The Two Things that Got Me Over the Hump (or, How To Organize the 2nd to Last Section of My Essay)

1. Thinking With Anne Beaufort

In her essay “College Writing and Beyond: Five Years Later,” Anne Beaufort revisits her earlier research and attempts to rethink her proposal for a writing curriculum. One of the corrections she offers has to do with her failure to account, in her earlier work, for how the curriculum she was proposing would “fit” with curricula writing instructors were already using. Beaufort identifies a series of six values and assumptions, any one of which, she asserts, may underlie the work of a writing course. These are:

1. The expressivist goal, facilitating self-expression, finding one’s voice, one’s personal truths; 

2. The critical theory/cultural studies goal, facilitating critique of social hierarchies and cultural 
hegemonies; 

3. The democratic, rhetorical goal, facilitating informed participation in civic issues; 

4. The pragmatic goal, facilitating successful written expression in school and work contexts; 

5. The aesthetic goal, facilitating an appreciation of the craft of writing and a love of language; 

6. The process goal, facilitating growth in managing writing tasks. 


Beaufort concedes that its completely possible that these goals might be interwoven in a given writing class and this is definitely true for the UNH writing course that I experienced as an undergraduate student and sought to teach during my early years in the classroom. A UNH writing course was guided by these three goals (in this order of emphasis):

The expressivist goal

The process goal

The aesthetic goal

During graduate school, both at Iowa, for my MAT and at UNH, for my doctorate, I was exposed to and persuaded to experiment with a writing course guided by two new goals while simultaneously carrying forward a goal from my earlier teaching. These courses were shaped by these three goals (again, in order of emphasis):

The critical theory/cultural studies goal

The democratic, rhetorical goal

The process goal

Today, if forced to choose, I would say that my teaching is informed by these goals:

The pragmatic goal

The process goal

I say “if forced to choose” because I am fortunate, today, to teach a range of writing courses and not just, for example, first-year writing (FYW). When I teach FYW I am undoubtedly guided by the pragmatic and process goals, having long abandoned the expressivist and aesthetic goals of my UNH tribe. But elsewhere, in other kinds of courses, with other kinds of assignments, I am able to operationalize these other kinds of underlying values and assumptions. For example, in a public writing course, I engage with the democratic/rhetorical goal of participation in civic issues. Same for a digital and multimedia writing course that I organize around the theme of sustainability. In a course on food and food writing, I engage the critical theory/cultural studies goal as I work to help students think critically about our food system and its power in their lives. In this same course, I engage the expressivist goal by asking the students to write personally about their experiences with food. In sum, I am able to emphasize different values and assumptions in different pedagogical contexts, and not confined to just one type of writing course guided by one set of values and assumptions.

Also:

Although there is a long tradition in first-year writing courses of starting with a personal essay (such as the literacy autobiography), I now realize that including this genre in an academic writing course takes away from the limited time available in a 10 or 15 week course to emphasize academic writing skills and genres. Those whose goals for freshman writing are expressivist would disagree with me (Elbow “Reflections”). I understand. But my goals for academic writing courses are different from the goals expressivists have. Personal narrative is seldom encouraged outside of freshman writing and creative nonfiction classes. Its genre conventions, purposes, and critical thinking requirements are much different than academic writing. So I no longer include any personal narrative assignment in an academic writing course.

2. Historicizing “A UNH Writing Course”

The basic point here is that conducting historical inquiry into the UNH program helped me to see a UNH writing course as a product of its time/context and not as “the way” writing should be taught.

• Who can help me make this point about the historically-contingent nature of all approaches to teaching writing?
• How can I show/explain a UNH writing course as a product of its time/era but also of its key founders/shapers? (for example: Murray was not an academic, so academic writing, traditionally defined, didn’t play a large role in a UNH writing course; same for rhetoric)