I loved the discussion of writing as performative because it
verbalized exactly how I feel about writing. What are some ways we can bring
the “performance” aspect to the forefront for students as they explore
themselves as writers (i.e. should we encourage talking aloud when drafting in
class, giving a speech, taking a text and turning it into a video performance,
etc)? How might we also connect this idea of writing as epistemic and
knowledge-making with this, or is that something we should let/hope students
find for themselves?
Dirk discusses that too much choice or freedom in
communication can lead to chaos and obfuscate meaning, but also that genres are
not plug-and-play and formulaic, which I think is something we all agree on. But
(and I may be echoing others with this question) how do we figure out how to
teach students these conventions and still allow for play within their chosen
genres? Might we use rationales to our advantage here to help both students and
ourselves understand when there has been a purposeful breaking from convention
(and what that means)? Should we first encourage them to play within the realm
of what is known whilst in class, or take risks here while the stakes are not
quite so high?
I do not have a definitive answer on how to encourage the performative in the classroom. Perhaps, being more prescriptive or demanding in this situation is required. I know the class I am interning in is fairly shy overall. I got them to do skits for logical fallacies and they were very reluctant. I empathize with the students, as I usually have to be forced to participate in more performative acts, but I firmly I believe these kinds of activities are helpful and they have helped me tremendously in the past. In fact, I believe some of my biggest moments of growth happened when I had to present material, memorize and act out a speech, etc.
ReplyDeleteCaitlin,
ReplyDeleteI don't find it as a surprise that both you and I found something to agree with in the first reading. I loved the bit about writing as a performance. My first thought when I read that was the rhetorical canon of delivery. The way that we deliver a text takes that text to the next level in that we are actively thinking about our audience, our methods, our presentation. I think it's a smart idea to have the students take a text of theirs and deliver it through another mode, whether it be visual, audio, or through a literal play.
When it comes to genre, I believe it's necessary to teach the conventions first and foremost in order to give the students a base or platform. Where they take it from there is all on them and I think it's at that moment where you encourage them to take risks. I think that by starting them out with breaking the genre, before playing within the guidelines, may lead to confusion later on.