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Articles Conference Reviews |
C.13 Research and Popular CultureC.13 Rethinking Research through the Lens of Popular Culture This might sound like strange praise, but one of the things that I liked about this session was the lack of answers. Crafting successful conference presentations is, in my opinion, often more difficult than it appears. Audience members—or at least this audience member—tend to both want concrete answers and yet are skeptical of success stories and the same concrete “solutions” many of us are hoping to find. It’s a difficult balance. And yet each of these presenters managed to walk that line by providing possibilities rather too-simple success stories. Kenneth Wright, James Madison University, “Research Writing Renewed, or, What Marduk, Dr. Seuss, and the Large Hadron Collider Have to Do with Composition”While Kenneth Wright did, in fact, offer a solution to a problem, he clearly offered only one possible solution to a problem that many of us have faced. Frustrated by what he saw as the “rhetorical dead end” of his students’ persuasive writing, Wright explained how he has shifted his composition course away from persuasion and toward informative writing. Instead of articulating their already held beliefs about common topics (such as gun control), Wright used Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night as a way to encourage students toward a search for information and surprise. Wright’s students researched topics as diverse as Dr. Seuss, the psychology of personal space, and claustrophobia. Such informative-based research, Wright argued, not only better approximates the kind of writing that students do throughout the university, but also allows both peers and teacher to function as interested readers of the informative text. Steven Krause, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, “RIP-ping, Mixing, and Burning: A Remix Manifesto as Research Writing.”Steven Krause didn’t talk much in his presentation. For a large chunk of his time, he introduced audience members to Brett Gaylor’s “Rip: A Remix Manifesto,” a documentary primarily about mash-up artist Girl Talk. Krause’s own presentation, then, functioned something as a mash-up of more traditional academic discussions and more popular video clips. Krause’s primary goals were to get audience members to think about the implications of ideas as property, but also to see the mash-up as a way to imagine the research process. While the topics and forms of student research didn’t vary much from more traditional assignments, the metaphor itself was meant to help students complicate the seemingly un-crossable line between what we do in school and what we do in life (texting, Facebook posting, creating mash-ups). Using this metaphor, students gather information from myriad sources (rip); mix that information together in order to re-see the form and purpose, to make something new from something known (mix); and then produce (burn) a tangible text to share with an audience. This seems a useful image for instructors hoping to engage students more fully in the research process. But, in Krause’s words, “How did it work? Meh.” Krause found students surprisingly apathetic to issues of popular culture. His final words on the topic serve as an important reminder for all of us, however, regardless of pedagogical approach: “It takes more than just a manifesto; it takes a lot of work.” Ain’t that the truth? John Van Rhys, Redeemer University College, Lancaster, Ontario, Canada, “Rethinking the Research Paper: Making Research Rhetorically Driven in the Digital Age.”Van Rhys began his presentation by noting that he’d recently had minor surgery and, as a Canadian, paid nothing for it, saw his own doctor, and was very happy with the Canadian health care system. The central question of Van Rhys’ presentation was how, in this world of Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, might we find ways to make the traditional research paper more dialogic? How, he wonders, might we highlight the importance of a real audience impacted by information, entering into an actual dialogue? Van Rhys reminds us that, as academics, our own research is often dialogic. We write within, from, and out of current research and scholarly conversations. It’s easy, then, to imagine that we can use a sort of apprenticeship model with our students, but so few of them will go into our fields. What are we to do? Online sites such as wikis and blogs can provide one answer, but Van Rhys cautions that digital reading can be largely decontextualized and doesn’t always support the kinds of deeper reading with which we’d like to see our students engage. Largely, he champions a recognition that the best research is not content regurgitation, but is instead entering into that Burkean conversation, and he wants teachers to keep reimagining ways to continue that conversation utilizing 21st century literacies. |