Dear Judge Baugh...

This will be short, mostly because I'm not sure I have the words to properly convey how heartbroken I am right now. I also am not sure I can trust myself to be entirely coherent. But I have to try. For whoever stumbles across this blog, or maybe only for myself, I have to say something.

For the past two days, I've scrolled past a handful of news headlines and facebook statuses decrying a sentence passed down by a judge where a 49 year old man was sentenced to 30 days in prison after the rape of a 14 year old girl led to her suicide. I didn't scroll past them because I agreed with the sentence. I scrolled past them because it didn't occur to me that, today, after all the publicity with Todd Akin's atrociously ridiculous claims of "legitimate rape" and the events of Stuebenville and Delhi that this could actually be true. After all, hasn't this been publicized enough? Surely people have started to realize how pervasive rape culture is and how devastating it is to our children. Our boys. Our girls.

I am furious and heartbroken that I was wrong. I'm appalled that, when I finally did click on a passing link, it wasn't to see an article from some backwater publication that needed to be double-checked for sincerity on Snopes. I don't have words to describe how awful it is to see a rape condoned because the victim was "troubled."

Judge Todd Baugh has defended his decision by saying that Stacey Dean Rambold has already lost his job, his wife, and will have to register as a sex offender...and hasn't his life already been ruined enough?

Except this is not about "ruining" one man's life. Whatever I feel towards Rambold, that's not the point. The point is that he did that ruination to himself. He is a (presumably) mature, sane, consenting adult.

She. Was. 14.

She had a name. Cherice Morales.

She had a future and it was stolen from her.

Has he suffered enough? That's not my call to make (though I would argue that, no. He hasn't. How do you ever "make up" for emotionally manipulating, sexually violating, and destroying a young life?). But what I do know is that this ruling sends a very clear message to all the young men and women who are in Morales's position right now. Because they're out there. They're broken and, yes, "troubled" and scared and tired. And they've just been told that, even if anyone found out what they were going through...well...losing your job and sitting in a cell for 30 days is penalty enough.

Because that sounds like a fair exchange, doesn't it?

Before We Reach for the Mute Button...

The recent shock and awe over Miley Cyrus's VMA performance has invoked a lot of strong opinions and vocal protests from a diverse audience. From the news to Twitter to Facebook and back, the reactions have been fast and furious: everything from "Miley can do whatever she wants. STOP TALKING ABOUT IT" to "Is this really what we should be focusing on right now?" to the idea that her scanty outfit and (arguably) outrageous twerking is one of the harbingers of the downfall of civilization.

What happened to our wholesome,
American family values?

Perhaps ironically, a large chunk of the commentary about the event is focusing on the reasons why we shouldn't talk about it. Jezebel had numerous articles speaking out against the slut-shaming* that was happening, defending Cyrus's right as a legal, consenting adult to express her sexuality however she damn well pleases. Meanwhile, enterprising bloggers created a tumblr account devoted to things we should have been paying attention to in Cyrus's stead. And with over 24 hours of non-stop media chatter over the event, more than a few individuals have just about had it. As Toula Foscolos wrote for Huffpost Canada, "Miley's not racist, not a whore, and not your punching bag." Isn't it embarrassing how easily we are caught up in the media hype of pop-culture and titillating, "shock-value" media ploys?

Actually, I'd like to argue that it isn't. At least, not all of it.

Yes, I would prefer it if we (in this case, being the assumed, generalized population of America) were more concerned with world news and the possible threat of a new war. But the fact that we, as an audience, are so obsessed with one twenty-something's performance has a lot to say. About our country. About what we value. And about how that conversation is developing in some fascinating and, I believe, vitally important ways.

For anyone who has been following the "War on Women" over the past few years (okay, centuries, but I'm talking recent legislation), the conversation about women's sexuality, agency, and a push against slut- and victim-shaming is crucial to how we respond to the world around us. As one of my fellow grad students pointed out, it's unlikely that the fallout would have been anything near as absolute if the offender had been, say, Drake or Kanye. Little has been said about Robin Thicke's participation in the duet, except in relation to Cyrus's agency. After all, boys will be boys.

The conversation has also raised up the voices of women of color, as in one black woman's response about how, in their rush to defend her right to her sexuality, white feminists completely ignored the blatant misappropriation of black culture, and the objectification of black, female bodies.

Cyrus's performance has also opened up conversations about any number of non-feminist topics, such as The Onion's bitingly comical summary of the interplay of publicity and "news," the objectification of child and teen stars, and a great deal of commentary and criticism about (what else) Americans' obsession with celebrity gossip.

I'll admit, I'm looking forward to waking up and seeing a stream of posts in my newsfeed that have nothing to do with VMAs, twerking, or the Cyrus family. But however much we want the conversation to change, I think it's important to note that it's these exact, uncomfortable, and seemingly-repetitive conversations that are the foundations of social change.

I doubt that Miley Cyrus's performance is going to bring about sweeping reforms in how we view celebrity, women, or race. But I do believe that, whether anyone intended it or not, she has become part of that discourse...and we do ourselves a disservice if we shut that down.

Rhetoric, Composition, and the "Teaching" Problem

In her 2008 article, Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future, Karen Kopelson talks about the "pedagogical imperitive" of Rhet/Comp programs. In other words, the idea that everything we do is in service of teaching. It's an eye-opening article....or, at least it was for me.

Teaching hasn't always been my focus. When asked how I decided I wanted to teach, I insist that (once upon a time), I wanted to be an actress or a singer or an author or a lawyer. Except that insistence ended in high school, when I finally realized that teaching was the one time that I could step outside myself and my job and focus on doing something that truly felt important, empowering, and engaging. So, aside from childhood dreams that could easily have (and probably did at least once) included marrying into royalty or traveling to the moon, teaching has truly been a constant presence in my life. It's no surprise, then, that my path back to graduate school ended with my joining a discipline that is heavily "teaching focused."

Yet however easily I fell into the pedagogical imperative (embraced it, even), the centrality of teaching to rhet/comp programs is something that needs to be questioned. It's not that I think that pedagogy isn't of vital importance. Teaching is my life and my joy (however trite that sounds) and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But one of the reasons I embraced college teaching as opposed to staying at the middle school level is due to the academic rigor I could find here. Teaching is pragmatics. As St. Augustine mentions in his On Christian Doctrine, we use different "levels" or styles of speaking depending on our purpose. Teaching is given the simplest level...not because of its lack of importance, but because its success hinges on the audience understanding what is being said. Technical jargon or "proper" niceties give way to communication. But pragmatics cease to be pragmatic if they aren't aiming towards a larger goal. Which, of course, begs the question that Rhetoric & Composition is still trying to answer: What is our larger goal?

Janice Lauer (the founder of Purdue's Rhet/Comp department), points out that one of rhetoric and composition's defining features is its ability to be "multidisciplinary, not only in [rhet/comp's] theoretical bases but also in [its] modes of inquiry. Of course, its that very diversity that leaves people questioning whether it should count as a discipline at all. Are we solely a "teaching" discipline? Are we defined by our lore (North, 1987), or our focus on process and post-process (Carlton, 1995), or our "feminized" style of discourse (Lauer, 1995)? Or can we, as Kopelson asks, embrace all of it?

Theory has never been my favorite focus. Like the teachers Louise Phelps comments on in Practical Wisdom, I too can be "impatient with [theory's] abstractions and irrelevance" (863). But, however my own personal opinion falls, I think we are doing ourselves a vast disservice if we limit the field only to people who share that view.

We are the field of rhetoric. We live in words and conversations and debates...sometimes over the most trivial of matters, it's true, but the point is that everything matters. Nothing exists in a vacuum. While philosophy might seek the "ultimate truth" and the sciences attempt to catalogue and demystify the laws of nature, we stumble into the amorphous fog in all its shades of grey (just so long as there aren't 50 of them). We dissect. We discuss. We debate. We disagree.

And that's okay.

I can insist on theory that has practical application. My passion is teaching, my mindset is pragmatic, and I have greater interest in the here and now than in the larger mysteries of the universe. But it is the discussions with others who do trouble themselves about ethics and history and culture and society and abstraction that allows me to keep pushing myself and my students to new levels. It is those conversations that help me to find my footing and establish myself within the discourse. And while one particular vein of theory might have no relevance to me or my research or my classroom, it is supremely selfish and egocentric to then jump to the conclusion that it is of no relevance to anyone. Or, even, to assume it needs relevance.

Perhaps what defines us as a group is our unending examination of the complexities of language and discourse. How that takes form will be different for each of us (research would be awfully useless if it didn't), but I don't think our disagreements make those conversations any less valuable.

Searching for Clarity (or When Did Academic Writing Come to Mean "Confusing as Hell?")

There are times when I don't think I deserve to be an English major.

I enjoy literature. I get insanely thrilled over nerdy things like composition pedagogy and rhetoric. And I love to write. I'm even crazy enough that I'm starting my doctorate (which is a completely different, terrifying topic). But, however much I love my subject, I can't stand "academic" writing.

I say "academic," because I'm not actually convinced that the writing I hate should even qualify...or that, if anything, it should be classified as "bad" academic writing. Yet it's the kind of writing that we all know to expect. Hell, it's even the kind of writing our students "aspire" to, because those are the signposts they've come to recognize in "intelligent" writing. It's that article that is jargon-heavy and vague. The one that's so complex and hard to understand that you can't quite tell whether you're too stupid to understand it or if the author never actually said anything at all.

This isn't the first time terrible writing has wound me up into a fury, but normally it's because--as a student--I'm being forced to read it. This time, though, it's the teacher in me that wants to scream.

I've been reading Robert Connor's Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy for an Independent Study class. I know. It sounds like a snoozer, but Connors actually does a masterful job of keeping a potentially dry subject interesting. He's funny, he's conversational, and he's clear...all while staying true to the rigor you'd want in a research textbook. As far as texts go, it's pretty great.

What isn't great are the writers he's talking about. Going through the history of writing instruction, it becomes increasingly obvious that Composition-Rhetoric methods have been forced into formulaic, prescriptive, boring frames because that's what was "easy" to teach. Because that's what's easy to write. And that's what's easy to understand.

Prescriptive, formulaic scholars like Alexander Bain weren't the only ones out there, though. There were innovative scholars. Conscientious scholars. Scholars who realized that the process and student interaction and non-linear lessons would get better writing than five paragraph essays. Except, time and again, Connors points out that their textbooks and articles just wouldn't catch on. And why not?

Because they were too difficult to understand.

Never mind torturing those poor graduate students who are forced to study onerous textbooks for hours on end. These are decades and decades of prospective writers and learning minds who wasted years of writing instruction on formulas because academics couldn't learn to be clear.

I get it. Theory is complex. And, sometimes, the only way to discuss theory is in abstractions. Not everything can be put into practical, layman's terms. But if you truly believe that you've found a valuable, useful way of teaching... why wouldn't you make it accessible?

Obviously, the history of composition-rhetoric is more complex and relies on more than the writing quality of a few theorists...but it's not a problem that is stuck in the past. THIS is what we call academic writing. And these, truly, are the consequences we face.

As a teacher, I'm not sure I can think of anything more depressing than the idea that the tools are out there...they're just not being shared.