges, admittedly most post-presentation Q and A sessions fall short of the ideal “dialog” that animates Burke’s infamous parlor. Not so at the RNF, a program designed on the model of more fruitful discussion and structured to offer dialog in small cohorts. It is fifteen minutes of the spotlight, times two. As in previous years, the morning and afternoon sessions of the researcher tables were preceded by plenary speakers. Paul Matsuda of Arizona State University and Rebecca Rickly of Texas Tech opened the morning session. David Blakesley of Parlor Press and Michael Spooner of Utah State University Press opened the afternoon session. Considering there is still no charge to attend the day long forum, the plenary speakers were of excellent caliber and alone worth attendance. In his talk, “Got Multilingualism: the Why and How of Integrating a Multilingual Perspective into Writing Research,” Paul Matsuda asked how we might imagine the composition classroom as a multi-lingual space. Noting that our students are increasingly transnational and multilingual, Matsuda took on the myth of linguistic heterogeneity that underwrites much qualitative research in composition and writing studies. The “audience” and the “text” are often conceptualized in the composition classroom as mono-lingual, Matsuda argued; both are the imagined products of English-only speakers who reenact the cultural privileges of Standard English as domination. Matsuda recommends that more composition researchers read Second Language writing research and acknowledge that the world is already global and multi-lingual. Rebecca Rickly’s talk, “Making Waves in the Research Culture of Graduate Programs,” offered strategies for graduate instructors who wish to help their graduate students understand the messiness of the research process. New researchers learn to conduct effective research experientially, Rickly argues, that is by conducting their own research and negotiating the difficulties of research design, data collection, and managing data. Few graduate students are given the opportunity to actually experience the research process in their research seminars, however, and so are often at a loss when they begin their dissertation work or other research activities. Graduate instructors may serve their students best, Rickly contends, by asking them to conduct micro-studies, to experience the reiterative processes and failures that the research process entails—qua failing forward (a term Rickly retools from Maxwell’s phrase “failing backwards.”) In practice-runs, graduate students learn to strategize towards narrowing research questions and refining the frameworks that allow their readings of data validity and reliability. In the afternoon plenary sessions, David Blakesley of the independent Parlor Press (PP) and Michael Spooner of Utah State University Press (USPU) spoke about the “New Realities for Academic Presses in Trying Economic Times.” Blakesley opened his talk with the very metaphor that I belabor and bash above—the currency of Burke’s metaphor for a press named after its ideals go without saying. Blakesley turned quickly to the focus of his talk: the difficulties of academic presses in an economy on the rocks. Trying economic times mean fewer books purchased, less revenue for presses. Libraries, institutions, and individuals, dealing with dwindling resources, decrease their expenditures on hard copies and journal subscriptions. Those who wish to support academic presses might consider giving academic books as gifts, assigning books from scholarly presses in graduate and undergraduate courses, urging their libraries to buy more books, and exploring ways to off-set the costs of academic conferences like the Cs for publishers. Spooner of USUP continued the theme of Blakesley’s talk, discussing the uncertain future of the USUP (despite the ability of this press to be self-sustaining, it has been slated for closure by the USU provost) as Utah State University leadership struggles with declining state funding. What remains clear: the closure of presses and the reduction of academic releases, bodes increased competition and decreased opportunity for publication, which in turn holds serious implications for tenure and promotion of junior faculty/scholars. Few tenure granting institutions have begun to seriously consider what this means for the ways value is ascribed to certain types of texts—is the scholarly monograph becoming an even more rarified form? How might on-line titles be the coming wave for scholarly publishing and what will tenure committees make of this transition? The afternoon plenary speakers were followed by an open session with editors of several journals interested in articles that treat and conduct qualitative research. Attendees were encouraged to visit these editors, hear about the journals’ submission criteria, and to ask specific questions related to their own projects. Journals represented at this year’s RNF Editor’s roundtable: Douglas Eyman and Cheryl Ball of Kairos, Keith Dorwick of Technoculture, Byron Hawk of Enculturation, Melissa Lanetta of Writing Center Journal, Brad Lucas of Composition Studies, G. Wade Mahon of Issues in Writing, Rebecca Mlynarczyk of Journal of Basic Writing, Mare Mueller of Community Literacy Journal, Ollie Oviedo of Readerly/Writerly Texts, Stephen Parks of Reflections, Michael Pemberton of Across the Disciplines, Deirdre Pettipiece of WPA Journal, Eric Schroeder of Writing on the Edge, Victor Vitanza of Pre/Text, and Adrian Wurr of The Reading Matrix. This session, while a bit chaotic and lacking in structure, really is a fantastic opportunity for new graduate students to meet and speak with the brains behind the journals—a session well worth attending if only to demystify and put a face to the production of scholarly texts. The Research Network Forum has gained a reputation for its zero-cost and accessibility to new and emerging scholar-researchers, a remarkable feat considering the expense a major conference such as the Cs and the logistics open forums can require. Chair Risa P. Gorelick and her squad of assistants and coordinators are to be commended for their efforts to keep the RNF free for attendees, despite increasing pressure from the Cs executive committee to begin charging for this event. They are also to be applauded for accepting all applicants to the program. While it becomes more difficult to find one’s name on the Cs program itself (acceptance rates for proposals have been at 30 percent for a few years,) the RNF continues to accept all who apply, offering an under-recognized opportunity to new and emerging scholars in the qualitative research community. If any program at the C’s could be said to bear out the parlor-ideal invoked in Burke’s metaphor, surely, it is the RNF. |