My name is Jim Brown. I received my Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Digital Literacies and Literatures from the University of Texas. In September 2009, I will join the English Department at Wayne State University as an Assistant Professor. I write for multiple blogs, and you can see all of my blog writings via this RSS feed. Clinamen focuses mostly on my research interests, and its title is explained in this post from January 2008. SearchRecent comments
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The Politics of a Door: RemixedIn July, I pointed to the door to Parlin Hall as the central front in the war between Rhetoric and Literature. Here's what that door looked like until a few days ago:
Here is what that door looks like as of today:
The Department of Rhetoric and Writing talked to the Dean's Office and the Physical Plant people to get this changed. Apparently, I was not the only one to notice this door - many people brought it to the attention of the department. My post in July used this door as an opportunity to riff on the history of our little disciplinary rift, and this new version changes things...but only a little. They changed "composition" to "writing" (we dropped "composition" from the title a couple of years ago), but it still looks a bit like these are three items in a series (English, Rhetoric, and Writing). Also, I ran into Linda Ferreira-Buckley, our Department Chair, right outside the door today and I pointed out that writing was still banished to the bottom of the door. She had a different take: "No, Jim. It's the foundation." This was a nice reminder: maybe I should stop being so damn cynical.
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The rhetoric of a door
I hope (and assume), for the sake of less hokeyness, Linda was being a little bit smart-ass (who, Linda?) and said this with a wry smile. Not that there isn't some truth to her claim, and not that we don't believe it with the appropriate caveats and self-ironizing. But we (rhetoricians, I mean) try not to say it very often with any measure of earnestness.