Talkin' and Testifyin' (Archived)

This is an archive of the site for the Spring 2005 "Minority Rhetorics" course. You are free to browse the archived version of this site, but it is no longer interactive. It was a great course with great discussions, but all good things must come to an end

Samantha Blackmon, PhD
Assistant Professor of English
Purdue University

Hey All,
Thought I'd join the convo after being silent all these years.....ah, Tori Amos.....
I'm not sure where my paper would fit for a C's panel but I plan to do an autoethnograpy of sorts. REally my overall theme is to relate elementsof the slave narrative to adoption to students in the Academy...and how all of these rely on the same thing for legitimation: writing.
Yes, really.
I'm thinking of these themes. Sorry, these will be scattered. I'm still thinking some things out.
In slave narrative:
1. the need to establish one's self by "proving" one was born, establishing one's right to exist

This is very off-topic, but I must say that I found it hi-larious that my spellcheck wanted to replace Smitherman with Spiderman. Perhaps we should come to class, ready to talk about Black English dressed in blue and red spandex with a web shooter in hand...

Hi all,

I'm definitely interested in seeing what we can put together for Cs related to this class' work. Rather than trying to rearticulate what my project will be about(it was hard enough the first time), I'm just going to cut and paste some of my proposal below (WARNING: not for the faint of heart). But to put it simply, I want to take a critical look at how the SRTOL movement was shaped not just by our concern for students and are respect for linguistic differences, but also for a desire to establish composition as a legitimate field of study.

Issue: I am interested in the ways that the ideological shifts within our discipline have shaped our understanding of the student writer, regardless of whether the student is deemed prepared, underprepared, or unprepared for college writing. It seems to me that the discipline’s shift from Current-Traditional (C-T) Rhetoric to a process-centered pedagogy diminished the value of a final product, emphasizing instead the rhetorical principles of invention and arrangement. This pedagogical shift is also political, for it helped the field of composition establish itself as a legitimate discipline worthy of scholarly inquiry, rather than a service course designed solely to help students write better for their other, more important, classes in the university.

Click here to get to the printable PDF.

From the latest news letter. Grab them quick. NCTE only puts them up for free for 2 weeks! (Note that you have to hit the read more link)

A Chinese Boy's Joyful Initiation into American Literacyfrom Language Arts, presents a case study that shows how a language-rich environment and personally meaningful communication opportunities influence one boy's entry into an American community of readers and writers.

For resources on maintaining and validating students' cultural identity while focusing on English literacy skills, read Preserving the Cultural Identity of the English Language learner from May 2004 Voices from the Middle, an entire issue devoted to the theme "Teaching English Language Learners.

The snack schedule is now a page in the syllabus.

On Sorrow Songs and the scores that DuBois presents along with the epitaths at the beginning of each chapter he writes:

They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days -- Sorrow
Songs -- for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that
I have written in this book I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of
these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to
men. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely.
They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I
knew them as of me and of mine. Then in after years when I came to
Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over
the pale city. To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs
themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and
night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the voices of my brothers
and sisters, full of the voices of the past. (Chapter 14, "Of the Sorrow Songs" Souls of Black Folk) (read more for song titles)

I found the reading of Rodriguez interesting. Is it me or did it seem that he fit (quite well) into Woodson's theory of Miseducation? He was educated, but he did not learn to think during/ with his education. Does this lack of the ability to think lead to his inability to reconcile his past, present, and future as well as his inability to reconcile the public and the private? Just a thought....

Bethany