composition theory

Along the same lines as Fisher (1998), Geoffrey Sirc (2002) took up the argument that students in composition classrooms have a right to study and compose texts that are of interest and value to them, texts that they find pleasurable. Sirc, in English Composition as a Happening, followed Deemer's exploration of the 1960s Happenings movement and its usefulness to a changing composition scene in the late 1960s. In that text, he suggested that composition should be more about what students need and want to write about, and what they have available to them to write about, than the stark, themed essays they are forced to compose within the confines of academic walls. Sirc argued for teachers to "complicate the distinction between art and life" as the Happenings artists did with their of-the-moment, of-the-material performances (Sirc, 2002, p. 5).

Breaking from compositional conventions "would perplex," Sirc said, while also making the "compositional scene...simpler, more an issue of basic being, wonder, the human heart, change" (p. 10). Who doesn't want wonder, change? Sirc said, however, that composition seems to exist to turn the raw art "of the student's readymade into a form that will produce not the cool-site wow but the literary hmmm " (p. 50). We can't ignore that students are confronted with new media texts daily, nor can we ignore the lack of literary hmm-ness traditional texts evoke in students. Rather than be dismayed by this, Sirc recommended, quoting David Foster Wallace, that "velocity and vividness – the wow – [should] replace the literary hmm" (p. 46).

New media texts produce wonder and wow because they are new, which is a necessary element for composition to see a change toward wonder. This newness can be a physical and emotional reaction to student work – a reaction, Sirc (2002) claimed, that rarely follows students' routine performances of academic writing. He wanted to read in students' writing something that, like Barthes' punctum, would strike him with force – "work," he said, "that sends me, that gives me something I'm not used to" (p. 118).

Akin to a death of boring academic writing, the avant-garde artists of the 1960s brought about a partial death and re-birth to academic painting by introducing new styles, new genres, new materials. They used paints that artists had never thought of using before, that were only available as new materials in the 60s, and that were cheap (p. 78). Sirc argued that "the need for new materials is paramount, materials that can produce shock and wonder, that are guaranteed, just by their presence to result in something different" (p. 129). The new materials that students have now are technological – computers, software, more and more textbooks that argue that a process of design is as important in composition classrooms as writing is, was, used to be. Reading "Once More to the Lake" isn't necessarily the best model for helping students to produce exciting, new work, and it isn't going to help them understand wonderfully complicated new media texts either.

– Cheryl Ball