Cleaning is Fun!

Okay, not so much fun as mildly entertaining. Particularly when it involves sifting through three or four weeks' layers of papers on and about my desk. Literally, on and about. I'm a piler. The best part: going through all the detritus of Cs (the annual academic conference of writing teachers), particularly my notes. Here's what I've found on my yellow legal pad:

1. A fabulous idea, no doubt shared by BILLIONS of other rhetoric scholars: The Rhetoric of the Makeover. Maybe we could do a book, so we can all chip in. I'd like to talk about the roots of makeover culture in the 19th century, framing it with my own life-long fascination with all things makeoverish. Like Seventeen Magazine and What Not to Wear.

2. Our friend Dr. B is truly brilliant, and I love hearing his work, and I've decided he should start his own blog: "Style and the Public Intellectual." And I think it requires some fabulous artwork like a cheesy 1970s GQ model. And Dr. B should just offer brief remarks with links to how other folks--both in and out of Composition Studies--are, for good or ill, taking up questions of style. Because a small audience hearing him talk about it a couple times a year at conferences, or more of us reading an occasional article and awaiting The Book, just isn't enough. And I'm not using his name because I don't want to be accused of exerting undue pressure on this whole blog idea. (All who know the scholar in question are now required to exert gentle pressure.)

3. On the same panel, Dr. M discussed identity as an emergent complex, which fascinates me. I continue to be amazed by research into cognition, and in particular its connections with both poststructural theory and buddhist philosophy. And I know I'll never have time to read all this stuff and understand it enough to say anything meaningful.

4. The respondent for the panel posed the Big Question: Why identity? Why are we all so fascinated and engaged with this concept in this particular historical moment? Which is like a giant reflection on my entire research agenda. So I'm not going there. Just put it on a sticky note up on the wall.

5. Someone in the audience at this panel suggested that the Sophists might be able to help us out on the interrelationship of style and content, and even though I doubt she was suggesting this at all, it reminded me of how many times I've read in recent years that the Sophists are going to save us all. Which led me to suggest a marvelous new graphic novel: "Sophistic Rescue Squad"! Imagine superheroes in tunics spouting rhetorical and philosophical stuff...

6. A colleague raised questions regarding LGBT issues at an American-style university in the Middle East (such a thorny issue that I won't even identify this further), some of which reminded me of late 19th and early 20th century Euro-American stuff on homosexuality, particularly the dangers of same-sex educational institutions... I then reminded myself that analogical thinking can lead to big trouble. And yet...to what degree can we make comparisons across cultures and historical moments? Are they even useful, or just temptations?

7. Dr. Leonora Smith of Michigan State gave a fabulous presentation (she's a poet and a scholar and a teacher, and it really shows) on the Sumerian goddess Inanna and the poet Eheduanna who wrote about her and was like an amazing writer around 2300 BCE and we should all know about this stuff. The first chapter of this book might be a good place to begin.

8. Dr. Dana Harrington of ECU presented a brief portion of recent work on Andrew Bell, a British educator who developed "monitorial" schools in India in the 18th century. She's interested in hybridity--how practices are picked up across cultural lines. And, of course, she's a former professor of mine and on my dissertation committee. But that's not the only reason I really enjoy her work. She makes really interesting connections and does rich archival research.

9. Not in my notes, because I was really really really bored: a panel on historical rhetorical stuff. Which should interest me. And was just badly done, in varying ways: one person disorganized with no apparent script or outline and another person reading directly from a paper without giving us a clear framework and covering just too much territory.

10. Not in my notes, because I was late (due to an important conversation with the aforementioned Dr. Harrington) was the final panel I attended. I missed the first paper and a few minutes of the second, but Tamika Carey was brilliant and I really need to ask her for a copy of her paper. Hell, I need to sit down and have her teach me lots of stuff about African American women's rhetorics, pedagogy, and more. In addition, it was good to hear more about Dr. Gwendolyn Pough's ongoing research on African American women's book clubs--since part of my fascination with identity and subjectivity is based on my own inhalation of books and pop culture as a child (heck, I'm still at it), understanding how certain groups take up and work with ideas through reading is really interesting. And I taught her first scholarly text in a sociolinguistics class last year, and made for great discussions and grappling with tough concepts like the public sphere.

Thus concludes my notes from CCCC 2007. (The Inanna stuff is going into the Research Tickler file.) The excess consumption of margaritas at a tex-mex place on the upper west side is just going to have to wait...