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FINAL Dissertation From Private to Public: Narrative Design in Composition Pedagogy Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kathryn Bridget Comer, MA Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Evonne Kay Halasek, Advisor James Phelan Cynthia L. Selfe Copyright by Kathryn Bridget Comer 2011 ABSTRACT “From Private to Public: Narrative Rhetoric in Composition Pedagogy” argues for a rhetorical revision of narrative in composition studies. Informed by the interdisciplinary narrative turn, this project aims to move past counterproductive debates surrounding ‘personal’ writing in order to attend to the rhetorical nature and uses of narrative. To this end, I draw upon a year’s worth of classroom-based qualitative research at The Ohio State University in which students analyzed and composed autobiographical texts in multiple genres and modes. Based on this research, I suggest that narrative rhetoric offers an ethical, dialogic orientation toward communication with significant benefits for composition pedagogy and promise for public use. The introductory chapter establishes the exigency offered by the narrative turn and suggests that composition studies has an opportunity to redress a neglect of production in these conversations. I then briefly rehearse the history of personal writing in composition studies, wherein scholars and teachers have debated the merits of narrative in terms of student-centered pedagogies, academic discourse, and critical consciousness. Without diminishing the value of these conversations, I suggest that they have resulted in a terministic screen that emphasizes psychological and personal concerns to the relative neglect of the ii rhetorical uses of autobiographical composition. To more fully attend to the richness of narrative communication, I propose an alternative set of terminology gleaned from humanistic and social scientific rhetorical theories of narrative. This narrative communication model becomes both a heuristic for analysis and heuretic for production of multimodal narratives in the composition classroom. Building upon this foundation, the three case studies approach autobiographical narrative through different genres and modes. In the course documented in Chapter 2, students analyzed and composed graphic memoirs, examining comics’ capabilities for representing an author’s layered identity and perspective while demanding the active engagement of the audience. Chapter 3 engages the hybrid genre of autobiographical documentary, a process that complicated students’ epistemological assumptions and highlighted the ethical issues that attend narrative representation. The course under discussion in Chapter 4 considered the potential of literacy narratives for fostering students’ informed engagement in public discourses and furthering composition studies’ public turn. In each of these chapters, students’ critical framing and resulting compositions guide my developing argument about the affordances and constraints of a rhetorical approach to narrative in composition pedagogy. The final chapter returns to my original questions—How does narrative rhetoric work? and What are the implications for composition studies?—to consider students’ contributions to these investigations. Ultimately, I suggest, we are in the midst of a kairotic moment for both composition and narrative studies, iii one that calls for critical, creative approaches to narrative design in the service of productive communication. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I offer my whole-hearted gratitude to the students who have made this project possible. Their generous collaboration and innovative narrative designs have been a constant source of inspiration. If this experience has taught me anything, it’s how much we stand to learn by listening to and laughing with students. They have made this experience a true pleasure. I would also like to thank my adviser, Dr. Kay Halasek, for her support and friendship in these past five years (and those to come) and for making this career choice seem reasonable, rewarding, and fun. Likewise, Dr. James Phelan and Dr. Cynthia Selfe have offered encouragement and productive critique while modeling tireless collegiality. I’d like to thank the Department of English community at OSU, especially Dr. Beverly Moss, Dr. Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Dr. Harvey Graff, Dr. Frank Donoghue, Dr. James Fredal, Dr. Kelly Bradbury, Dr. Michael Harker, Shawn Casey, Timothy Jensen, and Amy Spears for all they’ve taught me about being a scholar and colleague. In addition, I am grateful to Dr. Patricia Sullivan at the University of Colorado Boulder for introducing me to composition and rhetoric at exactly the right moment and helping me find my way into the field. And a very special thanks to Team Harlot for making grad school more rewarding and productive than it probably should have been. v I’d like to acknowledge the invaluable support of the Susan L. Huntington Dean’s Distinguished University Fellowship, as well as the programs and departments at Ohio State that made my research and writing possible: Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, Project Narrative, Digital Media Project, Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, Literacy Studies @ OSU, and Digital Media and Composition Institute. And finally, many thanks to the friends and family who have kept me sane and healthy all these years—especially my mother, who knew this would happen long before I did, and my father, who would have loved to (finally) call me “Doctor.” I am beyond grateful for the support offered by Margie, Dan, Vic, Meghan, Jill, Brian, Christina, Andy, and Christen, among many others. And most of all, I am thankful to and for Chris Lindemann, my partner and friend, for his love, kindness, and patience. We did this. vi VITA 1999 ……………………………….. Bachelor of Arts in English, Eckerd College 2000 ……………………………….. Master of Philosophy in Anglo-Irish Literature, Trinity College Dublin Spring 2004 - Spring 2006…….…. Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English and Program for Writing and Rhetoric, University of Colorado Boulder 2006 ……………………………….. Master of Arts in English, University of Colorado Boulder Autumn 2006 - Summer 2008 …… Susan L. Huntington Fellow, The Ohio State University Autumn 2007 - Summer 2010 …… Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Autumn 2010 - Summer 2011 …… Susan L. Huntington Fellow, The Ohio State University Publications “Language and Limitations: Toward a New Praxis of Public Intellectualism,” co- author Tim Jensen. Global Academe: Humanities and Academic Discourse. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. “Something’s Fishy Here.” Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion, 1, 2008. Fields of Study Major Field: English Minor Field: Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ..............................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... vi Vita .................................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: Introduction: (Re)Turning to Narrative in Composition Pedagogy ..... 1 Chapter 2: Illustrating Lives: Graphic Memoir and Multimodal Composition ... 60 Chapter 3: Documenting Lives: Autobiographical Documentary and Ethics ... 120 Chapter 4: Narrating Literacies: Literacy Narrative and Public Rhetoric ......... 184 Chapter 5: Conclusion: Toward Narrative Rhetoric ........................................ 242 References ...................................................................................................... 255 Appendix A: Course Syllabi ........................................................................... 280 Appendix B: Surveys ...................................................................................... 291 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.1: Narrative communication model...................................................... 38 Figure 2.1: Narrative communication model...................................................... 75 Figure 3.1: Narrative communication model.................................................... 135 Figure 4.1: Narrative communication model.................................................... 199 ix CHAPTER 1: Introduction: (Re)Turning to Narrative in Composition Pedagogy 1.1 Prologue This is a narrative about narrative. Or rather, about many overlapping narratives: disciplinary, pedagogical, personal, and rhetorical. The frame story I construct weaves the rich history of personal writing within composition studies into the cross-disciplinary narrative turn in order to develop a critical, production-oriented pedagogy of narrative rhetoric. The embedded stories I share are those gathered from a year of classroom research, the results of my own and students’ theory-driven experiments designing multimodal autobiographical narratives. Responding to the rising profile of narrative in academic and popular discourse, this dissertation works to revise composition’s traditional use of personal writing in the interests of rhetorical multiliteracy. Although narrative assignments have been employed and debated for much of composition’s disciplinary history, an historical overview suggests a reliance on expressivism, psychology,
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