Performance Papers

Performance Papers (15 points) 

Over the semester, I will ask you to write three (3) 1-page papers (legal size, single-spaced, you can play with formatting, but no smaller than 9 pt. font!), to be read aloud in class on the due date. Roughly the first half of the paper will be a critical summary of 2-3 of the week’s readings; the remaining half will be an amalgam of (a) a discussion highlighting a central issue or concern, which can also include (b) a consideration of how the readings have changed, challenged, or further developed your conception of writing, rhetoric, communication, or pedagogy. Both halves should serve one other. This is a special kind of critical summary—one that pushes you to develop your understanding of difficult texts as the course progresses, and encourages you to build on, extend, or revise your previous understandings. 

You are putting texts into conversation with each other so as to discover, articulate, and take up germane connections. So, I am not interested in matters of simple dis/agreement with the texts. I am interested in seeing you grapple with the texts and their issues, which is one of the reasons for all of us to hear the papers and to share them with each other. I am also interested in seeing you grapple with the mode and form, which is one of the reasons I am asking you to compose within the material constraints of a legal-sized sheet of paper.

Although each of you will write all three papers, each of you will only have the opportunity to read twice over the semester, given the size of our class. Those reading each week should bring enough print copies for everyone in the class, but everyone should submit their paper electronically to Canvas. For simplicity's sake, I'll suggest the following schedule:

9/29 - Humanism and Disciplinarity (Quintilian, Ramus, Bacon, Shome) 

• Amanda
• Jessi
• Kamila
• Katelyn
• Mandy
• Parisa

10/13 - Rhetoric and/as Genre (Vico, Bakhtin, Devitt, Queen)

• Michael
• Parisa
• Rob
• Amanda
• Angela
• Jessi

11/10 - Cultural Dis/location  (Anzaldua, Trinh, Stroud, Jarratt, Gates)

• Angela
• Kamila
• Katelyn
• Mandy
• Michael
• Rob

Or, feel free to swap and negotiate, so long as we get the schedule settled on our first class day!