Writing Space(s): Composition and Discursive Geographies

From the "madwoman in the attic" (Gilbert & Gubar) to the "basement" of composition studies (S. Miller), writing has never been as distinct from its spatial (architectural, geographical) context as we sometimes pretend. And that context pervades our field in terms of the metaphors we use to express our political orientations (left/right, margin/center), our methods (outlining, cognitive mapping), and even those qualities of writing we value (coherence, structure, flow). New technologies are accompanied by new conceptions of space, as hypertext threatens the "container metaphor" (Bowden) of the page, distance education overcomes geographical obstacles to access, and cyberspace itself is represented as a new frontier for our field.

Composition studies has been slow to take up issues of space as they affect writing, in part because we tend to think of space as the province of other disciplines (architecture, geography, design). Nevertheless, we make use of space, both literally and figuratively in our work as compositionists, and we will look at several recent scholars who are taking explict notice of that use. We will also survey some of the key works from critical and cultural theory that underlie this recent work. Our own reading and writing will revolve around three related areas of inquiry:

--How do spatial contexts condition the practice of writing?
--How are spatial metaphors in composition studies productive and/or restrictive?
--Are there alternative models of space that composition studies should embrace?

Obviously, we cannot hope to answer these questions in such a short time, but the wide range of material that we will encounter should point us in a number of productive directions. Our overall aim for this course will be to develop a sense of how spatial theories can inform or complicate a number of issues in composition studies.

reading schedule

[Please note: This schedule is tentative. I am still working on getting copies of some of the readings, and some shifting may occur in the process. The placement of the books is relatively stable, however.]

May 20 Introduction to Course

May 22 [space as metaphor]

• Nedra Reynolds, "Composition's Imagined Geographies" (CCC)
• selections from Robert Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas
• Geoffrey Sirc, "Writing Classroom as A & P Parking Lot" (PRE/TEXT)
• Darsie Bowden, "The limits of containment: Text-as-container in composition studies" (CCC)
• Collin Gifford Brooke, "Making Room, Writing Hypertext" (JAC)

May 27 No Class -- Memorial Day

May 29

• Henri LeFebvre, The Production of Space

June 3

• 1st half, Don Mitchell, Cultural Geography, A Critical Introduction

June 5

• 2nd half, Don Mitchell, Cultural Geography, A Critical Introduction

June 10 [cultural geography contextualized]

• 2 chapters from Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
• 1 chapter from Jim Collins, Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age
• 1 chapter from Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

June 12 [material spaces]

• Sara Ahmed, "Recognizing Strangers," from Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality
• Richard Marback, "Detroit and the Closed Fist: Toward a Theory of Material Rhetoric" (RR)
• Nedra Reynolds, "Who's Going to Cross this Border? Travel Metaphors, Material Conditions, and Contested Places" (JAC)
• Doreen Massey, "Uneven Development: Social Change and Spatial Divisions of Labor," from Space, Place, and Gender

June 17 [cyberspace]

• 2 chapters from Dodge/Kitchin, Mapping Cyberspace
• 1 chapter from W J T Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn
• Dave Healy, "Cyberspace and Place: The Internet as Middle Landscape on the Electronic Frontier," from Internet Culture

June 19

• Gregory Clark, "Writing as Travel, or Rhetoric on the Road" (CCC)
• Roxanne Mountford, "On Gender and Rhetorical Space" (RSQ)
• Linda Brodkey, "Modernism and the Scene(s) of Writing" (CE)
• Bruce McComiskey and Cynthia Ryan, introduction to City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices
• Nedra Reynolds, "Learning to Dwell: Inhabiting Spaces and Discourses," from Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference

June 24

• Kathleen Kirby, Indifferent Boundaries: Spatial Concepts of Human Subjectivity

June 26 Final