Riffs on the Diss

My Working Topic:
How can the scholar/warrior traditions of Greece, Asia, and Japan contribute positive training models and influence to the composition classroom?

I know that it is terribly early, and I also know that my dissertation topic will probably mutate a number of times. Still, I have found it very useful in my experience to explore, work through, and contemplate materials earlier rather than later. This is one of the reasons why I spent so much time putting my application together and why I did not apply to PhD programs for some time: I wanted to know what I would read and write about. When in the program, I wanted to be able to work towards my diss with every class (if possible, of course).

Still, it is important for me to think through some of the ways that this can apply. For example, rather than just work on with one culture's tradition of scholar warrior, by finding three different cultures I'll be able to compare values and training traditions. I hope to pull the strongest traits from each one, and I also hope to find some common themes in each of them. If they are common between the three cultures, then there is probably a lot to be said for them.

One way I see this kind of work manifesting in a "real" academic career is an awareness of the importance of working with student athletes, non-traditional writing classes--such as doing field work--and the potential for offering hybridized classes that have training elements ala Lerner and his Aikido/sociology blend. The last is unlikely, or it may require a strongly funded school or significant seniority. Regardless, they are options worth considering.

When I look at WPA work, I see a very hybridized position of scholar, manager, boss, and intellectual. The confluence of these roles, and their potential fragmentation or implosion, is also a position which could benefit or be strengthened by viewing outside models which balanced multiple, and potentially conflicting, roles. Thus, as an aspiring WPA, these analyses of scholar/warrior could inform my future decisions and ability to achieve my work in a more stabile and strategic fashion.

In the classroom, I see a number of iterations from the scholar/warrior. Greatest, of course, is personal accountability. Second, reintroduction of blatant classical rhetorical methodologies. This does not mean the full rhetorical program. Instead, after a couple years of my own reading and review of works already done in the field, I will have a better notion of how rhetoric has been applied in the comp classroom and then will be able to contribute my own views on this approach.

One of the more important positions I see coming from S/W is the pronounced ethos, and the value of ethos in action in students and instructor. Given some of the work done by hooks on passion--and I am sure others have done related work--I wonder about how I could research or write about returning ethos, honor, and accountability into the classroom.

It sounds very archaic, and it is probably too roughly worded there. Still, it needed to be said. Similarly, I think people might take offense and say that there is accountability in the classroom, that people are behaving in honorable ways. Yes, there are individuals who are honorable, and they surely know that. However, given the incidents of cheating, the treatment/abuse of workers on college campuses, the outspoken desire of many students to get grades without earning them, the demonstrated-largely-by-anecdote trend of instructors desiring pay while teaching poorly, and on and on all show a system where people do less than they need or ought to simply because they can get away with it. There is no honor in that.

That is one of my major motivations: to develop a sense of honor and integrity as a professional. Then, can I figure out how to communicate this to my students...? I do not think you can force anyone to be honorable; rather, leading by example is the way to go. And it does not hurt to have relevant readings and policies in place. Still, it is a complicated issue.

The blending of scholar/warrior is similar, too, to my interests in composition and technical communication. Writing is so terribly important to me, and I do not think that splitting it up or dividing it up is a good thing. Sure, it can be a useful approach at the start, but I do not have a solution to propose. That is another reason I'm in the program. I hope to get enough reading, writing, and thinking done so that I can evaluate and consider various modes of teaching writing as well as how to manage a writing program that has all of these various facets.

Undergirding all of this work is my experience as an adjunct. I am not sure how that will play out or influence matters, but I am certainly looking forward to the research and publication potentials surrounding issues of adjuncts in comp, TC/TW, and how they compare. I am also looking forward to more consideration and discussion of the experiences of WPAs running tc/tw and comp programs when compared to just comp.