P3.Commonplace Book
Commonplace Book (20%, 20 points)
Commonplace books collect annotations, reading notes, and jottings related to self-selected reading from within rhetoric and composition/writing studies resources. They are journal-like, distinctive in that they refer outward to texts you choose, read, and excerpt, before turning inward to record responses, questions, noticings, and reactions (for background and context on a closely related model, learn more about double-entry journals, or "Two Entry Notebooks"). You could think of them as composed in layers, making use at intervals of point-at-able passages of text (Winterowd), keying on sentences or paragraphs, flexing language to discern meaning and to attempt generative interpretation. Each entry in your commonplace book will include 1) a date stamp, 2) a selection of text from a source you read, 3) a written response to that excerpt that includes some contextualization of the passage as well as some accounting for what motivated you to capture it, to record it, and, finally, 4) a citation.
Furthermore, the commonplace book is designed for you to gain experience with reading and writing especially in the contexts of rhetoric, composition, pedagogy, writing studies, literacy studies, and a wide arena of scholarly areas that intersect with and also complement these specializations. Given this course-related emphasis, I have prepared a list of reading leads to serve as the bases for this project. Work with the following resources as you identify readings you wish to respond to for the ENGL5004 Commonplace Book.
- Any chapter published in Writing Spaces
- Any chapter in Bad Ideas About Writing
- Any journal or book open access published by the WAC Clearinghouse
- Any article published in one of the following journals
- College Composition and Communication
- College English
- Composition Forum
- Composition Studies
- Computers and Composition
- Computers and Composition Online
- Constellations
- Enculturation
- Hybrid Pedagogy
- JAC
- Journal of Business and Technical Communication
- Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy
- Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics
- Journal of Writing Teacher Education
- Kairos
- Literacy in Composition Studies
- Pedagogy
- Peitho
- Present Tense
- Rhetoric Review
- RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
- Technical Communication Quarterly
- Teaching English in the Two-year College
- The JUMP
- The WAC Journal
- WPA Journal
- Writing Center Journal
- Writing Lab Newsletter
- Written Communication
- Xchanges
- Any NCTE position statement
- Specific materials addressing Students' Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL), accessibility and disability rhetorics, cultural rhetorics, First Time Up, and rhetorical grammar.
Your goal for the semester is to develop at least 12 entries (approximately 250 words each; if you are inclined to shorter entries, more of them will keep with this suggested scope). Entries should be posted in reverse chronological order, with newer entries at the start of the document (the first entry will be at the bottom of the document). The first intermediary deadline--for a quick check, essentially--is Wednesday, March 6, just before Spring Break.
In addition to the set of entries, you should by the end of the semester distinguish what you consider to be two researchable questions related to your emerging interests. That is, where are your interests in rhetoric and composition/writing studies, composition pedagogy, composition theory, or any number of related issues starting to coalesce? Feature the researchable questions prominently at the start of the document by providing subheadings or some other type of in-text cue to label them. The completed (or, rather, well begun) commonplace book is due no later than the start of class on Wednesday, April 24.
Contact Information
Derek N. Mueller, PhDProfessor
Department of English
Virginia Tech
Office: 315 Shanks Hall
Phone: +1-734-985-0485 (Google voice)
dmueller@vt.edu
http://derekmueller.net/rc/
