Teaching Writing, Rhetoric, and Reason at the Globalizing University

Teaching Writing, Rhetoric, and Reason at the Globalizing University
Author: Robert Samuels
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000259927

This timely intervention into composition studies presents a case for the need to teach all students a shared system of communication and logic based on the modern globalizing ideals of universality, neutrality, and empiricism. Based on a series of close readings of contemporary writing by Stanley Fish, Asao Inoue, Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, Richard Rorty, Slavoj Zizek, and Steven Pinker, this book critiques recent arguments that traditional approaches to teaching writing, grammar, and argumentation foster marginalization, oppression, and the restriction of student agency. Instead, it argues that the best way to educate and empower a diverse global student body is to promote a mode of academic discourse dedicated to the impartial judgment of empirical facts communicated in an open and clear manner. It provides a critical analysis of core topics in composition studies, including the teaching of grammar; notions of objectivity and neutrality; empiricism and pragmatism; identity politics; and postmodernism. Aimed at graduate students and junior instructors in rhetoric and composition, as well as more seasoned scholars and program administrators, this polemical book provides an accessible staging of key debates that all writing instructors must grapple with.

Teaching Writing, Rhetoric, and Reason at the Globalizing University

Teaching Writing, Rhetoric, and Reason at the Globalizing University
Author: Robert Samuels
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000259943

This timely intervention into composition studies presents a case for the need to teach all students a shared system of communication and logic based on the modern globalizing ideals of universality, neutrality, and empiricism. Based on a series of close readings of contemporary writing by Stanley Fish, Asao Inoue, Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, Richard Rorty, Slavoj Zizek, and Steven Pinker, this book critiques recent arguments that traditional approaches to teaching writing, grammar, and argumentation foster marginalization, oppression, and the restriction of student agency. Instead, it argues that the best way to educate and empower a diverse global student body is to promote a mode of academic discourse dedicated to the impartial judgment of empirical facts communicated in an open and clear manner. It provides a critical analysis of core topics in composition studies, including the teaching of grammar; notions of objectivity and neutrality; empiricism and pragmatism; identity politics; and postmodernism. Aimed at graduate students and junior instructors in rhetoric and composition, as well as more seasoned scholars and program administrators, this polemical book provides an accessible staging of key debates that all writing instructors must grapple with.

The Psychopathology of Political Ideologies

The Psychopathology of Political Ideologies
Author: Robert Samuels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000457214

Inspired by Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, this book examines the unconscious processes shaping contemporary political ideologies. Addressing ten fundamental questions, Robert Samuels identifies four basic political ideologies: liberal, conservative, Left, and Right, which are often placed in the structure of a logical square, determined by two binary oppositions, with a fifth structure of centrism complicating the square. He turns to psychoanalysis to explain the unconscious defense mechanisms that structure these political ideologies. Each chapter uses a recent, influential title as a gateway to the analysis of the ideologies and structures identified. Through this analysis, Samuels argues that belief in ideological structures is tied to triumvirates of institutions and ideals; conservatives being tied to premodern institutions of religion, feudalism, and monarchy, while modern liberals are tied to ideals of universality, objectivity, and empiricism. He concludes that this investment in universality shapes the ethics of modern globalization and democratic liberalism. Unlike other books, conclusions are reinforced through examples drawn from current events with an integrated model of different psychopathologies. The Psychopathology of Political Ideologies moves beyond providing an understanding of what drives different political investments, to offer a more rational and conscious comprehension of subjectivity and social organization. This book will be a great resource for those interested in politics, political science psychology, social psychology, globalization, and ideology.

Trauma, Pedagogy, and the College Mental Health Crisis

Trauma, Pedagogy, and the College Mental Health Crisis
Author: Robert Samuels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2024-11-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040268862

Trauma, Pedagogy, and the College Mental Health Crisis argues that psychoanalytic theory and practice offers a solution to the large increase in students seeking mental health services. Robert Samuels returns to the roots of psychoanalysis, drawing from Freud’s and Lacan’s conceptions of hysteria and narcissism. This book examines the idea that the repression of psychoanalysis has resulted in a situation where students are being misdiagnosed and mistreated as the underlying structures shaping narcissism and hysteria are misrecognized. Samuels suggests that the more people are trained to focus on their own thoughts and feelings, the more they take on self-destructive thoughts and behaviors in a neurotic way and that psychoanalysis offers a solution. Trauma, Pedagogy, and the College Mental Health Crisis will be of interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as mental health professionals working with adolescents and professionals working in higher education. It will also be relevant to readers interested in adolescent mental health, higher education, parenting, and politics.

Engaging Research Communities in Writing Studies

Engaging Research Communities in Writing Studies
Author: Johanna Phelps
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000357678

This book invites readers to reconsider how writing studies researchers work with Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) on behalf of their communities and argues that engaging with IRBs during the research design process helps practitioners conduct research more quickly and effectively Using empirical data from both writing studies and extra-disciplinary contexts, Dr. Johanna Phelps presents findings from two discipline-wide studies, as well as metadata from two IRBs, to develop a principled engagement framework for writing studies researchers to interact with their communities This engaging and timely exploration of research design will be an important resource for scholars and students of writing studies; rhetoric and composition; technical and professional communication; cultural rhetoric; literacy studies; research design; research methodologies; research ethics; IRBs; justice; and critical theory

Arts-Based Research Methods in Writing Studies

Arts-Based Research Methods in Writing Studies
Author: Kate Hanzalik
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2021-02-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000352455

As the arts become an increasingly popular pedagogical tool in writing studies, Arts-Based Research Methods in Writing Studies offers scholars and educators in the field ways to leverage the arts for their own scholarship through the practice of arts-based research (ABR). Tailored to the needs of writing studies scholars, this concise guide presents ways of exploring and addressing unresolved research questions from the past as well as new, pressing questions that are emerging in light of increasingly fraught and complicated current contexts. It explores motives and methods for taking up ABR, sheds light on the processes of representing research and the ethical imperative of methodological disclosure, and looks critically at the complexities of fully realizing ABR in writing studies while offering some pedagogical applications. Connecting theory to practice, this book also performs ABR through a co-created mixed-media text about the everyday and extraordinary stories woven into the fabric of new American artists’ composing processes. Arts-Based Research Methods in Writing Studies lends itself to insight that is at once personal for writing studies researchers, useful for research communities, and a catalyst for social change beyond institutional walls; as such, it will be an important resource for scholars, educators, and graduate students in writing studies and those interested in multimodal, multilingual, and translingual learning; equitable pedagogies and administrative practices; online writing instruction; transnational literacies; research methods; community-based research; and disability studies in composition.

Dialogic Editing in Academic and Professional Writing

Dialogic Editing in Academic and Professional Writing
Author: Özüm Üçok-Sayrak
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2023-12-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1003811086

This book brings attention to the communicative process of editing as a dialogic experience that is attentive to the voice of the Other, and underlines an ethical turn for the editing process. The volume focuses on an essential, yet undertheorized, aspect of the communicative practice of editing by reading and receiving the voice of the Other and offering feedback towards assisting the text to find a voice without turning it to the voice of the editor. Utilizing the theoretical and philosophical frameworks of a diverse group of leading scholars and philosophers, contributors to this volume explore the editing process as connected to communication ethics that calls for a discernment of what matters. With its philosophical underpinnings, this book will especially be of interest to researchers and students in multiple disciplines in humanities and the social sciences including communication studies, dialogue studies, philosophy, literature, composition studies, education, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and political science.

Writing, Imitation, and Performance

Writing, Imitation, and Performance
Author: Irene L. Clark
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2022-12-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000833623

This book reconsiders imitation as a valuable pedagogical approach in Writing Studies. Countering concerns about product-oriented teaching, formulaic writing, paternalistic or elitist pedagogy, and plagiarism, the book maintains that the use of imitation can offer a writer greater insight and help to develop a clear writerly identity. Positing that writers often use imitation as a step toward developing new directions, structures, and styles, and that this imitation is indeed a form of performance, the author explores the neuropsychological aspect of imitation to show how it is a valid form of writing instruction. She explains how learning, experience, and role playing are manifested in the brain and influence one’s sense of self, one’s identity. The book emphasizes that imitation can provide students with opportunities to perform habitually as writers, readers, and critical thinkers, enabling them to develop new understandings and confidence in their ability to improve. It also includes suggestions for classroom application, written by Craig A. Meyer. This book offers important insights for scholars and teachers of writing and composition, education, and communication studies.