The CEA Forum
Summer/Fall 2007: 36.2
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Table of Contents
Articles
Shannon R. Wooden / Mary Braddon's ‘Good Lady Ducayne' in Context(s): Victorian Medicine, Literary Gothicism, and 21st Century Feminist Pedagogy
With no disrespect intended to the feminist work being done, it is imperative to a feminist project that we begin to see women writers not as preoccupied with gender but as active and equal participants in the larger cultural and ideological realities they inhabited ~ (read more)
Cheli Reutter / The Medical Humanities and College English
As faculty are becoming increasingly aware of options available for teaching texts or entire courses addressing health-related issues in works of literature and in film, the time is ripe for an article in this college English forum discussing teaching the medical humanities ~ (read more)
Christina Fisanick / Telling "My Story": Revisiting the Autobiographical Essay in the Composition Classroom
Students often use autobiographical writing assignments to repeat “my story,” a safe and linear narrative that is validated in the composition classroom and in mainstream culture because it replicates the self as a knowable and unified object. A poststructural approach to the autobiographical essay assignment can move students and their writing beyond these problematic, if comfortable, confines and help them explore their lives in writing that is more rhetorically rich and complex ~ (read more)
Amy Lynch-Biniek / The Ethics of Identity: What Is a Compositionist?
Our role is to question, along with our students, the ways in which language shapes our perceptions and beliefs, how others use it to such ends, and the multiple means by which we can employ and subvert words, structures, genres, discourses and rhetorics to represent ourselves ~ (read more)
From the Classroom
Jerry Denno / An Architecture of the Literature Survey
Having worked so meticulously to create convergences between primary and secondary readings, between formal and informal writing, between historical context and individual response, I can appreciate the course as a creative structure—an architectural design ~ (read more)
Matthew A. Fike / Thinking in a Discipline: An Assignment in Critical Thinking Class
My course is not in anyone's “discipline”—there is no such thing as a major in critical thinking—but students start out by applying the elements of critical thinking to their major fields as a whole ~ (read more)
Karen P. Peirce / Building Intercultural Empathy Through Writing: Reflections on Teaching Alternatives to Argumentation
The idea behind textual hybridity in assignments is to allow a break from the linearity of traditional academic argument. Students are aware that thoughts do not always arrive arranged with their thesis statements first followed by evidence and then analysis. Textual hybridity allows students to follow their trains of thought in a more organic manner and in whatever genre they are most comfortable working ~ (read more)
Mary Rist / Visual Rhetoric and Viewer Empathy in News Photographs
Since story-telling is an inevitable part of how we make sense of the world, we need to make students aware of how stories are told, visually as well as verbally. Aware that each reported event is framed, they'll be less likely to be victims of manipulation and have more questions to ask about what was included and what excluded from any particular telling ~ (read more)
Column
Colin Irvine / Making Lemonade: An Assistant English Professor's Perspective on the Profession
Returning then to the incredibly apropos metaphor, the Scary Snort takes many forms and its presence contributes to a number of problems, not the least of which—I'm sure you have noticed—include hypersensitivity and paranoia ~ (read more)
Reviews
Christine Denecker / Review of Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice edited by Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie
Bryna Siegel / Review of Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life by Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki
Heather Marcovitch / Review of Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century by Mark William Roche
Lee Brewer Jones / Review of Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel by Lisa Zunshine
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Editors' Note
This issue of The CEA Forum exemplifies one of the great strengths of the journal: the breaking down of the barrier between literature and composition in our conversations about teaching. Both our lead articles, Shannon Wooden's on feminist pedagogy, Victorian culture, and the gothic, and Jerry Denno's on designing the literature survey, focus on the creative innovations CEA members are pursuing in their literature classrooms. These articles join a series of compelling pieces on rethinking the composition classroom and its work and purpose, drawing on ethical, generic, and poststructural theory. Finally, our book review section features titles on literature and composition, reflecting the interconnections so crucial to so many of us as teacher-scholars.
As we completed this issue, pleased with its breadth of concerns, we couldn't help but anticipate the variety that is sure to characterize this year's annual conference, a variety that is the hallmark of the CEA and its meetings. As members prepare their presentations, we urge them to consider CEA Publications as venues for their work. Contributors are invited to submit full-length scholarly articles of literary criticism to The CEA Critic, and essays and praxis pieces on teaching literature and writing to The CEA Forum. Guidelines for both journals are available here; potential contributors are urged to review the guidelines carefully before submitting. We are also pleased to announce that all CEA Publications are now indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, allowing us to disseminate our work to a wider audience.
We look forward to seeing you all in St. Louis!
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