Podcast appearances and mentions of gerald graff

"Criticism LTD" concludes its lengthy examination of the unanswerable questions about the state of literary studies with a lengthy consideration of "The Future of Decline" [8:00], the delusion of progress [16:00], the British model of declinist politics [22:00] and literary criticism [29:00], an insider's account of the long tail of "The Chicago Fight" [45:00], the libertarian rejoinder [54:00], and the curriculum of cruelty [61:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Kim Adams, Saronik Bosu, Matt Seybold, Jed Esty, Bruce Robbins, Beci Carver, Gerald Graff, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera Soundtrack: Joe Locke's "Makram" For episode bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EmpireOfCriticism, or subscribe to our newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.SubStack.com, where you will also receive episode transcripts.

In the second part of the finale of "Criticism LTD," we hear about the origins of Jacque Derrida's "Limited Inc." from its editor, the fraught alliance between criticism and history [17:00], the Center For The Literary Arts at Washington University in St. Louis [33.00], the transition from creative writer to working critic [62:00], and critical vocationalism [72:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Gerald Graff, Matt Seybold, Jed Esty, Ignacio Infante, Danielle Dutton, Ryan Ruby Soundtrack: Joe Locke's "Makram" For episode bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EmpireOfCriticism, or subscribe to our newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.SubStack.com, where you will also receive episode transcripts.

The tripartite finale of "Criticism LTD" begins with a the feud between Matthew Arnold and Mark Twain, followed by "Bed Glee" [14:00], "Outing Criticism" [40:00], and "The Fate of Professional Reading" [59:00] Cast (in order of appearance): Beci Carver, Kim Adams, Ryan Ruby, Ainehi Edoro, Jed Esty, Matt Seybold, Gerald Graff, Harry Stecopoulos Soundtrack: Joe Locke's "Makram" For episode bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EmpireOfCriticism, or subscribe to our newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.SubStack.com, where you will also receive episode transcripts.

Learn tips and tricks that will make writer's block a thing of the past!Louie Centanni, MFA, is a lecturer at San Diego State University and has been teaching writing, rhetoric, and composition for over a decade. He is also an online writing consultant at the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center, and as a writer, he has published several short works and essays. When the global pandemics aren't killing everyone's social lives, he tours as a standup comedian. It's a lot easier to make bad writing good than to make no writing!Writer's Block – Does not exist – it is just an excuse for the fact we are terrified our writing doesn't sound good.Writing is like any other skill: Practice, fail, practice, fail.  Do not be afraid to fail. Our society teaches that failure is the worst thing ever, and it's not. Failure is feedback. Don't take it personally; laugh at yourself.Tips:1.     JUST DO IT! Start writing anything that's on your mind, even if it's bad; just get some words on the page.2.     Write first, edit later (pretend like your delete key does not exist).3.     Make an outline; have a plan.4.     Then, ask yourself, what do I need to do in each sentence? 5.     Write what you think you need to write, then show it to someone for feedback; feedback is information that will help you get on track. 6.     Do not take feedback personally – this is a common theme on many of the episodes and if getting feedback is tough for you, listen to episode #18: “How to Feel Good about Feedback with Dr. Kelly Stewart” https://www.buzzsprout.com/1547113/80631657.     Beware of imposter syndrome (we spoke about this on episode #9 “The Dissertation Shift with Todd Fiore” https://www.buzzsprout.com/1547113/7242724 8.     Do not try to sound smart, do not attempt to “dress up” your writing. The BEST writing is CLEAR writing. 9.     Follow templates if you get stuck (see the resource below).10.  Turn off Facebook, your phone, email – ANYTHING that can distract you (remember those grey activities that Mark Woods talked about in episode #6: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1547113/713680611.  Resist cleaning your house (see #1)Resources:Happy Doc Student Swag: https://www.bonfire.com/store/happy-doc-student-podcast-swag/They Say/ I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Berkinstein: https://amzn.to/3uqog0g Grammarly:  https://grammarly.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=3&aff_id=66812&source=websiteSupport this free content and buy Heather a yummy green tea: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/expandyourhappy   Get the Happy Doc Student Handbook here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578333732

As described on the front of his Francis Andrew March Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession of English Studies, “Graff invites all parties...to gather where the intellectual action is, to join the fray of arguments that connect books to life and give studies in the humanities educational force” (The Association of Departments of English, 2011). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thumbthrough/support

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, authors of the wildly popular book on academic writing called They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, share how you can use these communication templates to win over an audience while selling your point-of-view.   Become a Master Storyteller Grab your free copy of The 5 Stages of Grief in Telling YOUR Business Story: http://bit.ly/StorytellingTools Like what you hear? Bring Park to your next event.

Sometime in the 1990's I received a long letter from a teacher named Alex Lawson, asking me to consider doing an Ideas series on the state of education. The letter impressed me by its sincerity, and by the sense of urgency its author clearly felt, but I found the idea somewhat daunting. The subject inspires such endless controversy, and such passion, that I could immediately picture the brickbats flying by my ears. I also worried that my views were too remote from the mainstream to allow me to treat the subject fairly. My three younger children, to that point, had not attended school, and my reading and inclination had made me more interested in de-schooling than in the issues then vexing the school and university systems, which I tended to see as artefacts of obsolete structures. Nevertheless Alex and I kept in touch, and I gradually became able to pictures the pathways such a series might open up. Thinking of it as a set of "debates" or discussions, without getting too stuck on a tediously pro and con dialectical structure, allowed me to reach out very widely and include the heretics with the believers. The series was broadcast, in fifteen parts, 1998 and 1999. I re-listened to it recently, and I think it holds me pretty well. There are a few anachronisms, but my dominant impression was plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Alex Lawson, whose ardour and persistence inspired the whole thing, appears in the third programme of the set. De-schooling gets its day in programmes seven through nine.This series Inspired a letter I have never forgotten, from a retired military man in rural New Brunswick, who wrote to me afterwards that I had "performed a noble service for our country." I was touched, not only that he saw nobility in what I had done, but that he could see that I had attempted to open up the question of education and provide a curiculum for its study rather than trying to foreclose or settle it.The series had a large cast of characters whom I have listed below.Part One, The Demand for Reform: Sarah Martin, Maureen Somers, Jack Granatstein, Andrew Nikiforuk, Heather Jane RobertsonPart Two, A New Curriculum: E.D. Hirsch, Neil PostmanPart Three, Don’t Shoot the Teacher: Alex Lawson, Daniel Ferri, Andy HargreavesPart Four, School Reform in the U.S.: Deborah Meier, Ted SizerPart Five, Reading in an Electronic Age, Carl Bereiter, Deborrah Howes, Frank Smith, David SolwayPart Six, Schooling and Technology: Bob Davis, Marita Moll, Carl BereiterPart Seven, Deschooling Society: Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, John HoltPart Eight, Deschooling Today: John Holt, Susannah Sheffer, Chris MercoglianoPart Nine, Dumbing Us Down: Frank Smith, John Taylor GattoPart Ten, Virtues or Values: Edward Andrew, Peter Emberley, Iain BensonPart Eleven, Common Culture, Multi-Culture: Charles Taylor, Bernie Farber, Bob DavisPart Twelve, The Case for School Choice: Mark Holmes, Adrian Guldemond, Joe Nathan, Andy Hargreaves, Heather Jane RobertsonPart Thirteen, Trials of the University: Jack Granatstein, Paul Axelrod, Michael Higgins, Peter EmberleyPart Fourteen, On Liberal Studies: Clifford Orwin, Leah Bradshaw, Peter EmberleyPart Fifteen, Teaching the Conflicts: Martha Nussbaum, Gerald Graff

James Berlin     Welcome to MR. I’m Mary Hedengren, Jacob is in the Booth and we’re supported by the Humanities Media Project and UT Austin.   Was English in an identity crisis in the 80s and 90s? Maybe. But it’s certain that it thought it was. Interdisciplinary projects such as cultural studies and the voluntary expulsion of groups like English language and composition from English departments was inspiring a lot of ink in the PMLA and other journals and conferences between such illuminaries as Gerald Graff and Stanley Fish. And when people are anxious about who they are, they often look back to how they ended up here. How did English get so weird? What is the background behind composition’s complaints against literary studies? What led to everyone in the department being in a department together?   Enter Professor James Berlin. Berlin, a compositionist who had taught at U of Cinninati and Purdue. Berlin was a disciplinary historian who wrote two important books that tried to create a historical context for the current state of composition, which we’ll talk about today. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges. 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. The earlier book, Writing Instruction in 19th-Century American Colleges published in 1984, traces the role of writing instruction in American political psyche. “no rhetoric—not Plato’s or Aris­totle’s or Quintilian’s or Perelman’s—is permanent.”     The next major book Berlin wrote picks up where Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. Left off—at the dawn of the 20th century. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges. 1900-1985 traces the history of composition in the United States up to what was then the modern day. In going through this history, though, Berlin weaves three strands of compositional theory: current-traditional, expressivist and social constructionist. Berlin makes no secret about which of these strands he thinks is right. Current traditionalists are grammar-obsessed ninnies who sneer at students while pushing their glasses up their noses while expressivists are berkinstocked hippies singing kumbaya without teaching anything significant. Berlin is unapologetic about his perspective. In the introduction, he mentions the criticism the book has received as having a political project. James Berlin, much like the honey badger, don’t care. He has a strong interest in the project to "vindicate the position of writing instruction in the college curriculum" (1) and he feels social constructionism is the best way to do so. He identifies several points that lead to writing instruction’s increased disciplinarity First there was the Birth of CCCC when a 1948 paper by George S. Wykoff and ensuing conflict leads to John Gerber of U of Iowa proposing a conference to discuss composition. 500 attend April 1-2 1949 (105). "With the establishment of the CCCC and its journal [...] teachers of freshman composition took a giant step toward qualifying for full membership in the English department, with the attendant privileges" (106)   Then there is the Importance of pamphlet The Basic Issues in the Teaching of English published as a supplement to College English in 1959. Identify key questions for English, especially in pedagogy (such as should writing "be taught as expression or as communication") (Berlin 124).   Finally there was Braddock's 1961   Research in Written Communication and subsequent founding of Research in the Teaching of English (1967) is important because "Only a discipline confident of its value and its future could allow this kind of harsh scrutiny" (135). Lit studies "have appropriated as their domain all uses of langauge except the narrowly refertial and logical. What remains [...] is given to rhetoric, to the writing course" (30).   In the early 20th century, universities were becoming dominated by sciences and practical arts. Objective philosophies ruled. Current-traditional is the most vehement and widely accepted of the objective rhetorics, but behaviorist, semanticist and linguistic rhetorics are also put into this category (9). As Berlin puts it: "The new university invested its graduates with the authority of science and through this authority gave them an economically comfortable position in a new, prosperous middle-class culture" (36)   On the other extreme of things was expressionist writing "the teacher cannot even instruct the student in the principles of writing, since writing is inextricably intertwined with the discovery of truth. The student can discover truth, but truth cannot be taught; the student can learn to write, but writing cannot be taught. The only strategy left, then is to provide an environment in which the individual can learn what cannot be taught" (13).   Berlin describes that, "For the proponents of liberal culture, the purpose of the English teacher was to cultivate the exceptional students, the geniuses, and, at the most, to tolerate all others" (72). For expressionists "writing--all writing--is art. This means that writing can be learned by not taught" (74). How many times do we hear that? That you just need to ponder a little, get a little older and then you’ll pick up what you need to? This is still kind of the philosophy in many Eastern Hemisphere universities where writing instruction hasn’t taken off as much. And it exists here, too, even in our own departments.   The method of expressionist teaching will be familiar to those in creative writing :"Most important was that the students read all papers aloud to the entire class and were given immediate responses [...] the teacher did not lecture but acted instead  as an ad-[83]ditional respondant" (84). For more about expressionism and what influence it had on rhetoric and composition, check out our previous podcast on expressivism. Berlin’s last book Rhetorics, Poetics and Cultures was also a disciplinary project--reconciling composition (production) with literary studies (interpretation) by way of cultural studies--may seem a little dated to the 90s, which its heady enthrallment with cross-disciplinary cultural studies and post-modernity everywhere as specter and savior. He argues that English should reunite rhetoric and literary studies around text interpretation and production-not one or the other exclusively. He doesn’t just argue in theory but sets out his own class as an example of how to integrate textual production and analysis with general cultural studies. He emphatically defends the use of popular culture in the classroom and meeting students with the knowledge the already have. James Berlin died suddenly of a heart attack while he was still in the middle of career, but his influence is found all around the composition world. For example, the CCCC award for best dissertation is called the James Berlin award, and I think that’s fitting, considering how the establishment of a phd in composition has been such a benchmark in composition’s disciplinarity. Are we at a better place in terms of disciplinary security than we were in the 80s and 90s? I think so. I also think that part o the reason why is James Berlin’s impassioned disciplinary research and fervent argumentation. If you have impassioned discipline and fervent argumentation, feel free to email us at mererhetoricpodcast@gmail.com  

Paulo Freire  Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. I’m Mary Hedengren, we have Samantha and Morgan in the booth and today we get to talk about one of the most influencial figures in the so-called “social turn” of composition.     Paulo Freire was born into a middle-class family, but the Depression hit them hard, and soon he was familiar enough with the very worst of poverty. He noted, later in life, that his poverty, his hunger impacted the way that he learned: "I didn't understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn't dumb. It wasn't lack of interest. My social condition didn't allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class and knowledge" (Freire as quoted in Stevens, 2002). Eventually, things got better: the Freire’s got money, got food and young Paulo got a good education, eventually becoming a state director of the department of education. In this position, though, he didn’t forget the lessons of his hungry childhood—the relationship between education and poverty haunted him. His political work taught hundreds of people to read and became the basis of one of Brasil’s successful education programs.   But it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops for Freire—nope, the governemental tides shifted and Freire was exiled, living in Boliva and Chile. And if the examples of Cicero, Ovid and Machiavelli have taught us anything, it’s that there’s nothing like a sudden collapse of political position and forced vacation to inspire great minds to produce great works. So Freire, the ultimate doer, mover and shaker became a writer and thinker. He wrote Education as a Practice of Freedom and then his most famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1968. The book is dedicated to “the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side.” Strong stuff.     The book itself is strongly influenced by Marx—of course— as well as Hegel, Gramsci and Sartre. The key idea, according to Richard Schaull, is that “Man’s ontological vocation […] is to be a Subject who acts upon and transforms his world” (Shaull, Forward 32).   This would be a good time to describe Freire’s definition of “subject.” By this, he doesn’t mean like “subject to the king” but rather “subject of the sentence,” the thing that is making the action, not being acted on. Only human beings “exist”—are deeply involved in becoming (98), and it’s the goal of the educator to maintain that dignity.   Another key term from Pedagogy of the Oppressed is “praxis” which Freire here defines as an application through action: the action, reflection and the word. “Reflection,” says Freire, “is essential to action” (53).   Okay, but getting back to Pedagogy of the Oppressed-- what is all of this in opposition to? In a phrase, the banking principle of teaching. This idea, elaborated in the second chapter of PEdaogy of the Oppreessed, is the traditional way of teaching: you “deposit” information with your students, have them carry it around and bit and then you demand it parroted back to you in the form of tests or essays. You can see how this is directly against the agency of the student. Instead, the education should always be mutual, a process Freire calls—get ready for another term-- conscientization, A type of political consciousness, conscientization has also been translated as raising critical consciousness. How does one do this? Well, there’s two parts:   The goal of the educator, the politician, the social worker is two fold: 1- unveil the world of oppression and, through the praxis, the thoughtful action, to “commit to its transformation” And when the reality is transformed, is the work done? No, then “this pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation,” and educators “expulse[e] the mtyhs created and developed in the old order, which like spectors haunt the new structor emerging from the revolutionary transformation” (54-5).   Methods to do this include educators who must present the problem to the people through photographs or drawings and questions to “develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves” (83-4). There must be a showing of the oppression, an “unveiling” as Freire put it. But the most important method of pedagogy of the oppressed isn’t what you do with one or another lesson plan, but the way that you live. Remember Freire’s dedication at the beginning of Pedagogy of the Oppressed? To the oppresses and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side. For Freire, it’s crucial that these liberators live with the people, to suffer with them if they are to fight with them. Because, as he put it, “to carry out the revolution for the people” is “equivalent to carrying out a revolution without the people” (127).   Teachers of any sort must be united with those they teach. “The role of revolutionary leadership […] is to consider seriously […] the reasons for any attitude of mistrust on the part of the people and to seek out true avenues of communion with them” (166).   Only in this way can the teachers Freire proposes truly help their students” to over come the situations which limit them: the limit situations” (99).This term is actually borrowed by Viera Pinto, his fellow Brasillian intellectual exile. Consciousness of these limits leads to acts of rebellion, or “limit acts” which only human beings are able to do, real, empowered human beings.   As a sidebar, this might seem a little confusing: “limit siutations”=bad “limit acts”= good. Some of Frere’s terms kind of do this. For example when someone “lives” that’s just the basic biological state while the ideal is to finally “exist” to enjoy the deep teological process of becoming something significant.Also, activism isn’t necessarily a positive term here: Freiere defines activism as a sacrifice of reflection while sacrifice of action = verbalism (87.) I imagine that some of the confusion here comes from the translation from the Portuguese, but also, this is philosophy of rhetoric, so definitions of words are whatever we want them to be, right? Let’s celebrate that freedom.   , The work of Freire became very popular in the world of composition in the 1980s. Everyone wanted a bit of Freire and some scholars like Donaldo Macedo, bell hooks, Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux were especially inspired. They were the leaders of this new “critical pedagogy” as it developed in the United States. The anti-apratheid protests of the 70s and 80s fueled the pedagogy and Freier’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was banned in South Africa. Of course, that didn’t keep the revolutionary types of distributing photocopies of it illegally.   But although the text was championed by many Marxist thinkers and progressive educators, some critics responded with a little more hesitancy. Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff were concerned that educators always have the potential to be colonizers and, the text implies that “we know from the outset the identity of the ‘oppressed’ and their ‘oppressors.’ Who the oppressors and the oppressed are is conceived not as an open question teachers and students might disagree about, but as a given of Freirean pedagogy” (A criteque of critical pedaogy”). This is a legitimate concern: when an outsider comes in to liberate, how can they prevent themselves from being oppressors themselves? In a related sense, when is someone just one thing? In her 1988 article “Why doesn’t this feel empowering?” Elizabeth Ellsworth points out that everyone has multiple identities and someone who may be oppressed in one sense (for example as a woman) may be privileged in another (for example as a white woman.)     But whatever people thought of critical pedagogy, they had to engage with it. all of this attention to Friere’s work helped gain support for him. He was a professor and advisor at Harvard, for the World Council of Churches, and finally in 1979 he was able to return to Brasil and continue his work with adult literacy. In 1988, with a change in Brazil’s political structure, Freier was appointed Secretary of Education. The remarkable ups and downs of his life had shown Feeire the very real consequences of poverty and oppression as well as given him the education and opportunity to reach out and help others around him, others who have been just like him.