Exploratory #4: Network of Concerns
Part I (Network) due to Canvas by 3/29 (beginning of class)
Part II (Critical Blog Post Reflection) due on course blog by 4/1 (3:35 p.m.)
For your final Exploratory of the semester, I’ll ask you to work in small teams to construct a network of “global rhetorical” concerns based on this week's (and the previous week's, if you wish) readings. I’m choosing to keep that phrase in scare quotes for obvious reasons:
- First, it is too vast, since our readings this week cannot be conflated under the same goals. We have one text that draws our attention to linguistic imperialism in a unique pedagogical context (U.S. and non-U.S. at the same time), another that argues for affective response in local perceptions of global phenomena, and a third that borrows from international scholarship in order to try to complicate how we (in the U.S.) valuate literacy education. While each of these arguments falls within the purview of “global rhetorical,” our challenge is to understand their nuances.
- Second, we are learning that not all discussions of “globalization” necessarily serve “global rhetorical” work in Rhetoric and Composition.
So, please keep these challenges in mind as you complete Exploratory 4. Be on the lookout for how you can explicitly address them in your work.
I will suggest the following work teams for this final assignment:
- Andrew, Meghan
- Ashley, Sean, Travis
- Mikaela, Stephanie
Constructing and Populating Your Network
While there are many forms of networks, I think it easiest for us to consider this assigment in terms of social (or relational) networks. Such networks might be flat, multilayered, and/or multidimensional, but what they have in common is that they provide scopic views of various relationships.
Thus, what I am asking you to "network" is a set of significant concerns among our readings, and I am allowing your group to decide how you want to define "significant" according to how you think these texts can work together in helping us to understand and to complicate "globalization" for rhet/comp studies. The "concerns" you choose to network might include topics, themes, influences, theories, key concepts, methodologies, outcomes, but they need not be limited to these things. What do you want to show, and why is that important? Let that be a guiding factor for your group!
If you are already hung up on the description above, perhaps a simpler way to put this is: "create a network among these texts." :-)
Designing Your Network
Please do not feel loyal or limited to a single medium or platform (digital or non-). I am more interested in having you think together about how best to solve the problem of this assignment and let discussions of your medium or platform emerge from that problem-solving. Thus, if you want to create and recreate this on a whiteboard, and take digital images of your whiteboarding, that is perfectly fine. Or, if you want to experiment with free network mapping tools (i.e., draw.io, SmartDraw, etc.), that is also perfectly fine. Or, you may come up with another solution. However, please do not revert to a "standard platform" simply because you are accustomed to it (i.e., Prezi, Wix) for the simple reason that it might prevent you from showing some networked relationships that you think are essential.
Make this as robust as you possibly can. Each of you has already identified a set of "concerns" by and through which you are starting to understand "global rhetorics." It will be interesting to see how those can serve you in designing your own network among our texts.
Distributing Your Network
Please upload your completed "network" model to Canvas Assignments. As always, athough you will create it as a team, I'll ask each of you in the group to upload a copy to your Canvas slot.
Critical Blog Post
For your follow-up critical blog post (which you will do individually), please reflect on this final network assignment and how some aspect of the task illumined/complicated/addressed/extended your reading of our texts for the week.
This critical blog post is somewhat formal, rather than a simple reflection. It should be a minimum of 2-3 well developed paragraphs in length (a couple of screens), and my great desire is to see you engage expertly with both task and texts, at times speaking through or alongside what we read, and speaking with some insight about what we read (citing where necessary and embedding links where relevant). Since your post will be intertextual, I'll ask you to use MLA or Chicago-style parenthetical citations where needed, and to be clear that we know which articles/authors you are referencing.
You will post directly to our course blog, so what you write will become the temporary landing page. Be sure to define terms and unpack assumptions for us, using your posts as occasions to teach. Because the blog is somewhat performative, I'll ask you to title your posts creatively (or insightfully). Feel free to compose your post as a response to someone else’s, if you see an interesting conversation starting on the blog.
Send any questions my way,
-Dr. Graban
