Don't know why
but in my 10 years
of multigenring
I've never read
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
the book that sparked an idea
in Tom Romano
And the multigenre research paper was born.
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJb6RM1dwOU
***
March 19, 2010
I just finished reading The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) by Michael Ondaatje. Although I really have no interest in Billy the Kid as a historical figure, and never would have read this book based on its title, Bill suggested I read it as a seminal work for my class project. I'm glad I did.
The book is a collection of poems, narratives, pictures, news reports, rememberings and an interview with Billy, who insists on being addressed as Mr. Bonney. By reading all of these genres together, one gets a multi-voiced perspective of the last two years of Billy's life. The book is raw and honest, the imagery striking.
Billy's accounts of murder, drunkness, and fornication are not appropriate for a K-12 audience, but a mature reader can appreciate the graphicness of this book. In one poem, Billy describes a chicken digging its beak in the throat of a dying man and pulling out a vein.
Meanwhile he [Gregory] fell
and the chicken walked away
still tugging at the vein
till is was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory's last words being
get away from me yer stupid chicken. (Ondaatje, 1970, p. 15)
This is what Tom Romano calls an "indelible moment."
***
T: So what did you think of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid?
K: I certainly can see how it sparked multigenre. The book is told from multiple genres from
the perspectives of Billy and those who knew him. I see a lot of similarities between this
book and the kind of multigenre papers I wrote in Romano's classes 9-10 years ago. I'm
surprised, though, that Romano didn't think of the Endnote concept until he'd been tinkering
with multigenre a few years. The Endnotes are very similar to what Ondaatje does at the
end of the book.
T: What do you mean?
K: Well, when I first learned multigenre, Romano required a Letter to the Reader as the first
genre in a long multigenre paper. Its purpose was to introduce the paper and tell the reader
any important information the reader may need to understand the paper. A few years later,
Romano started having his students provide Endnotes, or a few sentences of explantion for
each genre, at the end of the paper. The Endnotes are similar to the Acknowledgements and
Credits Ondaatje placed at the end of Billy the Kid. After the book, Ondaatje cited sources,
including books, photographs, written accounts, and comic books, that he used to characterize
Billy. "With these basic sources I have edited, rephrased, and slightly reworked the originals.
But the emotions belong to their authors" (Ondaatje, 1970).
T: Interesting. Did reading the book change the way you conceive of multigenre?
K: A little bit. I've always written multigenre papers where each piece of writing has been a
different kind of genre. I required my students to do the same, the only exception being the
repetend.
T: Repetend?
K: A repetend is a repeated genre, kind of like a chorus in a song. It acts as a transition between
major ideas in a multigenre paper.
T: OK.
K: So anyway, I only repeat a genre if it is part of the repetend. A multigenre paper may be
constructed like this:
Genre 1: Repetend 1--Word collage
Genre 2: poem
Genre 3: narrative
Genre 4: word collage
Genre 5: diary entry
Genre 6: Repetend 2--word collage
Genre 7: dream sequence
Genre 8: top ten list
Genre 9: letter
Ondaatjee's book begins as:
Genre 1: Note
Genre 2: Poem
Genre 3: Narrative
Genre 4: Poem
Genre 5: Narrative
Genre 6: Poem
Genre 7: Poem
Genre 8: Poem
Genre 9: Picture
For me, when I think of multigenre, I think of each piece as a different genre. I have never
written or assigned multigenre papers that only rely on a few genres repeated over and over
again.
T: Why is that?
K: I like forcing myself and my students to think of different ways of communicating the
same information. I love multigenre because it gets you away from the expected school
genres--narrative, essay, poem. I guess I shy away from Ondaatjean multigenre because it
seems too much like what we already do in school. Multigenre gives students a chance to
experiment with genres we don't always explicitly teach. It's more 'out of the box.'
T: Will you continue to write and and assign multigenre papers the way you always have, or are
you rethinking that structure based on your reading of Ondaatje?
K: I still want more variety of genres, but after reading Billy the Kid, I'm more open to the idea
of repeating more than the repetend genre or switching between a smaller number of
genres. Ondaatje does it well, but I'm afraid if I told most students they could do this, I'd
end of with multigenre papers that looked more like a book of poetry than multigenre as I
know it.
T: Is that wrong?
K: No, but like all new ideas, I'm going to have to take some time mulling it over. I'm not sold
on the idea of a multigenre paper using 2-3 genres back-and-forth, but I'm more open to
genre repetition than I was a day ago.
T: Fair enough.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Multigenre Writing 1
The first time I heard of Tom Romano's multigenre paper was my sophomore year of college. Students were discussing their favorite papers they had ever written, and many of my classmates cited their "multigenre paper from Dr. Romano's class" as their favorite. I didn't know what they were talking about at the time, but when I took my first class from Romano the following year, I was sure to pay attention.
I've been infected with the multigenre bug for 10 years now, and I can tell you, multigenre is not only rewarding to write, it's also rewarding to read. When I assigned multigenre research papers to my college students, I actually looked forward to the day I would take 100 papers home to read. Now who does that with a traditional research paper? Students enjoy the experience too. I knew the assignment was a winner when two of my community college students stopped by my office to find out when I would be finished with their papers. They weren't concerned about the grade--they wanted to share their final drafts with their peer group before everyone left campus for the summer!
A few years ago, I gave a presentation about multigenre at NCTE. One of my co-presenters was Nancy Mack from Wright State University. Nancy was interested in editing a book about multigenre writng at the college level, but when she contacted some publishers, she was told there wasn't a market in higher education for books about multigenre writing.
There are many ways to approach multigenre writing, but I suspect some in higher education resist it because they've seen papers that were too cute. Perhaps they see construction paper sticking out of the sides of a paper and decide it couldn't possibly hold the academic rigor of their research papers.
For my semester paper, I've decided to examine multigenre research papers. Surprisingly, a fair number of the articles I've run across are written by college professors, which negates the book publishers' arguments that there isn't an interest in multigenre at this level. Some of the language to describe multigenre, though, may be part of the problem. In "Learning About Self and Others Through Multigenre Research Projects," Dickson, DeGraff, and Foard (2002) state, "This is not a success story of the uses of multigenre as an alternative to the traditional research paper" (p. 82). When phrased this way, readers new to the multigenre concept may mistakenly believe that multigenre is a way to avoid the research paper rather than present research through multiple lenses.
It's been a few years, so perhaps there is a readiness for multigenre writing at the college/university level. I know education programs have embraced the concept, but what about English, science, history, and art classes? I'll let you know what I discover.
I've been infected with the multigenre bug for 10 years now, and I can tell you, multigenre is not only rewarding to write, it's also rewarding to read. When I assigned multigenre research papers to my college students, I actually looked forward to the day I would take 100 papers home to read. Now who does that with a traditional research paper? Students enjoy the experience too. I knew the assignment was a winner when two of my community college students stopped by my office to find out when I would be finished with their papers. They weren't concerned about the grade--they wanted to share their final drafts with their peer group before everyone left campus for the summer!
A few years ago, I gave a presentation about multigenre at NCTE. One of my co-presenters was Nancy Mack from Wright State University. Nancy was interested in editing a book about multigenre writng at the college level, but when she contacted some publishers, she was told there wasn't a market in higher education for books about multigenre writing.
There are many ways to approach multigenre writing, but I suspect some in higher education resist it because they've seen papers that were too cute. Perhaps they see construction paper sticking out of the sides of a paper and decide it couldn't possibly hold the academic rigor of their research papers.
For my semester paper, I've decided to examine multigenre research papers. Surprisingly, a fair number of the articles I've run across are written by college professors, which negates the book publishers' arguments that there isn't an interest in multigenre at this level. Some of the language to describe multigenre, though, may be part of the problem. In "Learning About Self and Others Through Multigenre Research Projects," Dickson, DeGraff, and Foard (2002) state, "This is not a success story of the uses of multigenre as an alternative to the traditional research paper" (p. 82). When phrased this way, readers new to the multigenre concept may mistakenly believe that multigenre is a way to avoid the research paper rather than present research through multiple lenses.
It's been a few years, so perhaps there is a readiness for multigenre writing at the college/university level. I know education programs have embraced the concept, but what about English, science, history, and art classes? I'll let you know what I discover.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
My Local Literacies
Ever since I finished Barton and Hamilton's (1998) Local Literacies, I can't stop thinking about all of the ways literacy impacts my daily life. I don't know how I would function if I couldn't read and write. It doesn't seem like I can go 10 minutes without reading or writing something!
As I read the case studies of people's literacy practices, I found many similarities to my own life. Like Shirley, I have a lousy memory and because of this [rely] on written records" (p. 98). I write shopping lists before going to the grocery store as June does, and I have "kept diaries at various points" (p. 136) like Cliff.
On Thursday, I thought it would be interesting to jot down my literacy activities in a single day. I started the morning with good intentions and detailed notes, but as the day wore on, I got so engrossed in my literacy activities that I wrote less. Here's what I captured:
As I read the case studies of people's literacy practices, I found many similarities to my own life. Like Shirley, I have a lousy memory and because of this [rely] on written records" (p. 98). I write shopping lists before going to the grocery store as June does, and I have "kept diaries at various points" (p. 136) like Cliff.
On Thursday, I thought it would be interesting to jot down my literacy activities in a single day. I started the morning with good intentions and detailed notes, but as the day wore on, I got so engrossed in my literacy activities that I wrote less. Here's what I captured:
- Reading began before I got out of bed. I read, replied to, and deleted the 53 e-mails which had accumulated on my BlackBerry since 10 p.m. Wednesday night.
- As I surfed through TV channels, I read the screen--prices on the home shopping network, the upcoming schedule on the TV guide channel, credits on TV shows.
- I spent 1/2 hour on the elliptical machine, first reading a magazine, then reading my MP3 player as I scrolled through the play list.
- I took a shower and read the shampoo and conditioner bottles to distinguish between the two.
- I spent about an hour reading a textbook for class, writing notes in the margins while I read.
- During lunch, I watched the noon news on TV, which required reading all of those scroll lines at the bottom of the screen. I also scanned the Giant Eagle ad and wrote a shopping list, coordinating my trip to coupons, which had to be read for expiration dates.
- I spent the early afternoon reading and matching ranking sheets for my graduate assistantship. This activity was followed by writing e-mails to inform students and employers they had "matched" with one another.
- I read my calendar to make sure I was doing everything that needed to be done.
- I wrote a To-Do list for Friday.
- By 4:00 p.m., I had read/written 30 more e-mails (in addition to the 53 which began my day).
- I pulled receipts out of my purse and wrote them in the check register, which was then reconciled against my bank statement, which I read online.
- My husband and I went to H&R block to do our taxes. More reading. I also had to sign my name multiple times.
- After the taxes, Mike and I went out to dinner, where we read a menu. Along the way, we read many road signs and bill boards.
- When we got home, I sorted and read the mail. I scanned the newspaper headlines and decided there wasn't anything I wanted to spend time reading. Perhaps, like Shirley, I felt the newspaper was "old" since I had watched the TV news earlier.
- I went back to e-mail and ranking forms. Wrote a spreadsheet of matches.
After writing and reading this list, I think I know why I'm so tired! The bulk of my day was consumed with reading and writing e-mails. It's the main way I do work for my assistantship. I also may (who am I kidding? I do) have an addiction to my BlackBerry.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Is Christianity Just a Mistranslation?
I grew up with almost no religious background. My mom was raised Catholic, and Dad was Methodist, which led to some pretty mixed messages about Christianity. Mom told me I should pray to Mary. Dad said to cut out the middle man and talk directly to God. My parents' childhood religions couldn't agree whether non-clergy were qualified to read the Bible or not, and the one time I tired to read it, I couldn't stop giggling about that line about not coveting thy neighbor's ass. My neighbor was an overweight woman who wore ugly polyester pants every day. Who would want her ass?
After failing to find a church they both could live with, my parents were satisfied if my brother and I claimed there was some higher power but didn't talk about or practice anything specific.
I knew very little about Christianity as a child. After I took an Asian art class as an undergraduate, I think I knew more about Buddhism than Christianity. Then I met my Jewish friends who tried to help me understand their religion.
I remember having a conversation one night with my friend, Jeff. He told me that Christians and Jews both followed the Old Testament and believed in the same God, but the split occured when Christians believed Jesus was the son of God. Jeff explained that Jesus, a remarkable man, was not God/his son because Mary was not a virgin, so it was not an immaculate conception, hence no miracle. Jeff said he was taught somewhere in his religious education that a mistranslation has occured. The word used to describe Mary essentially meant young woman, but in the language the text was translated to (sorry, I forgot what the two languages were--Hebrew to English?), there wasn't a perfect translation, so the concept "virgin" was used as the closest approximation for young woman. Some people read this as proof of an immaculate conception and two millenia of wars and bloodshed have resulted due to a poor translation between languages.
In The Handbook of Research of Writing (2008), Prior and Lunsford say, "the translation of a text often has high-stakes consequences" (p. 85). They continue, "Jewish translation histories are punctuated by frequent arguments over...which of the many Jewish langauges/dialects ought to be privileged as the target, especially because the most common tongue of the Jewish diaspora--the Hebrew used in sacred texts--may not be amenable to new work coinages" (p. 86). Is it possible that Christianity is the result of a mistranslation?
When I think about translations, scribes, and the fact that the Bible was written from stories passed through oral culture, my friend's explanation is plausible. Those of us who have studied a foreign language know there are not direct translations for all words in all languages. We also know that when copying for hours, it's possible to make a mistake, and those of us who have played the "Telephone Game" know how quickly words get distorted.
When I learned about Buddhism in my Asian art class, I remember God/Buddha decided to take an Earthly form and Queen Maya was the person he chose to be his birth mother. Kinda sounds like an immaculate conception to me. In Nepal, women pray to Queen Maya, which sounds very similar to the relationship many Catholics have with Mary. I wonder if Buddhism and Christianity can be traced back to a common story and if all religions ultimately derive from a single source which has been mistold, miscopied, and mistranslated to the point it has evolved into separate religions.
I'm not out to convert or proclaim any religion is wrong, but I believe it's very possible that many of the world's religions believe in variations of the same higher power. If Latin could be vulgarized into languages such as French, Italian, and Spanish, surely some Master Religion could have turned into Christianity, Judiasim, Buddhism, etc.
After failing to find a church they both could live with, my parents were satisfied if my brother and I claimed there was some higher power but didn't talk about or practice anything specific.
I knew very little about Christianity as a child. After I took an Asian art class as an undergraduate, I think I knew more about Buddhism than Christianity. Then I met my Jewish friends who tried to help me understand their religion.
I remember having a conversation one night with my friend, Jeff. He told me that Christians and Jews both followed the Old Testament and believed in the same God, but the split occured when Christians believed Jesus was the son of God. Jeff explained that Jesus, a remarkable man, was not God/his son because Mary was not a virgin, so it was not an immaculate conception, hence no miracle. Jeff said he was taught somewhere in his religious education that a mistranslation has occured. The word used to describe Mary essentially meant young woman, but in the language the text was translated to (sorry, I forgot what the two languages were--Hebrew to English?), there wasn't a perfect translation, so the concept "virgin" was used as the closest approximation for young woman. Some people read this as proof of an immaculate conception and two millenia of wars and bloodshed have resulted due to a poor translation between languages.
In The Handbook of Research of Writing (2008), Prior and Lunsford say, "the translation of a text often has high-stakes consequences" (p. 85). They continue, "Jewish translation histories are punctuated by frequent arguments over...which of the many Jewish langauges/dialects ought to be privileged as the target, especially because the most common tongue of the Jewish diaspora--the Hebrew used in sacred texts--may not be amenable to new work coinages" (p. 86). Is it possible that Christianity is the result of a mistranslation?
When I think about translations, scribes, and the fact that the Bible was written from stories passed through oral culture, my friend's explanation is plausible. Those of us who have studied a foreign language know there are not direct translations for all words in all languages. We also know that when copying for hours, it's possible to make a mistake, and those of us who have played the "Telephone Game" know how quickly words get distorted.
When I learned about Buddhism in my Asian art class, I remember God/Buddha decided to take an Earthly form and Queen Maya was the person he chose to be his birth mother. Kinda sounds like an immaculate conception to me. In Nepal, women pray to Queen Maya, which sounds very similar to the relationship many Catholics have with Mary. I wonder if Buddhism and Christianity can be traced back to a common story and if all religions ultimately derive from a single source which has been mistold, miscopied, and mistranslated to the point it has evolved into separate religions.
I'm not out to convert or proclaim any religion is wrong, but I believe it's very possible that many of the world's religions believe in variations of the same higher power. If Latin could be vulgarized into languages such as French, Italian, and Spanish, surely some Master Religion could have turned into Christianity, Judiasim, Buddhism, etc.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
William Holmes McGuffey
I'm sitting in McGuffey Hall at Miami University while attending the 10th Annual Graduate Student Conference sponsored by the Educational Leadership department. McGuffey Hall is named for William Holmes McGuffey, a former Miami faculty member, who has been mentioned in recent class readings for his contribution to literacy education, specifically though his famous Readers. I thought while I was here I would stop by the McGuffey Museum, but I was disappointed when the sign on the door said tours where by appointment only.
I did get a picture of McGuffey's house, located in the center of campus, though.
You can learn more about McGuffey and the museum (his house) by visiting the William Holmes McGuffey Museum website.
I also thought you might like to see the McGuffey statue which sits outside the hall which bears his name. 
When I was a student completing my bachelor's and master's degrees at Miami University, I would walk past both McGuffey's house and his statue on the way to class.
When I was a student completing my bachelor's and master's degrees at Miami University, I would walk past both McGuffey's house and his statue on the way to class.Love and honor to Miami...
(The beginning of the college fight song).
Still Stuck in New Criticism?
I need to get something off my chest. I've been thinking a lot about the format of dissertations. I recently read five dissertations for a class assignment and was beyond bored with the experience. The writing is just so formulaic and seems to defy everything I was taught about effective, engaging writing.
Last year I read a dissertation for the first time, and I just shook my head. The structure seems contrived, simplistic, and not far from what Tom Romano refers to the "five paragraph you-know-what." To me, the dissertation looks like a five paragraph "you-know-what" on steroids.
Nystand, (1993) in "Where Did Composition Studies Come From: An Intellectural History," describes the "five-paragraph theme" (p. 275) as an innovation of the formalist period tied to the tenets of New Criticism. I can't tell you how many education professors, in both my undergraduate and graduate education, have criticized the five-paragraph essay as a contrived school genre which is ineffective because it is inauthentic to the real work of writers. Let face it, how many of us have written a five paragraph essay outside of school in our adult lives.
In Ohio, we coach students to write five paragraph essays in high school so they can pass the OGT and get their diplomas. Is what we do to graduate students, advising them to write five chapter dissertations, really that much different? Isn't the dissertation format also a contrived school genre? How many published books about educational research are exactly five chapters?
I'm frustrated that compositionists recognize the limitation of the five-paragraph essay for college freshmen, but at the doctoral level, the highest level of study, we are less innovative and forward-thinking.
I've been talking to students and professors about this. Some professors have encouraged me to NOT write a five chapter dissertation while warning me I might not get my dissertation approved if I divert too far off the beaten path. One professor argued that the dissertation format in many way parallels the structure of intro, lit. review, question/methods, findings, and analysis that we see in journal articles and is hence an appropriate way to require graduate students to write.
The statistics of graduate students being ABD is depressing. Is it possible that the dissertation genre is part of the problem? We recognize that many middle and high school writers struggle with five paragraph essays but shine when they write poetry and other creative genres. Do some PhD students give up because they find themselves writing in an academic voice which isn't their own? In an attempt to provide a model of perfection for struggling writers to emulate, has graduate education done a disservice to their students?
It wouldn't be fair to criticize without suggesting an alternative, so let me suggest an alternative assessment. If the dissertation prepares PhD students for academic research and writing, could a student prove this competency by conducting X research studies and writing them as authentic journal articles which are submitted to peer reviewed journals? Wouldn't that also build a student's CV, impact the larger research community, and validate the student's scholarship by unbiased reviewers?
Last year I read a dissertation for the first time, and I just shook my head. The structure seems contrived, simplistic, and not far from what Tom Romano refers to the "five paragraph you-know-what." To me, the dissertation looks like a five paragraph "you-know-what" on steroids.
Nystand, (1993) in "Where Did Composition Studies Come From: An Intellectural History," describes the "five-paragraph theme" (p. 275) as an innovation of the formalist period tied to the tenets of New Criticism. I can't tell you how many education professors, in both my undergraduate and graduate education, have criticized the five-paragraph essay as a contrived school genre which is ineffective because it is inauthentic to the real work of writers. Let face it, how many of us have written a five paragraph essay outside of school in our adult lives.
In Ohio, we coach students to write five paragraph essays in high school so they can pass the OGT and get their diplomas. Is what we do to graduate students, advising them to write five chapter dissertations, really that much different? Isn't the dissertation format also a contrived school genre? How many published books about educational research are exactly five chapters?
I'm frustrated that compositionists recognize the limitation of the five-paragraph essay for college freshmen, but at the doctoral level, the highest level of study, we are less innovative and forward-thinking.
I've been talking to students and professors about this. Some professors have encouraged me to NOT write a five chapter dissertation while warning me I might not get my dissertation approved if I divert too far off the beaten path. One professor argued that the dissertation format in many way parallels the structure of intro, lit. review, question/methods, findings, and analysis that we see in journal articles and is hence an appropriate way to require graduate students to write.
The statistics of graduate students being ABD is depressing. Is it possible that the dissertation genre is part of the problem? We recognize that many middle and high school writers struggle with five paragraph essays but shine when they write poetry and other creative genres. Do some PhD students give up because they find themselves writing in an academic voice which isn't their own? In an attempt to provide a model of perfection for struggling writers to emulate, has graduate education done a disservice to their students?
It wouldn't be fair to criticize without suggesting an alternative, so let me suggest an alternative assessment. If the dissertation prepares PhD students for academic research and writing, could a student prove this competency by conducting X research studies and writing them as authentic journal articles which are submitted to peer reviewed journals? Wouldn't that also build a student's CV, impact the larger research community, and validate the student's scholarship by unbiased reviewers?
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Wordle
A member of my writing group showed me Wordle today. It's a website where you type in a bunch of words and the site makes a word collage for you. Although the site generates the pattern, you have some control to move words and change their color and size. It's a really cool way to introduce poetry and the effect of word placement on a page.
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