Personal Narratives and the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

Queering Composition, Queering Archives: Personal Narratives and The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Deborah Marie Kuzawa, B.A., M.A., M.A.

Graduate Program in English

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Cynthia L. Selfe, Ph.D., Advisor

Scott L. DeWitt, D.A.

Beverly J. Moss, Ph.D.

Deborah Marie Kuzawa

2015

Abstract

I examine the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), an open-access archives of personal stories about literacy. Examining the DALN’s structure, implicit values, and contents, I argue that the DALN is both a queer and queering resource for composition studies, and may help expand understandings of literacy, expertise, and the relevancy of the personal and openness in composition classrooms and research. In this context, queerness is not about sexuality or gender but a heuristic: a way to critically question the traditional frameworks and epistemologies used to interpret and explore the world. My overarching research questions are:

• What might the DALN (as a classroom and research resource) and queerness (as an

epistemological and ontological concept) offer to the discipline of composition studies?

• To what degree does the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives reflect and/or push

against the epistemology and ontology of different conceptions of archives?

• How have composition teacher-scholars positioned/used the personal, literacy

narratives, and archives within composition scholarship, and how might they use the

DALN to push against conventional approaches/understandings of archives and personal

narratives in classrooms?

• Does the queer nature of the DALN shape or manifest itself in teachers’ perceptions of

the DALN and how teachers use and discuss the DALN in their classrooms? If so, how

and why, and if not, why?

I argue that the DALN simultaneously embraces and resists dominant binary values

(restriction/openness; academic/personal; expert-direction/self-direction) that shape the fields

of archival and composition studies and may be used to queer and expand composition

ii classrooms, providing richer understandings of archives, personal literacy narratives, and queerness.

The DALN both reflects and resists archival values and practices originating in archival

studies, queering understandings of what an archives can be, look like, and who and what are

appropriate for inclusion in and access to archives. Though the DALN may not have been

consciously developed with queerness in mind, its archival structures, practices, and implicit

values queer conventional archival values and structures. Because the DALN is an archives of

personal literacy narratives, I explore it within composition studies’ scholarship about archives

and literacy narratives. I contend that composition teacher-scholars may use the Digital Archive

of Literacy Narratives to expand relatively narrow conceptions and uses of archives and personal

narratives found in composition scholarship, which may mean greater inclusion in composition

scholarship and theorizations.

In order to understand how the DALN is already perceived and used by composition

instructors, I developed an open-ended questionnaire to ask instructors (n=9) about their

experiences with the DALN as a classroom and research resource. Though findings reveal

practical and philosophical challenges of incorporating the DALN (e.g. issues of technological

access; curriculum mandates; resistance to openness), I argue instructors may use the DALN to

meet and challenge the goals of composition courses (e.g. teach about literacy; bridge between

discursive and material understandings of sociocultural identity; meet research mandate of

undergraduate education). Future studies would include larger sample sizes and a wider range

of DALN stakeholders such as students, administrators, and community members to gain a more

holistic understanding of the DALN-in-context.

iii DEDICATION

I dedicate this dissertation to the contributors and users of the Digital Archive of

Literacy Narratives and to people everywhere who are brave enough to share their stories with the public. I also dedicate my dissertation work to first-generation college students and their families, and to my late grandfather Frank Kuzawa who instilled in me a sense of curiosity and love of knowledge.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have completed this dissertation without the support, love, and brilliance of many individuals. First and foremost, I must acknowledge Cynthia L. Selfe, whose support,

cheerleading, and tough love helped me through the times when I thought I wouldn’t or

couldn’t make it through to the end. I cannot imagine a better or more appropriate advisor. To

my committee, Scott L. DeWitt and Beverly J. Moss: thank you for your smart insights into my

work and for your support and guidance throughout this process. To the Rhetoric, Composition,

and Literacy program at Ohio State University and the Digital Media Project: thank you for such

a wonderful environment to learn, teach, and share; far too few graduate programs provide the

collegial, supportive, and intellectually challenging environment that exists in the halls of

Denney. To Mary Faure and the Engineering Education Innovation Center team: thank you for your support and for the space to teach, learn, and grow as a teacher, professional, and scholar.

To the instructors who participated in my research: thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts about the DALN. To the teachers I have had over the years, from kindergarten to graduate school to the larger community: thank you for encouraging my curiosities and questions and for being a part of my intellectual development, especially all of the students I have taught over the years; Santina Mullins; Glenn Jambor; Jessica Humphry;

Kasia Marciniak; George Hartley; Jennifer McLerran; H. Louis Ulman; Dickie Selfe; Nan Johnson;

Brenda Breuggemann; Debra Moddelmog; Thomas Piontek; Ben McCorkle; Chad Allen; Alana

Kumbier; the International Drag KingCommunity Extravaganza; TransOhio and the TransOhio

Symposium; the Digital Media and Composition institute; and the other educators, queers, and feminists who have touched my life. To the organizers, presenters, and attendees of the 2012 v Queer Places, Practices, & Lives conference: thank you for creating a queer academic space and helping me recognize and embrace the queerness of my research and the importance of a queer perspective.

To the Accountabilabuddies, Jennifer Herman, Elizabeth Brewer, Krista Bryson, and especially Katie DeLuca: your feedback, encouragement, and shared laughter over drinks will always be my model for supporting other scholars and colleagues. To Katie, my commiserating partner in dissertation writing: thank you for “playing Cindy,” letting me vent, and having confidence in my work and me even when I didn’t. Your friendship has been a shining light in this dissertation rollercoaster. To colleagues and friends Erika Strandjord; Angel Lemke; the participants of Writing in Depth, including Maurice Stevens and Michelle Rivera-Clonch;

Melanie Yergeau; Julia Voss; Lauren Obermark; Leila Ben-Nasr; Cate St. Pierre; and Genevieve

Critel: your support, work, and commitments have inspired me in more ways than you know.

Finally to my family, both blood and chosen: the entire Kuzawa clan—Dave, Jen, Rob,

Laura, Kristin, Scott, Marissa, Maizy, Aaron, and my parents Pam and Bob who may not have always understood my aspirations but have always supported me, and especially my mom, who has always been and always will be my biggest supporter and fan; my sister-friend forever

Sabrina Smith; Merrick and Erica Beinke; Stephanie Taylor; and especially my chosen brothers and (our) partners in crime Brock Hopson and Cory Bouchard who have listened to me blather on and have provided distractions from the stress; and of course my best friend, amazing partner, and biggest cheerleader Kim Nickel and our silly Maxx—I could not have completed this journey without your support, love, snuggles, and belief in me. Thank you all for your unwavering love and encouragement on my journey to Dr. Deb.

vi VITA

1979 Born—Northeast Ohio

1997 Graduated with honors, Garfield Hts. High School

2001 B.A. English, Certificate Women’s Studies, Ohio University

2005 M.A. Women’s Studies, The Ohio State University

2005 M.A. English, The Ohio State University

2002-2005 Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Department of English and Department of Women’s Studies

2006-2008 Writing tutor, Columbus State Community College

2006-2009 Adjunct Faculty, Columbus State Community College

2008-2012 Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Department of English

2010-2011 Graduate Administrative Assistant, The Ohio State University, Digital Media Project

2012-2013 Graduate Teaching Associate| Writing Consultant, The Ohio State University, The Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing

2012-2014 Graduate Administrative Assistant | Research Consultant, The Ohio State University, University Libraries

2014-present Lecturer, The Ohio State University, Engineering Education Innovation Center

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English --Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Areas: Composition Studies; Queer Studies; Literacy Studies; Cultural Studies

vi i Table of Contents

Abstract...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita ...... vii

List of Figures ...... ix

Chapter 1: Dr. Queerlove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DALN ...... 1

Chapter 2: The queerest of the queer: The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives among archives

...... 47

Chapter 3: Academically personal, personally academic: Personal storytelling, archives, and composition studies ...... 109

Chapter 4: Into the classroom, queerly: The DALN as a classroom resource ...... 165

Chapter 5: Queerly forward, a conclusion: The DALN and the future of composition studies ... 211

References ...... 240

Appexdix A: Demographic and Keyword forms for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives ... 279

Appendix B: The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, Personal Narratives, and Teaching Survey

Questions ...... 281

viii Appendix C: Code explanations and annotated response to question 12 ...... 285

Appendix D: Karen’s assignments for second-year writing ...... 294

Appendix E: Brian's assignments for digital media and English studies ...... 303

Error! Bookmark not defined.

ix List of Figures

Figure 1. Binary Values shaping archival structures and content ...... 47

Figure 2. Matrix of binary values and archival structures ...... 48

Figure 3. Values in Conventional Archives ...... 62

Figure 4. Values of Archives 2.0 ...... 72

Figure 5. Values of queer archives ...... 85

Figure 6. Screenshot of GrassrootsFeminism.net’s Digital Archives...... 87

Figure 7. Questionnaire Participant Demographics ...... 182

Figure 8. Courses Using the DALN...... 187

x Chapter 1 Dr. Queerlove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DALN

My research, like my life, is situated, contingent. My research, like my life, constitutes an enactment of my current commitments and beliefs…In the future, rereading this chapter, rereading my life, I will inevitably see things differently. Lisa Ede (1992)

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes). Walt Whitman (1855)

This dissertation is about the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), but it is also about the personal and queerness in academic spaces. It is about how instructors and students might use the DALN and personal narratives not only to meet the goals of composition courses but also to challenge those goals and open composition classrooms to more possibilities for composition pedagogy and research. I primarily examine the DALN itself—that is, the structure and implicit values of the DALN—as well as the content of the DALN. Each chapter turns to different disciplines and data to better understand the DALN’s structures, values, and contents within the context of queer studies, archival studies, composition studies, and composition classrooms. Following the epigraph from Lisa Ede, my arguments in this dissertation are situated and contingent: this is how I see the DALN and its potential right now, at this moment in my own personal history and in the history of the DALN and composition studies. Accordingly, others

may see the DALN differently due to their own personal subjectivities, histories, and contexts

and as the DALN evolves as an archives1 and resource. This contingency is one reason why I find

the DALN to be valuable: people may use it for a wide-range of purposes in a diversity of

contexts, based on their own needs, experiences, and knowledges.

Because I have been a writing teacher and tutor since 2003, I have been interested in

how the DALN and its position as an academic and community resource might be used in

composition classrooms. This dissertation is the result of me asking:

• What might queerness (as an epistemological and ontological concept

untethered from sexuality and gender) and the DALN (as a classroom and

research resource) offer to the discipline of composition studies?

This introduction serves a few purposes. It provides an overview of the DALN’s history; it provides my own personal literacy narrative about the DALN and how I came to a queer understanding of the DALN and its narratives; it defines queerness2 and situates the DALN

within its own history and within a queer framework; and it establishes the arc of this

dissertation as a whole. This introduction relies upon queer studies and queer theory to

establish what queer values are and how these values may manifest in the DALN, and the rest of my project unfolds in three waves: Chapter Two turns to archival studies to establish traditional

1 According to the Society of American Archivists’ glossary (authored by Pierce-Moses, 2005), archives, as a noun, functions as both singular and plural; archive (without the –s) is the verb form (Pierce-Moses, 2005). 2 I am using queer to mean a particular worldview that embraces contradictions and surfs between the binaries that shape our lives. In some ways, I am returning to the older understanding of queer. A famous example is from E.B. White’s “Here is New York” (1949): “on any person who desires such a queer prize, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and privacy.” Queer here suggest the unusual, contradictory, and complex—privacy and loneliness seem contradictory to the most populous city in the U.S. (Chappell, 2013), yet the isolating nature of city makes privacy and loneliness common. Further, if one desires privacy, then one would expect that loneliness would not be a concern. This chapter works to provide an overview of what a queer worldview and queer values are or could be.

values and structures of archives as a way to better understand the structure and values of the

DALN as an archives; Chapter Three turns to published composition scholarship about archives

(primarily from edited collections) and personal narratives (from College Composition and

Communication) to analyze how the DALN might or might not fit into composition scholarship about/using archives and personal narratives; Chapter Four turns to the results from a brief questionnaire completed by a small, targeted sample of composition teachers who use the

DALN in their classes in order to understand how and why some teachers have used the DALN in their classrooms.

Through my position as a teacher and tutor of writing and research, students have

expressed to me how they sometimes feel disconnected from the relatively impersonal

academic literacy work they are expected to do in college. I believe that the DALN’s position as

resource of first-person personal stories could be one way to combat impersonal disconnections

from classroom literacies and expectations. My hypothesis is that the queer affordances of the

DALN as a literacy resource may provide broader perspectives and understandings of literacy

that more traditional literacy resources may not provide. Teresa de Lauretis (1991) argues that

queer theory—and I extend her definition to encompass queerness more broadly—provides

space for instructors, researchers, and students to examine “…the conceptual and speculative

work involved in discourse production, and…the necessary critical work of deconstructing our

own discourses and their constructed silences,” (de Lauretis, 1991, p. iv). The DALN exists as

both a queer and queering archives. Exploring the DALN with a queer heuristic provides room to

produce and deconstruct discourses and silences as they relate to the issues of literacy,

expertise, and education. The DALN’s literacy narratives often expose the hidden work of

literacy or the “work involved in discourse production,” and working with personal narratives

from the DALN may help instructors, researchers, and students begin the process of deconstructing both society’s and their “own discourses and their constructed silences” around literacy and its intersections with sociocultural identities and knowledges.

The DALN and literacy narratives

So what is the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives? The DALN is “…a publicly available archive of personal literacy narratives in a variety of formats (text, video, audio) that together provide a historical record of the literacy practices and values of contributors, as those practices and values change” (DALN Home, n.d.). It is a self-archiving repository and database of personal stories about and/or related to literacy, told by individuals and small groups of narrators.

Personal literacy narratives are stories about literacy—reading, writing, and meaning making,

broadly defined. The DALN is one of the few publicly available repositories of stories focused on

literacy practices and values (Selfe, 2013).3 I was introduced to the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives in 2008, and I have been a co-investigator on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) paperwork since 2009. Since then, I have facilitated the contribution of or have been present during the contribution of hundreds of narratives to the DALN.4 Although there are dozens of field researchers listed on the IRB protocol, most field researchers facilitate collections and work with the DALN for only a short amount of time, such as for a course or independent study, or for

3 The DALN in relation to other resources about literacy will be explored later in this dissertation. 4 I have helped people record their narratives as part of special collection efforts and at events ranging from academic conferences and GED graduation ceremonies to gender performance festivals and community crafting and learning events. I have co-facilitated workshops on literacy narratives and the DALN at academic and community conferences, and I have developed and tailored workshops for a variety of audiences such as two-year and four-year college faculty, activists, community organizers, and gender performers. I have presented on the academic value of personal literacy narratives and the DALN, and the DALN has played a significant role in almost all of the composition courses I have taught since 2009. Most of my involvement has been unpaid volunteer work, but I have also received two grants from the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives (from the DALN’s grant from the Battelle Engineering, Technology, and Human Affairs Endowment Fund). For each grant awarded, I was required to solicit literacy narratives from various groups and individuals, and then caption and upload the narratives to the DALN.

a specific event(s). My consistent work with the DALN has helped me develop a relationship to and perspective of the DALN that many users (including other field researchers) may not have.

My knowledge of and experience with the DALN do not make my perspective necessarily better or more correct than others’ perspectives, but it means that I may have a wider array of experiences and knowledges to rely upon when working with and theorizing about the DALN.

So what are literacy narratives? Literacy narratives are personal stories about literacy– composing, reading, and meaning making–in a variety of contexts (see DALN, “What is a literacy narrative?”). Personal literacy narratives, those peculiar, complex stories that shape our daily existence, are central to my project precisely because they can expose intricate relationships between literacy, individuals, communities, and identities and can expose dominant and minority worldviews and silences between them. Throughout this dissertation I refer to personal literacy narratives rather than just literacy narratives because I want to distinguish the stories told by individuals and groups of individuals from the larger literacy narratives of cultures, communities, and disciplines. The latter tend to be narratives of literacy (Daniell, 1999), and these narratives of literacy are (generally) Lyotard’s (1984) grand narratives: they are composed of institutional and ideological knowledge (in this case, knowledge and beliefs about literacy) that legitimate certain stories or knowledges over others; grand narratives are the narratives of

the experts. I believe that the DALN, as an archives of personal literacy narratives from experts

and non-experts alike, may help instructors queer the larger narratives of literacy in productive ways by providing a space to imagine and re-imagine what literacy is and does to and for people on academic, personal and interpersonal levels.

In the DALN, the voices of the marginalized and the underrepresented are placed side-by- side dominant, hegemonic voices, which calls attention to sociocultural binaries that

characterize many personal literacy narratives. As a means of understanding the DALN, those binaristic oppositions highlight tensions between dominant and marginalized ways of thinking,

knowing, and existing within a literate world. On the one hand, Abdi’s (2009) narrative “My

Mom’s Struggle to Read” explores his mother’s journey from illiterate to literate as she learns to read the Quran in Arabic for herself. The narrative highlights what I argue is the most basic binary related to literacy—literate and illiterate— as well as the binaries of male/female, public/private, expert/novice (or self), and restriction/openness. The narrative’s central focus is about moving from a place of restriction (unable to read Quran for herself) to openness (able to read and interpret Quran on her own) is disconnected from the classroom and academic literacies. On the other hand, in “The CCCC Virtual Underground: Making Sense of My First Cs”

(2010) by Kathryn Trauth Taylor, the voices and experiences of multiple first time attendees of the Conference on College Composition and Communication are woven together. The people included in the narrative are all graduate students in English and related fields, and therefore, they are all invested in academic understandings and uses of literacies to a certain degree (even if they may critique the working of those understandings and literacies). Unlike Abdi’s narrative, illiteracy is not explicitly part of Taylor’s narrative, but similar to Abdi’s narrative, the binaries of expert/novice and restriction/openness are central. Side-by-side, these narratives show how a

Somali woman learning to read Arabic and graduate students learning to navigate a professional and academic space share similarities in relation to literacy: in their own particular contexts they are defined by their status as novices who are restricted in their knowledge and (intellectual) movements and have moved or are moving toward expertise. When taken together, these two

narratives provide different understandings and foci on what literacy narratives can be; what

expertise is and how it relates to the self and non-expertise or being a novice; and the role of

restriction and openness in literacy-based experiences. When examined together, these narratives provide a richer understanding of how literacy and associated binaries might impact different types of people in different contexts.

The idea of examining and comparing narratives from graduate students and a narrative about a recently-literate Somali woman may seem a little unusual or a little queer, but the

DALN’s structure encourages this type of work. Narratives are placed side-by-side in the archives without any explicit hierarchy or external categorization of value, and this openness is precisely why I have focused on the DALN for this project. In the following section, I provide my own brief personal literacy narrative about the DALN and my development of this dissertation.

The DALN and Me: A brief and queer personal literacy narrative

This is not the dissertation I was going to write. This is the project that I fought against, that I tried to ignore. Not because it is not a worthy focus and not because it is already done, but because I was afraid of the personal–my personal–looming large and swallowing my research whole, making my project little more than long-form navel gazing. It is not surprising that I had convinced myself that the personal (my personal) was too far from the academic norm to be taken seriously. Jeff Park (2004) argues that, “as we move into higher grades and university, the articulation of the personal is largely discouraged, denied and sometimes completely ignored”

(p. 161), and Patricia Leavy (2009) argues “As researchers, we are often trained to hide our relationship to our work” (p. 2). I worried that the project that I was squelching down inside of me would be considered less rigorous or less important because of my visceral, personal, and often emotional connection to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives and to people’s personal stories. It seemed as if I should not have such a personal connection to my work, or at the very least, I should not pursue a project that might reveal my personal attachments because it would

somehow be less academic (see Leavy, 2009; Paley, 2001; Park, 2004; Spigelman, 2001).

From the moment I was introduced to the DALN, it spoke to me—not a specific narrative per se, but the archives as a whole. It was like academia and communities and literacy had a love child and the DALN was it. I was in love. Sitting down to listen to and gather people’s personal stories invigorates me because it combines the things I enjoy most: sharing and learning about people, their histories, knowledges, and the identities and communities that they claim. After I had worked at collection events and uploaded a few dozen narratives, I began to realize that I connected with the DALN because both the DALN and personal literacy narratives seemed queer to me—not queer in that they are about LGBT people or culture, but queer as in peculiar and unusual, as in pushing against established binaries and norms. For me, the DALN and its narratives are queer because they can potentially highlight and challenge normative binaries and expectations for academic (especially composition) resources, archives, and contexts of personal storytelling.

But I continued to downplay the queerness of the DALN in my dissertation and work with it. One day, soon after attending the Queer Places, Cultures, and Lives conference and after writing nearly one hundred and fifty pages for dissertation projects that I was not passionate about, that I had developed because they seemed to be safe and legible for some hypothetical research-intensive tenure-track job, I realized I was scared. I was afraid that dedicating my dissertation to exploring the DALN as queer and within a queer framework would mark me and my research as niche and would make others uncomfortable, making it more difficult for others to see the value in a queer framework or even the DALN.5 Once I acknowledged my fear,

5 I believe that this fear stems partially from seeing academics and teachers I admired pushed out of their departments because their work, centered on queerness and subcultural practices, made others

though, everything finally clicked—or snapped—into place. I realized that I had to embrace what

I knew in my heart was important: celebrating and interrogating the queerness of literacy and personal stories in the academic world, and the queer potential for the future of composition studies that personal literacy narratives and the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives might provide. Queerness, which has been so central to my life and intellectual development, was the

key to help me explicate how and why the DALN could be a useful resource for expanding

composition and fostering inclusivity and diversity. I had been trying to force myself and my

research into a mold that I thought would be widely acceptable and job-worthy, and in my mind,

this meant it must be decidedly less queer. But my vision of my future career had shifted over

time from the research-intensive tenure-track to something else, something more activist and

community-minded, and the original mold and standards of acceptability no longer mattered or made sense. So I began my dissertation again, and I stopped worrying and began to embrace my love of personal literacy narratives and the DALN in all their queer glory.

Like Pinar (1998), I recognize that “Queer is not a neutral term” (original emphasis, Pinar,

1998, p. 3), which I suppose was part of my anxiety about embarking on this queer dissertation

journey. When I use queer, I mean unconventional, and at times even “oppositional,

fragmentary, transgressive” (Rallin, 2008). I am not using queer simply as a substitute for gay

and lesbian or LGBT (see Ahmed, 2006; Alexander, 1999a, 1999b; Butler, 1990, 1993;

Halberstam, 1998, 2005, 2011; Rallin, 2008; Sedgwick, 1990, 1994, 2012). My project is not

about queer people or even gender or sexuality, but about the potential of queer resources and

queer approaches to the classroom. Queerness is about the possibilities to restructure and re- imagine the world around us (see Luhmann, 1998; Pinar, 1998; Seidman, 1993). Luhmann (1998) uncomfortable, and the work was accused of being too personal, not scholarly enough, and too divorced from what the discipline was supposedly about.

argues if “…queer pedagogy...is foremost concerned with a radical practice of deconstructing normalcy, then it is obviously not confined to teaching as, for, or about queer subject(s)” (p. 51).

So in this way I am following Luhmann and what Harper, White, & Cerullo (1990) call the

“impulse” to “think about potential differences” within the concept of queer: “The moment you say 'queer'... you are necessarily calling into question exactly what you mean when you say it.

Queer includes within it a necessarily expansive impulse that allows us to think about potential

differences within that rubric” (Harper, White & Cerullo, 1990, p 30). So despite my definitions

and uses of queer, there can be and will be other ways of understanding what queer means or

looks like; queer does not simply encourage difference but rather exists and thrives on

heterogeneity. Jacqueline Rhodes (2004) in “Homo orgio: The queertext manifesto” claims, “…to

identify or come out as [queer] is to resist the connection between” signifier and signified (p.

388). In the case of the DALN, using a queer approach to understand the DALN helps disrupt the

signification of “academic,” “archives” and “literacy,” opening up the possibilities for

understanding what these terms and ideas might mean and look like to different people in

different contexts. Plummer (2005) argues that, “In general, ‘queer’ may be seen as partially

deconstructing our own discourses and creating a greater openness in the way we think through

our categories” (p. 365). To queer something is to critically question the traditional frameworks

and epistemologies we use to interpret and explore the world around us. The DALN functions

both as a queer resource with implicit structures and values that move between dominant

discourses and binaries, and it functions as a resource that can be used by instructors and

students to queer academic spaces and subjects. These queer possibilities are the reasons why I

fell so hard for the DALN.

In this dissertation, then, I return to older understandings of queer as complex and

unexpected as well as using queer as a heuristic to understand personal literacy narratives and

the DALN in academic spaces. Like Kumbier (2014), “I use queer as an adjective and a verb” (p.

3). As an adjective, I am using queer to describe the content, structure, and processes of the

DALN. Kumbier argues:

As a verb, [queer] suggests disruptive, transformational, or oppositional practice designed

to challenge normalizing systems and structures…[my] use of queer is informed strongly

by queer activist discourses, and somewhat (but much less so) by scholarship in queer

theory…[and my] understanding of queer…emphasizes the oppositional, unruly, and

coalitional aspects of queer thought, action, and identification. (Kumbier, 2014, p. 3, p. 4)

Like Kumbier, I bring my personal understandings and experiences with queer and queerness (as

a personal and community identity and value system) to bear on how queer can function as the

guiding concept of this dissertation and my understanding of the DALN. Through this process, I

am demonstrating the ways in which the personal can be productively wrapped up in the

academic and vice versa. I celebrate the queerness of choosing both/and instead of either/or.

This dissertation is a celebration of queerness, a celebration of contradiction, a celebration of the multitudes Whitman references. It is a song of myself and a song of the thousands who have contributed to, explored, and used the DALN.

In the following sections, I provide a brief history of the DALN and an overview of my specific project with the DALN. This is followed by an in-depth exploration of what it means to

make queerness the center of this project, including the queer epistemological framework and

methods I am using to situate and analyze the DALN as a resource.

A Little History: The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

H. Lewis Ulman, in the edited collection Stories that speak to us: Exhibits from the Digital

Archive of Literacy Narratives, provides the only publicly recorded history of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.6 In his exhibit, Ulman (2013a) imparts insight into the complex gestation and birth of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, beginning with Dr. Cynthia Selfe’s initial idea about developing a “unique archive of personal literacy narratives” in 2005 to the final

Institutional Review Board approval from The Ohio State University in 2006 and the first contributions in 2008 (Ulman, 2013a).

Ulman (2013a) notes that the DALN is not a research project in-and-of itself. Rather, the

DALN is a repository of personal literacy stories that may be used for a range of purposes, including (but not limited to) research. Ulman (2013a) says, “we hoped that the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives…would create an invaluable historical record of a period of rapid change.”

Because the DALN is an on-going project directed by Ohio State faculty and it contains narratives from human subjects, “…the DALN required approval from Ohio State’s Institutional Review

Board (IRB), a committee established at all institutions conducting federally-funded research on human subjects to review and approve such research” (Ulman, 2013a). Even if “…the research falls into one or more of the categories of exemption established by federal regulations” the project must go through the IRB process in order for the exemption to be determined properly

6 On the DALN website, there is not a History page or section detailing the history and development of the DALN; the FAQ section provides information on what a literacy narrative is and how to submit narratives. Although there is some published scholarship about the DALN, none of it beyond Ulman (2013a) provides a historical overview of the DALN’s development (See Bryson, 2012; Ostergaard & Giberson, 2010; Perl, Hawisher & Selfe, 2010; Purdy & Walker, 2010; Ruecker, 2012).

(“Exempt Research,” 2012). Archives, though, rarely require IRB approval because they are not typically research projects in and of themselves, and they generally deal with inanimate items such as manuscripts and other physical and historical materials rather than human subjects.

Regardless, institutionally, despite the word “archive” in its name and the focus on creating and preserving a historical record, the DALN was initially treated more like a research project than an archives because the DALN contains the stories from human subjects (many of whom are still living) rather than inanimate objects.

However, during the IRB renewal and review process at the end of 2014, OSU’s IRB board decided that the DALN no longer falls under the purview of IRB regulation. The board believes that public perceptions and knowledge of what it means to submit materials to an online archives had changed since 2006; further, the DALN is not itself a research project but an archives of stories contributed by individuals of their own free will, covering whatever details they choose to reveal about their literacy experiences. As a result, some of the issues Ulman

(2013a) identifies in his history of the DALN—such as the burdens of the IRB process for satellite

DALN centers—no longer apply. 7 I argue that the DALN’s queerness—the ways in which it transgresses and moves between different categories and understandings of resources—has contributed to its reclassification for the IRB.

The DALN’s queerness is also evident when examining the development of the project in

general. When Ulman and Selfe were developing the DALN, there were no clear academic

models for its structure and ethos because it is not purely academic; it is not a research project

per se; and it is not quite a conventional archives of inanimate objects and textual materials.

Instead, it is both/and: it functions as a dynamic academic and personal resource—it is

7 I also believe the queer position of the DALN contributed to its changing relationship to IRB: it challenges the categories of the institution and academia.

academic, public and personal. As a result, Selfe and Ulman turned to the national storytelling project StoryCorps as a model. StoryCorps’ mission is “to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives” (“About

Us | StoryCorp,” 2012). The DALN’s mission is very similar, with a specific focus on the literacy stories of our lives: “The DALN invites people of all ages, races, communities, backgrounds, and interests to contribute stories” about literacies in their lives (“DALN Home,” n.d.). Unlike most academic research projects but similar to public projects such as StoryCorps, the DALN is publicly accessible outside of academic settings. The DALN provides a relatively accessible space8 for people to share their personal literacy stories for whatever reason they may want, such as preserving records of their literacy-related experiences so that their families and friends can access, enjoy, and even add to the stories over time. As Ulman (2013a) notes, freeing the literacy narratives from a specific academic research project and from academic spaces more generally means potentially broader interpretations of what literacy is, does, and looks like. This openness is a key feature of the DALN and, I argue, a contributing factor to its reclassification by

IRB.

Although the DALN was not conceptualized as a research project, Selfe and Ulman initially concentrated on educators and academic researchers to build the archives. Ulman and

Selfe envisioned DALN Centers on three campuses of The Ohio State University as the main way for narratives to be contributed to the DALN (Ulman, 2013a). However, the burdens of the IRB requirements (and the overhead costs required to make it work) made the DALN Centers unfeasible, and as Ulman notes, the process of determining how narratives would be

8 Comer & Harker (2015) argue that contributing to the DALN requires a relatively high level of technological literacy, and that some of the features of the archive (no set key terms or required metadata, for example) make it difficult to search. I will explore these claims further in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4.

contributed to the DALN “raised the question of what formal relationship anyone other than authors of narratives has to the process of contributing narratives to the DALN” (Ulman, 2013a).

As a result, there was a shift from understanding users and contributors of the DALN as

“researchers gathering information for study to individuals contributing personal literacy

narratives for their own reasons” (my emphasis, Ulman, 2013a). This shift, I argue, democratized and helped to further queer9 the DALN in that anyone, anywhere can contribute a narrative without a researcher, instructor, or other expert involved. Ulman (2013a) notes:

Currently, individuals can and do record and submit their literacy narratives to the DALN

entirely on their own, but teachers, friends, and colleagues of contributors, as well as

colleagues of the DALN co-directors, often help individuals record and contribute

narratives to the DALN, organizing theme-based recording events, providing access to

recording equipment and Internet connections, and serving as face-to-face audiences

for the narratives, often prompting narrators with questions from the DALN protocol

and interjecting unscripted questions in response to narratives. (Ulman, 2013a)10

As Ulman emphasizes, literacy narratives are contributed in a variety of ways; many are contributed to the DALN through collection efforts at places such as academic and educational events (Conference on College Composition and Communication; the Ohio Educational

Technology Conference; Adult Basic Education and Literacy GED graduations) but many are also contributed at community events (International Drag KingCommunity Extravaganza; TransOhio

9 The relationship between the DALN and queer and queerness is explored in the following section of this chapter and in Chapter 2. 10 Although Ulman notes that “interviewers have no formal relationship to the DALN” (Ulman, 2013a), as of 2014, there were 15 co-investigators in addition to Ulman and Selfe listed on the IRB. These co- investigators completed IRB training and continue to keep their certification up-to-date. These co- investigators have spearheaded collection efforts at various events such as conferences and festivals as well as targeted collection efforts such as soliciting particular communities to contribute to the DALN.

and Ally Symposiums; Short North Gallery Hop).

Collection events are a major way that narratives end up in the DALN. The context of the recording—the location, type of event, physical space, and so on—almost always impacts the way in which a DALN recording booth is set-up. Although the components of the DALN recording booth set-up varies, it typically includes a table and chairs; some type of recording equipment

(i.e., laptops, video cameras, audio recorders, iPads, etc.); flyers about the DALN and literacy narratives; consent and metadata forms; and DALN volunteers who assist individuals with recording their narratives. At some events, such as large festivals like the Community Festival and the Doo-Dah Parade and Fest in Columbus, Ohio, DALN volunteers may roam through the crowd, approaching people to contribute a personal narrative to the DALN. Some contexts can present challenges to garnering contributions and recording narratives. For example, recording on North High Street (a major thoroughfare for Columbus, Ohio) in front of The Center on High–

Stonewall Columbus meant fielding inquiries and intrusions from pedestrians and transients who are frequently in the area, and recording in public spaces can make it more difficult to hear or understand the narrator due to ambient sounds from laughter and side conversations to traffic and moving furniture.

There have been targeted collection efforts outside of specific events, such as the collection of narratives from the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing communities or Columbus, Ohio’s historically black neighborhoods (e.g., Narratives of Black Columbus).11 Some narratives come

11 It is important to note that though the DALN homepage provides a link to the deaf and hard-of-hearing collection under “Collections,” there are only eight, all submitted in 2008; not all DALN narratives from deaf and hard-of-hearing people are included under the link (such as Terry Galloway’s 2009 “Mean Little Deaf Queer”). Further, though the collection of narratives from Black Columbus is on-going, the narratives from these efforts are not aggregated under a single collection heading on the DALN’s homepage. A search of the DALN using BlackColumbus provides over 200 narratives, but not all narratives from

to the archives from students in composition courses where instructors have incorporated the

DALN; there are many textual narratives that retain their course- and MLA citation style- approved heading of course number, title, and instructor name in the upper left-hand corner of the first page.12 Still, though, some narratives are also contributed independently of any course, specific collection event, or solicitation. Just as there is no single way to tell a literacy narrative, there is no one way in which literacy narratives are recorded and make their way to the DALN.

This openness highlights the queer possibilities and values of the DALN because individuals

determine what is important and what literacy looks like and means in different contexts. The

following section examines queer values and possibilities of the DALN in more depth.

Queer possibilities, queer values

Whether we are talking about sexuality, gender, education, or literacy, queer disrupts and destabilizes traditional understandings and worldviews (see Jagose, 1997; Kumbier, 2014;

Sedgwick, 1990; Sullivan, 2003; Warner, 1993). A queer political approach, for example, rejects same-sex marriage as the pressing concern for queer politics (or any politics) because marriage is an inherently conservative institution that serves neoliberal power interests and deflects attention from more serious concerns such as socioeconomic class warfare and the prison

Columbus’ Black communities are included—only those that specifically include the keyterm “BlackColumbus.” 12 In the writing courses I have taught, I have offered multiple extra credit options, including submitting literacy narratives created in the class to the DALN. Several students from courses I’ve taught have both textual and multimedia narratives in the archive. However, I argue submission to the DALN should never be a requirement for students. Literacy narratives are personal, and contribution to the DALN is 100% voluntary. Comer & Harker (2014) voice concern about the ethics of students using the DALN but not contributing to it. However, to me, the bigger ethical concern would be requiring students to submit. When they signed up for a course, they likely did not know that working with the DALN would be part of it or that they would be expected to engage with and contribute to a public archive. Contribution must happen of free will. Additionally, students and researchers use archives all the time without the expectation (or even the possibility) of contributing to the archives (this will be explored more in Chapter 2).

industrial complex (Against Equality, 2011; also Vocat, n.d.). Daryl Vocat (n.d.) in “Queer by

Choice?” argues that, in general, our society promotes an “…imaginary us/them dichotomy that serves to protect people from what they perceive as the other, or as something existing outside of their realm” and queerness is one way to challenge this binary by pointing to other possibilities beyond either/or (emphasis in original, Vocat, n.d.). My approach to this project is also a little queer: I am claiming not only that the DALN as an archives is queer but also that using a queer heuristic/approach will emphasize the queer possibilities of both the DALN and personal literacy narratives in the composition classroom.

In this chapter, I want to establish two points about the DALN and its narratives:

1) Although the DALN is not purposefully queer—the founders did not set out to

create a queer archives--it is a structurally queer archives with queer values (queer

values will be explored in more detail in the following section and in Ch. 2).13

However, these queer characteristics do not preclude other readings,

understandings, and uses of the DALN in non-queer or even anti-queer ways;14

13 See the October 1999 special issue “Queer Values, Beyond Identity” of the International Journal of Sexuality & Gender Studies, edited by Jonathan Alexander. Also: Alexander, 2008; Bornstein, 1998, 2006; Doty, 1993; England, 1994; Feinberg, 1999; Grace, Cavanagh, Ennis-Williams, & Wells, 2007; Giffney & O’Rourke, 2009; Grace, 2006; Grace & Benson, 2000; Halberstam, 1998, 2011, 2012a, 2012b; Harper, 1997; Harris, 1999; Hill, 1996; Malinowitz, 1995; Pinar, 1998; Queen & Schimel, 1997; Rhodes & Alexander, 2012.

14 The difference between being purposely queer and structurally queer can be understood through popular culture examples.

1) RuPaul and Madea. Drag performer, former model, musician, and TV personality RuPaul is purposefully queer (pushing at the binaries of feminine/masculine, hetero/homo, male/female). RuPaul purposefully plays with femininity and masculinity to both elevate it and demonstrate that gender is performative and the gender binary does not preclude play and movement. He says, “I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses?” (Malena, 2013) Though he is known for being a drag queen, RuPaul also appears out of drag in films and appearances, and even on his shows RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul’s Drag U he appears both in and out of drag. In other words, he is

2) If we use a queer heuristic or framework to approach the DALN, we will more

using things considered to be feminine (and masculine) in order to re-interpret what feminine (and masculine) can mean and look like. Along the same lines, some may assume that Madea, the grandmother character created and played by Tyler Perry, is similar to RuPaul because Madea is also a man dressing and acting like a woman—in fact, Atlanta drag queen Miss Sophia claims that Perry was a frequent attendee at her shows and stole the character of Medea from her act (Queen Lena, 2013). However, Perry’s Madea is presented not as a performance of femininity but as an example of femininity and womanhood; Madea-focused films do not emphasize the play of gender but rather reinforces the gender binaries. Douglas (2009) notes, that although “Christian, heterosexual, Black audiences” tend to be viewed as hostile toward cross-dressing or other things viewed as queer or less-than-heterosexual, these same audiences love Madea because, “The more these actors [such as Perry] bend gender roles for laughs, the more they reinforce notions of how men and women are supposed to behave—as heterosexuals. That’s part of Madea’s appeal.” Madea is structurally queer in that the audience knows that the character is a cross-dressed man, which pushes at the masculine-male/feminine-female binaries, but rather than work to question the binary, it simply reinforces restrictive heteronormative understandings of gender. So although both RuPaul and Madea are cross-dressed men performing as women and both also perform and appear as men, RuPaul is purposefully queer whereas Madea is only structurally queer and is used in hetero-normative ways (not to mention the homophobic and anti-queer themes found in other Tyler films) (see Lyle, 2009, 2011; M, 2013; Smith, 2009).

2) Rocky Horror Picture Show and audiences. Tim O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is purposefully queer (pushing at the binaries of private/public, feminine/masculine, homo/hetero) whereas the hordes of heterosexuals and non-queers who (cross)dress-up and participate during showings of the film and other Rocky Horror-themed events are (for the most part) structurally queer. O’Brien’s film is filled with purposeful queerness, but the non-queer- identified fans do not necessarily understand their participation as queer—if that were the case, then it is unlikely that Rocky Horror would be used for community theater productions, as it currently is. Unlike Madea, audiences participating in Rocky Horror (and the film itself) do not work to re-inscribe the masculine-male/feminine-female binary because from the beginning it is understood that Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a man who wears the trappings of a (kinky) femininity rather than a man who is impersonating a woman. Dr. Frank-N-Furter furthers the purposeful queerness of Rocky Horror when it is revealed that he is actually an alien—pretty far removed from the usual binaries of male/female, hetero/homo.

In the case of the DALN, being structurally queer is not about intent of the archive or intent of the co-founders, but simply in the values that have developed through the evolution of the DALN as a resource. I argue that structural queerness can be pushed towards a critical queerness through conscious use and meta-awareness. That is, by stepping back from the object of study— in this case, the DALN—and examining it on a conceptual level in relation to similar and dissimilar objects may provide a degree of awareness of the ways in which the object of study exists in the world. Accordingly, developing meta-awareness should then impact the ways in which the object is deployed and discussed in different contexts. In other words, a move from structural queerness to critical queerness is about consciousness and intent. The DALN’s queer structure and values in relation to other archives/archival sources will be explored further in Chapter 2.

effectively see and understand the structural queerness of the DALN and the queer

possibilities for using personal literacy narratives and the DALN in the composition

classroom.

As Alexander (1999a) notes, queer is often about critiquing and questioning the legitimacy of binaristic thinking such as heteronormativity. Binaristic thinking—man/woman, hetero/homo— is required in order for heteronormativity to exist. Luhmann (1998) claims:

Both queer theory and pedagogy argue that the process of making (sense) of selves

relies on binaries such as homo-hetero, ignorance-knowledge, learner-teacher, reader-

writer, and so on. Queer theory and pedagogy place at stake the desire to deconstruct

binaries central to Western modes of meaning making, learning, teaching, and doing

politics. (pp. 50-1)

In other words, binaries shape the classroom and world at large, and a queer approach provides a way of interrogating and disrupting those binaries. In using a queer framework for understanding the DALN and to challenge binaristic thinking, I align myself with Renn (2010) who argues that the “increased adoption of a queer theoretical approach…could be useful beyond the study of explicitly LGBT topics” by questioning “normative constructions of socially constructed binaries such as male/female, teacher/learner, leader/follower, research/practice…queer theory might contribute to addressing larger questions in higher education” (p.132). Beginning with a queer framework is one way to challenge dominant binaries and tackle the pressing issues of education. As a classroom resource, the DALN could be used by instructors could to draw attention to dominant binaries in education as well as to demonstrate queerness-in-action.

In my work with the DALN, I have solicited narratives from particular communities

because I believed that these communities have the potential to provide queer perspectives—

not because the people or spaces themselves were queer-identified or LGBT-identified, but

because the individuals might have world-views that push against the norm and disrupt societal

binaries. For example, in 2009, I suggested that the DALN set up a recording booth at

Glamarama, a burlesque workshop and craft fair held at a local dance studio because I felt that

this community of women and men might offer views about literacy, sexuality, gender, and

community that might not be captured in other contexts (DALN search keyword: glamarama). In

2012, in honor of the Columbus (Ohio) Bicentennial, I received a grant from the DALN to collect literacy narratives from Columbusites, and one group that I specifically targeted were entrepreneurs who publicly identify as feminists. I felt this particular population might provide a unique perspective and might queer widespread understandings about things like entrepreneurship, feminism, community, and leadership (see Olivera Bratich; 2012; Elizabeth

Lessner, 2012; Jennie Scheinbach, 2012; Emily Westenhouser, 2012).15 These collection efforts illustrate that “What is ‘queer,’ then, is not permanently fixed in the figure of the homosexual”

(White, 2010, p. 26) but can encompass a range of identities and ways of being in the world.

Along the same lines, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990) claims, “… ‘queer’ can refer to[…]the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning…[queer is] when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (original emphasis, p.8). Sedgwick’s definition of queer is applicable beyond individuals’ gender or sexuality, and I argue that the

DALN is queer because as a whole it demonstrates that literacy is not and cannot be made to

15 Although the women are visible LGBTQ allies in Columbus, they did not volunteer their sexual identities in the narratives, and three out of four of the women were in committed relationships with men at the time of recoding their narratives.

“signify monolithically.” Aneil Rallin (2008) in “A provocation: Queer is not a substitute for gay/lesbian,” argues that “Queer agendas aim to disrupt dominant systems… Queer produces…disruptive epistemologies….queer [is] oppositional, fragmentary, transgressive, [and] multiply perverse…[it is] about refusing the normativizing of bodies/desires/identities and claiming the radical potential of queer to disrupt the assimilationist agendas.” The DALN does not attempt to neatly or universally define literacy. As a result, the DALN allows the disruption of literacy as a concept and literate as an identity solely defined by academic voices as well as binaries that figure into classroom spaces such as expert/self.16 Further, although many narratives within the DALN reflect dominant myths about literacy practices and values, such as the belief that literacy alone can improve socioeconomic status and mobility (Bryson, 2012; cf.

Street, 2002), the open nature of the DALN means that resistant and marginalized literacy practices and values are also included, making resistant readings and uses of the DALN possible.

The unconventional, queer possibilities of the DALN were made apparent to me again and again, as I sat at the DALN table at events like the ABLE (Adult Basic and Literacy Education) GED graduation ceremony. I listened to a young man talk about his personal literacy journey from county jail to GED and college (Nazario Ramirez, 2009), and then heard his college degree- holding instructor discuss her personal literacy story and her reasons for teaching GED classes at the Franklin County Jail (Melody McGee, 2009). Over time, when I listened to narratives such as

“Me Saved From…” (Anonymous, 2009) about the narrator’s struggle to break multigenerational cycle of poverty, teenage pregnancy, and dropping out of school, and then listened to narratives from technorhetoricians such as Dickie Selfe and Cheryl Ball (2009) and politicians such as

16 Bryson (2012) claims that the images used on the DALN website may encourage a traditional definition or understanding of literacy. Although she has a valid observation, I believe that the examples and information provided on the website (including instructions on how to compose and record a narrative) as well as the narratives themselves can counteract the focus on traditional reading and writing.

Michael Coleman (2010), I became more acutely aware of the ways in which these personal stories exist in the DALN with no hierarchy of value or external categorization placed on them— and this strikes me as a little queer. These stories bump against one another in the archives, and although they are quite different from one another, at the same time, they are similar in that each narrator defines what literacy is and what it means to him/her, providing a variety of subject positions from which to understand literacy-in-context. To queer something is to draw attention to and critically question the frameworks traditionally used to understand different phenomena—and the contrast and similarity amongst DALN narratives provide a complex understanding of literacy in the world.

Of course the DALN, like any other technology or resource, is not value-free (cf. Feenberg,

1991, 1999, n.d.). According to Alexander (1999b) ”Values are a means of proactively shaping our place in the world, of actually shaping the world we wish to inhabit” (p. 308). The democratic values and ethos central to the DALN are evident in its marketing and contribution materials, such as the tag line (“Everybody has a literacy narrative”); the introduction found on the homepage of the website and on handouts, which emphasize personal definitions and self- direction; the open-ended metadata and demographic forms; and the overall process of how narratives come to the DALN. Jeffery Weeks (1995) in Invented Moralities, claims that,

Speaking of values is a way of describing the sort of life we want to lead…[values] enable

us, in a complex and pluralistic world, to ensure that what we think is right is not

necessarily what other people think is right, and to find ways of living with difference in a

tolerant and democratic fashion. (p. 10)

Queer values have developed in response to restrictive politics and worldviews that draw boundaries between in groups/out groups, and shame and ostracize deviations from the so-

called norm. Like Weeks (1995), “I do not expect, or even hope, that the positions I have adopted will evoke universal agreement” because I recognize that there are not universal values or understandings of experience, and because “…there are as many… [possibilities] as there are

human subjects” (p. x, p. 5). Even more to my point, the DALN lends itself to being understood

in an untold number of ways because each interaction with it is shaped by own our personal

values, and it is constantly evolving as new narratives are contributed. That the DALN can be

read and used as both queer and not queer is a sign of both its queerness and a sign of

queerness’ “expansive impulse” to embrace variations in understanding (Harper, White &

Cerullo, 1990, p 30).

The DALN is a living resource that is relational and in flux. Each person who engages with the DALN brings his/her own experiences and purposes to the experience, and it is constantly growing and changing as narratives are added, as research projects about the DALN, and narratives from the DALN are circulated publicly. Morris (1998) contends that “Becoming queer is just that: a constant becoming, a constant transformation…[something] become[s] queer in relation to…desires, fantasies, readings, reactings, writings, experiences. A queer identity [or queer value] is a chameleon-like refusal to be caged into any prescribed category or role”

(Morris, 1998, p.279). I argue that the DALN’s ethos and primary values of openness, the personal, and self-determination through self-reflexivity are queer ones, and the DALN’s values encourage difference and accommodate a “complex and pluralistic world” (Weeks, 1995, p.10).

Although I argue that these are the values that are central to the DALN, 17 I admit the contingent

17 For examples of how openness, the personal, and self-determination through self-reflexivity can be considered queer values, please see the following: Bornstein, 1998, 2006; Doty, 1993; England, 1994; Feinberg, 1999; Grace, Cavanagh, Ennis-Williams, & Wells, 2007; Giffney & O’Rourke, 2009; Grace, 2006; Grace & Benson, 2000; Halberstam, 1998, 2005, 2011; Harper, 1997; Harris, 1999; Hill, 1996; International

nature of queerness and any related values.

Despite my assertion that the DALN is a queer archives, the DALN can be understood or read in other ways. The DALN does not determine or limit what people do with the narratives, the associated data, or the DALN as a whole (see Bryson, 2012; Comer & Harker, 2015; Ulman,

DeWitt, & Selfe, 2013).18 Just because I claim it is queer does not mean that others cannot understand and use it in non-queer or anti-queer ways.19 Krista Bryson (2012) argues that the

DALN “provides contributors [and users] both subversive and traditional frameworks for understanding literacy and literacy narratives” (p. 254). The democratic values of the DALN as a resource and the variety of narratives within it provide space for a multitude of perspectives for interpretation. Ulman (2013a) says, “In effect, our approach [to the metadata provided by narrators] treats information supplied by contributors as data requiring interpretation in its own right, rather than as information that can be understood as straightforward descriptions of contributors and their narratives” (Ulman, 2013a). Ulman’s claim is about the values behind the

Journal of Sexuality & Gender Studies, October 1999; Malinowitz, 1995; Pinar, 1998; Queen & Schimel, 1997; Rhodes & Alexander, 2012.

18 Though I am suggesting that the DALN may be used by a wide range of communities for a wide range of purposes, I am not subscribing to what Feenberg (1991) calls an “instrumental theory of technology.” That is, I am not contending that technology—such as the DALN—is a value- and politics-neutral vessel for exploring the world. The instrumentalist view ignores the role of human actors in the development of the technology (in this case, the DALN) and the ways in which their values and commitments impact the development and use of technology. This is why I focus on the underlying values of both archives in general and the DALN in particular. 19 A non-academic example of something queer that is appropriated or used in non-queer ways: the phenomenon of heterosexual bachelorette parties at LGBT bars and drag shows. Groups of women celebrating marriage—a civil right denied to many LGBT citizens—in what is supposed to be a safe and queer space is a common example of how queer spaces and events are understood and re-interpreted in non-queer ways (see, Peitzman, 2012; Zafar, 2012). Gallegos (2012) notes that one gay nightclub in LA, The Abbey, banned heterosexual bachelorette parties because, “…bachelorette parties [are] an ‘offensive heterosexual tradition’ that flaunts marriage inequality.” Pride parades are another example: for most LGBT people, Pride parade and festivals are celebrations of the diversity and beauty of the LGBT community and allies, whereas the same parades and festivals are used as examples of the depravity and immoral nature of LGBT people by conservative Christians who protest such events, and footage of events is used to garner more supporters on either side.

design and ethos of the DALN: the design affords broader uses than academic analysis and broader audiences than academics or researchers, and its data is not necessarily uncomplicated or open to only one interpretation or use.

There are multiple possible interpretations and uses of the DALN and its data, so to honor the complexity of the data, I define multiple values that are present when reading the ways that stories bump against one another in the DALN. I cannot capture all of the values present in the

DALN, but below are what I have identified as the three main values of the DALN, all of which are queer and influence the DALN’s structure and use as well as illustrate its queerness. I use these values as a heuristic for understanding the DALN. Relatedly, each of these values can be found in the history, tradition, and scholarship of composition studies, which is one reason why I believe that the DALN is a useful and productive resource for educators and researchers within the field.

1. Openness. Openness is perhaps the defining feature of the DALN: unlike nearly all other

archives, there is no archivist or researcher determining who has a worthy story, only

that each narrative is personal and can be related to literacy in some way. Halberstam

(2011) says “Open…means questioning, open to unpredictable outcomes, not fixed on a

telos, unsure, adaptable, shifting, flexible, and adjustable” (emphasis in original, p. 16).

Openness is at the core of queerness—an openness to change, to expression, to

understanding, to difference. The structure of the DALN, with its lack of controlled

vocabularies and bare minimum requirements for narrative submission, encourages

“unpredictable outcomes.” The broad goal of the DALN is to provide a record of literacy

practices and values as they change over time, but at the same time, this overarching

goal does not preclude additional purposes and foci for individual stories. Additionally,

the contribution process is defined by openness: anyone with an internet connection

(and knowledge of the DALN) may access and contribute to the archive, without any

connection to or help from DALN representatives. The DALN’s definition of literacy is

purposefully left open so that narrators can define it for themselves, and everything

from demographic information to copyright permissions are open-ended so that

narrators can choose how their narratives are labeled in the archives, and how open or

accessible their stories are. In many ways, the composition classroom is also relatively

open: composition courses are often theme-based, which means a dozen different

sections of a composition course at the same university could have a dozen different

themes, with varying foci, content, and assignments; the pedagogy and practices of

composition are adaptable and adjustable (to return to Halberstam’s definition of open)

to the needs of the instructor, students, and program. Ritter & Matsuda (2012) argue,

“Due to its inherently interdisciplinary nature, composition studies draws its students

and prospective scholars from many areas inside and outside English studies,” and these

people bring with them a variety of ways of understanding and using composition and

literacy (p. 1). Composition as a field is dynamic and open because it draws on different

disciplines for its content; further, expectations for writing and reading in the 21st

century have grown to include multimodal compositions, which has meant a shift and

openness in the pedagogy, research, and expectations for composition (see Bloom,

Daiker, & White, 1997; Ritter & Matsuda, 2012; Reid, 2009; Selfe & Hawisher, 2004;

Yancey, 2004).20 An example of openness from the DALN is Sile Singleton’s (2010),

20 The debate about composition as a gatekeeping course to the university hinges on the idea of openness: how might composition close off access to the university, and how might composition best serve the students in composition classrooms? Crowley (1998) and Miller (1991), for example, contend

“Finding Myself,” which discusses various literacy practices over the course of a few

decades. However, one could argue that the core or arc of the narrative is about coming

to consciousness as a queer, black, gender non-conforming person and not solely or

even primarily about literacy. However, it is included in the DALN because despite

departures from traditional understandings of literacy as reading and writing, Sile’s

narrative is her personal journey as a literate person.

2. Personal. “The personal is political” has long been the rallying cry for feminist and queer

activists, meaning that personal realities are not neutral but socially and politically

meaningful. Personal voice and the self have been central to various pedagogical

debates in late-20th and early-21st century composition pedagogy and scholarship, and

both personal voice and the self are central to the DALN and queerness (see Elbow,

1981; Halberstam, 2011; Jarratt & Worsham, 1998; Kirsch, Maor, Massey, Nickoson-

Massey & Sheridan, 2003; Park, 2004; Spiegelman, 2004; Warner, 1993). If not for the

personal, the DALN would not exist. There are only two criteria for deciding whether or

not a story is appropriate for the DALN: does the narrative relate to literacies in some

way,21 and is it a first-hand, personal account (Ulman, 2012, personal interview). The

that composition pedagogy (which could be considered an expression of composition’s values) has a controlling function, determining who can or cannot access the wider university. However, I argue that composition’s interdisciplinary nature and strong alliance with feminism and feminist theory has the potential disrupt composition’s role as a gatekeeper in some classrooms due to the equitable values of feminism. Further, the ways in which composition functions in different educational contexts is wide ranging, and both Crowley’s and Miller’s projects are historical in nature, which means that they reflect the history of composition but do not necessarily provide a clear sense of the current state and values of composition. Although some things may remain the same in higher education and in composition, there have been significant changes to the field in the decades since the publication of Crowley’s and Miller’s monographs. 21 Though the requirement that narratives relate to literacy in some way may seem to presuppose what is or is not literacy, this requirement is very broadly cast. Less than a dozen narratives have been rejected from the DALN since its inception, which demonstrates that the threshold for inclusion is low (Ulman, 2012, personal interview).

DALN’s homepage and promotional materials demonstrate the degree to which the

personal is privileged: “The DALN invites people of all ages, races, communities,

backgrounds, and interests to contribute stories… We welcome personal narratives…We

also invite contributors to supplement their narratives with samples of their own

writing…and compositions…” (“DALN Home,” n.d.). The personal is the core of the

DALN’s existence, and the personal has played a large role in the scholarship, research,

and development of composition studies. In A teaching subject (1997), Harris explores

how concepts such as growth, voice, and community have impacted and continue to

impact composition studies as a discipline. Each of these terms come back to personal

expression, personal discovery, and personal development as a writer and thinker.

Harris says that part of composition’s role is to help students see themselves as “people

who not only bring experience but ideas to the classroom, whose work as intellectuals

does not begin and end in school but continues on outside of it “ (Harris, 1997, p. 22).

Harris asserts that composition needs to meet students where they are—and consider

who they are inside and outside of the classroom—in order to most effectively teach

composition. The DALN’s valuing of the personal even while it exists as a resource

created and maintained in academic spaces provides a model for moving between the

binaries that Harris claims shape classrooms and people’s experiences in classrooms.

3. Self-direction and self-reflection. A key principle of queerness is self-direction and self-

reflection. Self-reflection is central to both personal literacy narratives and the DALN.

When we ask people to compose a literacy narrative, we are asking them to reflect upon

what literacy means to them now and in the past, and we are asking them to reflect

upon their personal experiences and develop a narrative of their experience. In the

DALN, self-direction and self-reflection manifest through the forms and materials associated with the DALN and narrative submissions. Rather than a list of predetermined choices or a list of choices and an “other” box, narrators choose what information to provide or omit on the forms. That is, narrators determine how or if they will be identified: everything from the narrator’s name and narrative’s title to demographic information to keywords are generated by the narrators themselves, and they can refuse to offer any information (beyond contact information for non-public use), without it impacting the inclusion of their narrative in the DALN. Further, critical thinking, one of the central components to composition, is based on reflexivity

(particularly self-reflexivity), and self-reflection by both instructors and students has played (and continues to play) a large role within composition studies’ pedagogy and scholarship (see Bloom, Daiker, & White, 1997; Brookfield, 1995; Brown, Enos, &

Chaput, 2002; Gregorie, 2009/2010; Ritter & Matsuda, 2012; Yancey, 1998). In the

DALN the diversity of responses to what some might consider relatively straightforward questions such as gender and class illustrate the above values and the ways in which self-direction and self-reflexivity are queer—that is, the ways in which these values

“encourage an open mesh of possibilities” (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 8) and provide “ways of living with difference” (Weeks, 1995, p. 10). Ulman (2013b) notes that as of September

2012, there are 39 different terms for gender used by narrators in the DALN (including

“yes”), and class identifications include “artist class.” Both gender and class develop from personal experiences, so leaving the questions open allow contributors to reflect on these concepts and determine (and provide or not provide) the language and concepts that have the most meaning for them.

Valuing openness, the personal, and self-direction/reflection means that the focus is on individual desires and purposes, and there can be as many desires and purposes for contributing and using the DALN as there are contributors and users. Individuals use the DALN for personal,

social, and academic reasons—the design and values of the DALN encourage this multiplicity.

For example, when I explore the DALN, I note the ways in which the DALN, as a collection, surfs between dominant binaries in our society, whether that is literate/illiterate, academic/personal, public/private, restriction/openness, or dominant/minority. Others may use the DALN to maintain a history of their family’s experiences with language; to explore linguistic variations of concepts; to perform discourse analysis; or to complete statistical analysis on the locations, gender, or race of narrators. Although we are all working with stories from the same resource, from the same container, what we do with the stories and the archives and which stories we zero-in on are unique to our socio-cultural positions and desires (for examples of this in scholarship, see Ulman, DeWitt, & Selfe, 2013).

Theoretically speaking: Frameworks and methods of analysis

In this dissertation, I argue that a queer approach to and understanding of the DALN and personal narratives may disrupt dominant research and pedagogical methods in composition and literacy studies in ways productive for both composition and queerness. Of course, though I contend that the DALN is a queer archives, the DALN may not be what some consider a queer project. It contains narratives produced by people of a variety of identities, both queer and not, and the narratives focus on more than queer culture or artifacts. However, one may still use queer commentary/critique (that is, a queer lens or perspective) to analyze and better understand the narratives and the DALN without claiming or conceding that it is a queer

archives itself. In other words, we can use a queer framework to understand the DALN in the same way we might use a feminist framework to understand socially conservative political campaign: to provide a more complex and differently nuanced understanding of the subject at hand. Berlant and Warner (1995) claim, “Queer commentary takes on varied shapes, risks, ambitions, and ambivalences in various contexts” both related and unrelated to LGBTQ people and cultural productions (p. 343). Rhodes and Alexander (2012) argue that “’information’ and

‘data’ about the ‘queer’ are readily accessible” in the 21st century, and they wonder how we might be able to make this information meaningful. They claim that,

rhetoric offers us a number of strategies for such meaning-making, showing us the various

ways in which information about the queer can be constructed—to further queer

visibility, to argue with or against the queer, to analyze the emergence of the queer and

the queer’s impact on the public sphere. (Rhodes & Alexander, 2012)

Although Rhodes and Alexander focus on queerness in the form of queer persons and queer cultural productions, using a queer perspective to understand the DALN and literacy narratives reveals the ways in which queerness exists outside of individual humans and can develop from values and structures rather than sexual or gendered identities or desires (see Giffney & Herd’s edited collection, Queering the Non/Human, 2008). I argue that one way to make queerness meaningful is by incorporating queer approaches and worldviews into classrooms, using resources such as the DALN. This positions queerness as a worldview and set of values rather than reducing queerness to particular sexual or gender behaviors, identities, or desires.

Using the predominant queer method—the reconfiguring and challenging of binaries— to understand the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives and personal literacy narratives may help us to better understand both the DALN and literacy narratives as queer (see Giffney, 2009;

Jagose, 1997; Sedgwick, 1990; Sullivan, 2003; Warner, 1993). Understanding the DALN through a queer lens provides a language and framework for discussing the intricacies and potentialities of both the DALN and personal literacy narratives. I see the DALN as one resource that, when read through a queer lens and due to its queer values, may help fill gaps—the personal and contextualized realities—left by more traditional literacy resources such as library-bound archives, governmental documents and statistics, and life history collections created by individual scholars (e.g., Brandt, 2001; Graff, 1979; Heath, 1983; Mass-Observation Archive, n.d.;

National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.; Selfe and Hawisher, 2004). The DALN could

function as a type of queer commentary about literacy because the DALN and its contents push

against traditional, academic ways of presenting literacy information. For example, statistics and

monographs often obscure the personal details of people’s experiences in favor of broader

understandings but the DALN elevates personal experiences in order to understand individual

and community experiences. I believe that composition can potentially access the power that a

queer position provides by consciously taking up queerness because, as Sedgwick (1994) claims,

“’Queer’ seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person’s undertaking particular,

performative acts…” (p. 8). A queer method, then, needs only the willingness of individuals to

acknowledge and use queerness to develop understanding.

Queer methods

Fusco (2012) claims “There is no quintessential queer methodology...” (p. 152), and I

believe Fusco makes this claim because queerness is defined, in part, by excess and multiplicity.

Although queer analysis may have its roots in gender and sexuality, nearly all queer analyses

focus on disrupting and pushing against boundaries and binaries (see Browne & Nash, 2010;

Halberstam, 2008; Pinar, 1998; Warner, 1993). Still, though, it can be difficult to comprehend

what queer methodologies are or look like because “Methodologies are logics that attempt the impossible task of arranging different ways of knowing into hierarchical orders, based on competing ethical, practical and epistemological values…[whereas] the understanding of ‘queer’

[is] an anti-essentialist counterdisciplinary project, committed to partiality and irony…”

(Hegarty, 2007, p. 125). Halberstam (2005) calls queer methodology a “scavenger

methodology,” one that borrows from a variety of disciplines and traditions as a way to fill in the

gaps of dominant culture and may not have traditional disciplinary coherency. Manning (2009)

argues that “queer methodologies are vital for exposing hegemonic linear ways of being and

thinking” whether about gender and sexuality or about the world in general (my emphasis, p. 1).

Like Manning, I envision queer analysis and methodologies as well-suited to highlighting and critiquing hegemonic power structures and the tensions within them, whether these power structures are explicitly about sexuality or gender or not.

Pinar (1998) argues that a queer approach “straddles…the divide” and refuses to accept the binaries as they are (p. 10), and likewise, Boellstorff (2010) characterizes a queer method as

“surfing the binaries” such as public/private, academic/popular, dominant/minority, and normative/non-normative. As Boellstorff (2010) contends, paying attention to the movement between the binaries that shape our daily existence is necessary for understanding that existence. He says,

To surf is to move freely upon a wave that constrains choice (you cannot make it move

in the opposite direction), but does not wholly determine one's destination. A wave in a

sense does not exist, for it is but a temporary disturbance in the ocean, yet waves are

consequential: they not only move surfers but can destroy buildings in tsunamis, or

erode coastlines of the hardest rock. While any analogy is imperfect, what I mean to

underscore with this notion of surfing binarisms is that a queer method could recognize

the emic social efficacy and heuristic power of binarisms without thereby ontologizing

them into ahistoric, omnipresent Prime Movers of the social. (p. 222)

We must be willing to let the wave (in this case, the DALN or literacy or academia) move us

while at the same time we must be willing to resist allowing that wave to determine our

objective or intention. Queer commentary or method allows us to acknowledge and explore the

binaries that shape our socio-cultural worlds while at the same time, a queer method recognizes

that all binaries are historically and culturally situated and mutable. Boellstorff (2010) claims,

“Characterizing this movement [between and across binaries] in terms of 'blurring' is…misleading, because it is through the perduring presence of the binarism that the

'movement' can have cultural consequences…the realization that one must surf binarisms [has] pivotal methodological implications” (original emphasis, Boellstorff, 2010, p. 228). And it is the final point made here—that surfing binaries has significant “methodological implications”— which anchors this entire dissertation and analysis: surfing binaries is the hallmark of queerness

(whether methodology, analysis, life), and the DALN rests on binaries—or at least one major one: literacy/illiteracy. To talk about literacy is to highlight the tension—and ultimately surf— the binary of literacy/illiteracy, whether explicitly or implicitly; illiteracy is always in the background of literacy narratives, whether articulated or not, and therefore the DALN is always already moving between binaries (cf. Branch, 2007; Cushman, Kintgen, Kroll, & Rose, 2001;

Stuckey, 1990). Surfing the binaries is a way to expand and complicate our understandings of both literacy knowledges and practices.

The DALN and the narratives contained within it do not blur or circumvent the boundaries between, for example, experts and selves or academic and personal. The boundaries between

them remain intact. Instead, many narrators and users of the DALN psychically “flit” between various positions. To return to Sile Singleton’s (2010) narrative, for example, Sile moves between private and personal understandings and definitions of literacy and gender to academic and dominant understandings and definitions these concepts.

Rhodes & Alexander in “Queered” (2012) posit, “Perhaps rhetorically what is most important narratively about being queer is that [it] is not always coherent in the ways you want it to be.” Coherency–that neat tying together of issues, concerns, arguments, and purposes into tidy, easily consumed and understood packets–cannot be found in DALN literacy narratives and cannot be found in queerness. Though the DALN as a whole may have a degree of coherency under the heading of “literacy narrative,” the contents of the DALN challenge an easy sense of coherency. A queer method can position the DALN not as messy and jumbled but as complex, referential, and reflective of the nature of personal experiences in general and personal experiences of/with literacy in particular. The proliferation of narratives in the DALN ensures that one’s view of the DALN is always only partial, and here lies some values of queerness, literacy narratives, and the DALN: lived lives are not neat and tidy, learning is not a smooth or linear process, and to paraphrase the Whitman epigraph at the beginning of this chapter, we live in contradiction every day because we belong to so many communities and occupy different identity positions. Contradiction is not a sign of weakness but rather a sign of complexity and richness. Using a queer approach, instructors, students, and researchers may be able to more easily see the ways in which the DALN and (many of its) personal literacy narratives reflect a queerness, a richness in their refusal to limit literacy to dominant definitions (reading/writing alphabetic text) or spaces (schools/the academy). This richness may be used to better understand literacy and its impacts as well as provide a more open composition classroom.

Exploring the chapters of this dissertation

The chapters following this introduction place the DALN within the context of archival studies, composition studies, and classroom uses of the DALN. I position the DALN within common configurations and conceptions of archives; recent composition scholarship with and about archives and personal literacy narratives; and classroom uses of the DALN in order to demonstrate the ways that archives and archival research can already be a little queer and the ways in which the DALN is a queer archives and resource for composition classrooms.

The second chapter, “The queerest of the queer: The Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives among archives” explores how and to what degree the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives reflects the epistemology and ontology of different conceptions of archives. This chapter has three main foci: analysis and discussion of how archives have been conventionally understood, particularly within archival studies; analysis and discussion of Archives 2.0 and the challenge of born-digital materials; and exploration of the possible values of queer archives, culminating with a discussion of the DALN as a queer archives for composition studies. Turning to the Society of American Archivists (the largest professional organization of archivists in the country), foundational archival theorists Theodore Schellenberg and Henry Jenkinson as well as contemporary theorists such as Terry Cook and Kate Theimer, I establish that binary values structure the discourse surrounding archives, which impacts how archives operate and exist in the world. Taking cues from Anne Cvetkovich, J. Halberstam, and Alana Kumbier, I provide an

overview of how an archives might queer those binary values, particularly within the context of

DALN. I ask, how do values impact access and use; contribution and accession; audience and

location, and how does this invite or exclude different communities, stories, and experiences

from being preserved and shared as knowledge? Openness, the personal, and self-direction, and

the movement between these values and their binary opposites are all central to the DALN’s structure, function, and possibilities. Each of these binary values provides the space for the

DALN to be used and understood by different audiences for different purposes. I argue that the

DALN, as an internet-accessible, open archives that anyone can contribute to, is a queer archives that pushes against the values and structures conventional archives and archives 2.0. My goal is to demonstrate how the DALN moves between different conceptions of archives and archival values, and through its undulation, it provides a more open, queer way for understanding what archives are and can be.

The third chapter, “Academically personal, personally academic: Personal narratives,

archives, and composition studies,” explores how personal narratives and archives have been

understood and deployed in composition studies scholarship by turning to recent monographs

and the journal College Composition and Communication. My purpose for this chapter is to

demonstrate the ways in which the DALN not only fits into the relatively narrow conversations

about archives and personal literacy conversations already happening in composition studies,

but also the ways in which the DALN may queer those conversations. The emphasis in

composition scholarship tends to be on experts (e.g. teacher-scholars) and what those experts

gain from both personal stories and archives rather than what students or non-experts might

gain from composing personal literacy narratives or working with archives. I argue that

composition studies should pay closer attention to the small stories of students and other “non-

experts” as a way to develop more nuanced and responsive composition scholarship and

pedagogies. When the DALN is used as a resource for composition, there is a potential to

democratize (and queer) scholarly argument (particularly in composition studies) by allowing

anyone to access and contribute to the project.

The fourth chapter, “Into the classroom, queerly: The DALN as a classroom resource,”

turns to the ways in which the DALN has been used in some college classrooms by examining

questionnaire responses from a small, targeted group of participants. The questionnaire centers

on instructors’ experiences with and motivations for incorporating the DALN and personal

narratives in the classroom. My purpose for this chapter is to understand how a small sample of

college instructors understand and use the DALN; though a larger study must be done to make

generalizable claims, focusing on how some instructors experience and use the DALN provides a

perspective of the DALN as a classroom resource. Because the DALN is relatively new, there is

little scholarship published about it, particularly scholarship focused on teachers’ uses of and

thoughts about the DALN. Overall, the survey reveals that the major pedagogical motivations for

using the DALN is to open the classroom and expose students to a wider range of identities and

experiences while supporting the academic development of students as writers and thinkers. I

argue that many of the responses reflect a desire to expand composition studies, and I suggest

that this impulse provides an opportunity to queer composition classrooms.

In the final chapter, “Queerly forward, a conclusion: The DALN and the future of composition,” I consider how the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives and personal narratives could function as the future heart of composition studies. I ask, How can the DALN be theoretically and practically useful for composition’s future? I consider how the DALN might be used by instructors to teach composition and academic argument in an increasingly diverse and digital composition classroom. With the rise of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and online education, the DALN and its open and digital nature could become an invaluable resource for teaching composition and literacy in the 21st century. I argue that the DALN can be used by

instructors as a bridge between discursive and material understandings of sociocultural identity,

and teachers may use it to provide a way of understanding queerness as a worldview and intellectual approach rather than simply associated with sexuality and gender identity.

Instructors and students may use the DALN to re-imagine personal stories’ and archives’ roles in the work of composition. In this concluding chapter, I return to the questionnaire responses as well as the resources provided by the DALN, and I suggest a method for incorporating the DALN into classrooms.

Concluding in order to begin: Moving forward

I began this introduction with Lisa Ede’s rumination on the contingency of research because it reflects how I think about the DALN and its possibilities: the DALN is situated and contingent upon those who use it and those who contribute to it, and with each use and contribution, the DALN can be viewed and understood differently. It is a continually evolving resource. Each researcher’s, student’s and teacher’s interaction with the DALN is shaded by that individual’s position and worldview and the narratives that are available at that particular moment in time. As we grow and change, how we understand and view something such as the

DALN or literacy also grows and changes with each return to it, based on our evolving worldviews. Certainly the evolution of perspective is not unique to working with the DALN—

Ede’s point is about research in general. But I believe that the DALN is especially open to a reimagining because each week, each month means a slightly different archives as narratives are continually being added.

I worked with the DALN for years before I could clearly articulate what I found so compelling about archives and personal narratives—and the DALN in particular—as resources for classrooms and communities. Part of this articulation was pushing past those who have been dismissive about the worth of the DALN and personal stories for composition studies, such as

graduate students and scholars who see the DALN as nothing more than a collection unverifiable personal stories that resists easy exploration and use.22 In some ways, this critique

of the DALN signals its queerness. Kumbier (2014) argues,

The significance of [queer archives’] objects cannot be objectively determined or

verified, the objects themselves may or may not be unique, and their informational

content may be hard to evaluate using conventional archival criteria (of uniqueness,

evidence, enduring value, and/or functional significance)….queer archives exceed the

limits of documents-based collection; they require engagement, critical investigation,

and participation. (p. 15, p. 18)

I argue that we can better understand the possibilities for the DALN as a classroom and research

resource for the fields of composition and literacy by beginning in a queer frame of mind.

Queerness is useful for understanding the DALN and the possibilities of personal narratives

because its “…productivity lies in this double impulse of production and deconstruction, in its

‘both…and’ structure” (Luhmann, 1998, p. 146). A queer lens provides the basis for

understanding the ways in which DALN embodies queerness through its structure and values.

Furthermore, a queer lens can illuminate how the DALN’s queer values and structure may

provide alternative ways for entering into academic conversations, in part because the DALN

and its narratives are “both…and”—they surf the dominant binaries of composition, such as

expert/self and academic/personal.

22 At conferences, I have chatted about the DALN with graduate students and faculty from around the country, both informally and more formally through workshops and Q&A sessions after presentations. Though many (if not most) of these people embrace the DALN as an interesting (perhaps quirky or frustrating) resource for composition studies, others have voiced skepticism about the value of a the DALN because of the uneven quality of submissions and lack of controlled information, and others wonder how useful a bunch of personal, subjective stories could or should possibly be for improving or impacting composition pedagogy and scholarship.

Taking a queer approach to the DALN may allow us to enact what Morris (1998) calls a

“digressive politics.” For the DALN, this means “examin[ing] the cultural codes and discursive strategies located within the dominant culture and attempt[ing] to illuminate how we have been produced by these codes” about and related to literacy practices and values (Morris, 1998, p. 280). A digressive politics sees the radical potential in texts—and in the case of the DALN, this means understanding the radical possibilities of personal literacy narratives for classrooms and research, and the radical possibilities of an unruly resource such as the DALN. Luhmann (1998) argues “…pedagogy might begin with the question of how we come to know and how knowledge is produced in the interaction between teacher/text and student” and the interaction between students and communities (p. 148). The DALN’s unruliness, its departure from the expectations for archives and for academic argument, are what drew me to the DALN and are what made me afraid of making the DALN the heart of my dissertation. I had to work with the DALN and its narratives without a clearly articulated research agenda in mind in order to truly understand the radical potential in the DALN and personal narratives for composition studies. Over time, as I listened to more and more narratives without a narrow research question in mind, I was able to reflect upon the quirkiness of the DALN and see things differently and through different lenses.

Chapter 2 The queerest of the queer: The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives among archives

Archives have the power to privilege and to marginalize. They can be a tool of hegemony; they can be a tool of resistance. They both reflect and constitute power relations. Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook (2002)

I’ll strip away your hard veneer And see what I can find. The queerest of the queer The strangest of the strange… Garbage (1995)

Archives are peculiar things—queer things—and this chapter examines the often- implicit values that undergird structures and understandings of archives. In order to better understand the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, I ask:

• Does the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives reflect the epistemology and ontology of

different conceptions of archives,1 and if so, to what degree?

I examine the common connotations and values of archives because these impact not only how archives are understood but also how something with the word archive(s) in the title, such as

1 The Society of American Archivists’ glossary notes that using the term archive (without the –s) as a noun is generally disapproved of by U.S. and Canadian archivists, but is commonly used in other English- speaking countries. Archive (without the –s) is used as a noun throughout professional publications, perhaps because many professional publications include scholars and archivists from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and a variety of other countries who write and publish in English. 43

the DALN, may be perceived. The discourse surrounding archives is steeped in binaristic values,2

and Hunter (1997) points out that these values are most often hidden rather than made explicit.

Values manifest in the types of materials available, access to and approved use of materials, location of materials, and how those materials and archives are talked about (Hunter, 1997). I turn to larger conceptions and values of archives in archival studies and popular culture to understand and to situate the DALN as an archives within these conceptions and values.

As explored in Chapter 1, using a queer heuristic or framework can help expand our understandings and perspectives of the world around us. A queer position, as a result, may provide a different or more complex sense of what archives (and archival research) could be and could look like. Rawson (2012) in “Archive This!” argues that “queer archival practices…are nontraditional, anti-institutional, and ephemeral. They challenge basic understandings of what counts as evidence and where and how…experiences can be represented” (p. 239). As a result,

Cvetkovich (2012) in “Queer archival futures” says, “A queer influence on…archives can lead not only to new kinds of collections, but also to new ways of thinking about the archive, including new practices of research and exhibition.” A “queer influence on…archives” may manifest in different ways because as Rawson (2012) notes, “As with the debated definitions of queer, there is no singular queer archival practice…” (p. 247). Ultimately, though, queer archives and queer archival practices and values are about drawing attention to the ways that archives and their values are shaped through what is included and excluded from archives, and the ways that archives shape values and ideas such as legitimacy and research. Cvetkovich (2012) argues that archivists, activists, artists, and researchers “…can use their creative powers to perform

2 As Derrida (1976, 1982) notes, values (or concepts) are constituted discursively and in terms of their opposites, (e.g. restricted/open, impersonal/personal, and so on) so to explore one side is to learn about the other simultaneously. 44

interventions that keep the archive open to critique and transformation” by emphasizing the role of archivists and others in shaping what is considered archives- or research-worthy. In this chapter, I explore the various values underlying archives in order to better understand how the

DALN might function as a “queer influence” to help faculty and students in composition studies envision archives and archival research in more open ways. Fagerholt (2009) claims, “the archive can be used to create a new perception of reality.” Understanding the values that underlie different conceptions of archives may reveal not only the realities of particular archives but also how archives might be a “tool of resistance” and/or a “tool of hegemony,” to return to the epigraph from Schwartz & Cook (2002)—and I use this chapter to ask what it might mean and look like if we consider the DALN to be a “tool of queerness” for the field of composition studies.

In order to examine the DALN vis-à-vis archives and queerness, this chapter unfolds in three ways: analysis and discussion of conventional archival structures and values, particularly within archival studies; analysis and discussion of Archives 2.0 and the challenge of born-digital materials, such as those in the DALN; and exploration of the structures and values of queer archives, culminating with a case study of the DALN as an example of an archives with queer values that is useful for the work of composition studies. My analysis rests on understanding the values that serve as the foundation of archives because these values are what shape everyday archival structures, realities, and expectations.

Thinking about values and structure

Values are mapped onto everyday structures, from the physical (ex: buildings) to virtual

(ex: computer interfaces). Archives preserve human knowledge and experiences, and they reflect (both overtly and tacitly) the perspectives and values of those who maintain and control them. We can most often see archives’ implicit values through their processes of access and use;

contribution and accession;3 and audience and location. A deconstructive approach to a text reveals the conceptual binaries that shape that text, so by looking to the structures of archives, we may be able to understand what values underlie and result in different structural configurations. Galloway (2012) in The Interface Effect argues that an interface—a structure which mediates access and interaction—“is not a thing” but it is “always an effect.…a process or a translation” of social, historical, and cultural norms and expectations (p. 33; cf. Moghaddam,

Bongen & Twidale, 2010 ). Similarly, in “The Politics of the Interface,” Selfe & Selfe (1994) argue that “…the values of our culture—ideological, political, economic, educational—are mapped both implicitly and explicitly, constituting a complex set of material relations” (p. 485). If the interface—that is, the structure of a thing—is political, then that means that structure is also value-laden; politics are inherently about values, so to claim something is political is to claim that it is operating according to particular values system. This is no different when it comes to archival structures. Skinnell (2010) argues, “…the structure of the archive…determines what can be archived, and therefore the rhetorical uses to which the contents may be put.” An interface or structure can be traced to a particular politics (and therefore value system), even if those engaging with (or even designing) the interface do not “acknowledge or support” such a position

(Selfe & Selfe, 1994, p. 481). In other words, to talk about the structure of archives (or most anything else created by humans) is to talk about the values (and attendant binaries) that serve as the foundation for archives. All of this impacts what or who can be part of archives, who can access archives, and what can be and what is done with archives and their records as well.

3 According to the Society of American Archivists’ glossary, accession, while related to acquisition, also includes “...the initial steps of processing by establishing rudimentary physical and intellectual control over the materials by entering brief information about those materials in a register, database, or other log of the repository's holdings” (Pearce-Moses, “Accession,”2005). The SAA glossary is written by Richard Pearce-Moses. Despite the single-authorship, the glossary is presented as the official SAA definitions. 46

The often unspoken values present in archival discourse impact how archives operate and exist in the world. The primary values I will examine in this chapter are the binary values of restriction/openness; impersonal/personal; and expert-direction/self-direction (see Figure 1).

Restriction Openness

Impersonal Personal

Expert-directed Self-directed

Figure 1: Binary Values shaping archival structures and content.

The Society of American Archivists’ “Core Values of Archivists” (2011) provided the initial interest in these binaries, and further research in archival theory—particularly the work of foundational theorists and archivists Jenkinson (1922, 1937) and Schellenberg (1953, 2003) and contemporary scholars such as Cook (1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007) , Kumbier (2014), Manoff

(2004), and Theimer (2009, 2011)—helped me better understand the ways in which these value binaries shape archival studies and archival practices historically and contemporarily. Then, because popular culture provides insight into prevalent, lay understandings of objects and institutions, I began to examine popular culture representations of archives and their attendant values to obtain a sense of how archives are understood in our broader culture and the ways in which these depictions do or do not align with the archival values that originate in archival studies. In light of the values identified in archival literature and popular culture, I returned to the DALN to determine the degree to which the value pairs manifested in the DALN’s structure and content. Finally, after exploring the DALN, its narratives, and related scholarship, I returned

to queer studies to help me make sense of the ways in which the DALN both embraces and pushes against dominant binary values shaping archives and archival practices.

I am most interested in how these value binaries shape and manifest in three main

areas of archives’ structures generally and in the DALN particularly: access and use; contribution

and accession; and audience and location (see Figure 2). Each of these aspects of archival

structures and binary values is intimately related. That is, to talk about one is to talk about the

other: to talk about openness means to talk (explicitly or implicitly) about restriction; to talk

about location is to talk (explicitly or implicitly) about audience, and so on. For example, the

location of archives can reveal who the intended or actual audience may be (as well as the

intended uses and types of access available).

Values Structures

Restriction/ Impersonal/ Expert- Openness Personal direction/ Self-direction Access/Use

Contribution/Access

Audience/Location

Figure 2: Matrix of binary values and archival structures

In examining archives and the DALN, I have focused on structures and values laid out in

Figure 2 for a few reasons. First, the structures of access, use, location, and intended audience

are some of the most publicly visible aspects of archives; contribution and accession are structural aspects that most directly impact archival content because contribution and accession are how/why materials are accepted for inclusion in archives and how they are described (and who describes them). Second, as I note above, the binary values I highlight stem from analyzing and understanding historical, contemporary, and queer conceptions of archives and values.

Exploring the implicit values and binaries of archives is a way to engage with historical and contemporary understandings and structures of archives. Further, this exploration can provide a foundation for understanding the position and possibilities of the DALN and queer values for archives and academic spaces such as the classroom.

Archives, like history itself, have been controlled by the victors, by those in power, and often to the detriment of less powerful groups. According to Cook (2000), “Archives traditionally were founded by the state, to serve the state, as part of the state’s hierarchical structure and organizational culture” (Cook, 2000, p. 18). But over time, the purpose and goal of archives have evolved and broadened beyond the state and beyond the physical. Schultz and Cook (2002) note that “In recent years, the word ‘archive’ has experienced a resurgence well beyond its popular connotation of dusty basements and old parchments – in cultural studies, the world-wide web, and elsewhere” (p. 4). The range of disciplines that use the concept of archives—and the range of meanings attached to that concept—demonstrates that archives has power to help people understand something about different disciplines. In the process, these diverse uses of archives can impact other understandings of what archives means. Monks-Leeson (2011) argues,

…the term [archives] is ill defined, widely used, and—to many archivists—widely misused.

While there is good reason to posit the need for a more universal understanding, we, as

archivists, cannot ignore that archive and archives have acquired particular connotations

within other disciplines and theoretical contexts, and the use of the term on the Internet

both points toward and builds new sets of meaning. (p. 53)

In many fields, such as cultural studies, literary studies, and critical theory, archives is used as a

metaphor for understanding different phenomena, but these uses of archives have little connection to archives as they are understood and theorized in archival (and library) studies

(see Derrida, 1995; Foucault, 1982; Spivak, 1985; Steedman, 2001; Voss & Werner, 1999).

Although some in archival and library sciences may be resistant to broader uses and understandings of the concept of archives, Monks-Leeson argues that archivists cannot afford to ignore these conceptions because, whether archivists like it or not, these broader understandings of archives impact how archives are generally understood.4 For instance,

archives is used to describe everything from collections of physical and (sometimes) digital

materials found in libraries, to all materials available about a subject (such as Halberstam’s

(2005) use of archive to describe all materials and memories available anywhere about Brandon

Teena) to individual resources about a single topic (such as Bociurkiw’s (2011) use of archive to characterize the documentary Who took the bomp about the feminist punk movement and band

Le Tigre). Rather than viewing archivists’ and others’ understandings of archives in opposition, I argue for seeing the differences as part of a continuum, with no one end being privileged over

4 Both within archival studies and beyond, the most basic requirement for archives seems to rest on endurance or permanence: archives focus on long-term access well beyond the original purposes, uses, and audiences of the materials (Halberstam, 2005; Jenkinson, 1937; Kumbier, 2014; Pearce-Moses, “Archives,” 2005; “Schellenberg,” 2011). For something to truly be an archive—whether conventional, 2.0, or queer—there must be intent to preserve for future access, with materials that are not easily deleted or removed. For example, even Halberstam’s (2005) relatively broad (and atypical) understanding of archives as the culmination of individual and collective memories and materials dispersed throughout culture (rather than centralized physical or virtual spaces) centers on the notion of endurance. Halberstam argues that, “the real work of…an archive [should be] capable of providing a record of the complex interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality,” and this rests on the endurance and sharability of memory (p. 46). If we are focusing on archives as spaces (whether physical or virtual), then endurance means maintaining materials for others’ uses in the future.

the other. Popular, lay conceptions do not completely displace professional understandings, and professional understandings will not displace popular depictions and uses. Archives is an encompassing term, a queer term, and when we use archives as a way to identify a collection— such as the DALN—the baggage of the term impacts how that collection is understood.

In the following sections, I examine the values of conventional archives (i.e. physical, space-and-place--bound archives) and archives 2.0 (i.e. digital, online archives), followed by an examination of what it means to call something a queer archives. Providing this context allows us to more clearly see the ways in which the DALN has been shaped by the archival profession— and how it challenges it as well.

Archival values: Understanding Conventional Archives and Archives 2.0

Current understandings of archives and their purposes have been shaped by the history of archives and archival science in the U.S. as well as the variety of social and technological changes that have occurred over the past century. In the past, Hunter (1997) notes, the meanings and purposes of the archive were more straightforward (i.e., long-term storage of important and unique materials for future generations), but due to technological advancements, the meaning and purposes of archives have become more complex (i.e., both long-term storage and shorter-term storage of a variety of materials both public and personal). Evolutions in technology and social and cultural norms have meant emphasis on different aspects and values of archives (for example, expectations of self-directed, open access based on experiences with the internet) rather than brand new set of archival values, so instead of new terms, we still use the term archive(s).

Understanding exactly what archives are and what their values may be is not a straightforward task. In “Archives in a wider world” (2001) Tyacke notes “...everyone either

keeps records or is in one” (p. 7), so we are all part of archives. Rebecca Comay (2002) asks,

“What isn’t an archive these days? Where did it all begin, when will it end? In these memory- obsessed times—haunted by the demands of history, overwhelmed by the dizzying possibilities of new technologies—the archive presents itself as the ultimate horizon of experience” (p. 12).

In the following sections, I explore the implicit and explicit binaristic values of conventional archives and Archives 2.0. I begin with the values of archivists and archives as established by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) in “Core Values of Archivists” (2011) and

its online glossary of terms and concepts (authored by Robert Pearce-Moses, 2005) because it is

the largest professional organization of archivists in the U.S. and therefore influences the

practices and values of archivists and archives across the country. I explore conventional

archives, archives 2.0, and queer archives (and their attendant values) as they manifest in

culture and in practice by examining the historical development of each conception of archives. I

ask: How do the SAA values align with the binary values I have identified earlier, and to what

degree are these values visible or not visible in the practices and structure of conventional archives, archives 2.0, and queer archives? These explorations provide the basis for examining the DALN as an archives, including its values and structures.

Values: Society of American Archivists

The Society of American Archivists establishes the core values and code ethics for archival professionals in the United States.5 The organization provides two different documents

5 The UK equivalent of SAA is the Archives and Record Administration (although the Google link says Society of Archivists, this name is not listed anywhere on the actual site); the Archives and Record Administration’s website does not provide a comparable list. A search for “values” on its website yielded two hits, both of which are biographies or abstracts from the organization’s 2013 conference, Accountability, Culture and Ethics. ARA does have a Code of Conduct, which contains items that could be considered values-based. However, the Code of Conduct is presented as the code of conduct required for 52

that help establish the values of archives and archivists: the “Core Values of Archivists” (2011) and “A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology” (2005, authored by Pearce-Moses).

Though the former document has the word “values” in the title, the glossary similarly establishes the values of the SAA by providing definitions or delineations of different terms— including archives. When examined together, I develop a more complete understanding of the values central to the archival profession in the U.S.

“Core Values of Archivists” (2011) provides 11 areas that should be of top concern for archivists,6 and the value of openness looms large in the document (Society of American

Archivists Council, 2011). Though there are 11 areas identified in “Core Values,” there is an emphasis on the following:

• open access to records and service to the public;

• preservation of cultural heritages and diverse histories;

• selection of materials based on the broad public good (Society of American Archivists

Council, 2011).

“Core Values” stresses the social responsibility of archives and archivists, including “the widest

possible accessibility of materials,” by promoting the use of materials through public policy and

advocating for the preservation of diverse materials for a range of communities (Society of

American Archivists Council, 2011). However, despite the seeming openness of the “Core

Values” document, the SAA’s definitions of archives provide a far more restricted understanding of archives and attendant values. full membership in the ARA (“Code of Conduct,” 2012) rather than a general code of conduct for all archivists. 6 Those areas are, in alphabetical order: access and use; accountability (i.e. ensuring institutional/governmental accountability through public records); advocacy (i.e. public policy and promoting collections); diversity; history and memory; preservation; professionalism; responsible custody; selection; service; and social responsibility (Society of American Archivists Council, 2011). 53

The SAA definition of archives “contains qualifications and parameters” that demarcate between archivists’ understandings of archives and wider understandings originating from outside of the archival profession (Kumbier, 2014, p. 11). Kumbier (2014) notes that this is “an assertion of expertise, a signal of membership in a particular discourse community, and a means of discerning who speaks as an archivist…” (p. 10). In other words, the definitional work establishes restrictions on who may be considered an expert on or about archives. Expert- direction and restriction,7 then, are at the core of the SAA’s definition of archives. Archivists

determine what records to preserve, and those records are then stored in a particular building or area of a building, which often have specific restrictions for access and use of the records in the archives (Pearce-Moses, “Archives,” 2005). The purpose of archives is to maintain materials

“as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control” (Pearce-

Moses, “Archives,” 2005). Unspoken here are the specific values that judgments are based on; who, exactly, is making the judgment of value, using what standards, for what communities or groups? Although unspoken, these behind-the-scenes judgments impact the degree of openness

within conventional archives and archival practices.

Explorations of many archives’ policies reflect the more restricted understandings of archives presented in the SAA glossary rather than the openness described in the “Core Values”

(2011) document. For example, the website for Britain’s Mass-Observation Archive (also called the Mass-Observation Project, housed at the University of Sussex) states “The Archive is open to all bona fide researchers provided they agree to abide by the conditions protecting the

7 The SAA’s assertion of expertise and restriction of who may speak as an archivist is not unique to this organization. In many ways, this is the purpose of many if not most professional societies or organizations. 54

collection” (my emphasis, Mass-Observation Archive, n.d.). This highlights the significance of the binary values of restriction and openness, and illustrates an important point: institutional understandings of the purpose and potential uses of archives often exclude non-academic or non-research use and access. One reason why actual practices in archives may not reflect the openness that the SAA’s “Core Values” encourage may be because many archives and archival materials (such as the Mass-Observation Archive) are housed in libraries, universities, and other institutions that may have competing values,8 and therefore the archivists are often not the only ones who determine issues related to archives such as access and public good.

Sometimes the restricted nature of access is less obvious and explicit than that of the

Mass-Observation Archive. The restriction may be more implied and more material, such as with

The Ohio State University Archives. University Archives’ hours are only posted for the upcoming week, but they are generally Monday through Friday, 9am-4:30pm, with no weekend availability

(“University Archives,” 2013). The lack of weekend and evening hours and the practice of posting hours for only the upcoming week limit who can access the archives. Although the hours are Monday-Friday from 9am-4:30pm for this week does not mean that those hours apply for any other time. For those who work, not knowing the hours can make it difficult to plan ahead or arrange one’s work schedule appropriately.9 Further, many archives that are not focused on

university or college histories are still located in academic libraries, which can limit who has

access. Some academic libraries require a student, staff, or faculty ID in order to enter or require

obtaining a visitor’s pass. For individuals who are not in college or have never been in college,

8 For example, an institution may be more invested in preservation of a particular history which could mean exclusion of contradictory materials, or an institution may be more concerned with institutional values and needs than the values and needs of users or of the archival profession. 9 Also, in the case of OSU University Archives, there is no information about public transportation to or from the archives, and the parking information indicates that it is $.25/10 minutes or $6 for an all-day pass (“University Archives,” 2013). 55

walking onto a college campus or into a university library can be intimidating, effectively

restricting access to resources.10 Understanding the values underlying different conceptions of archives helps us understand who or what may be included or excluded from the archives, whether in terms of content or users.

If I endeavor to understand archives broadly and the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives specifically, I must begin with the SAA, the professional organization governing the values of archives. So too must I explore the common or popular conceptions of archives because these broader understandings impact how collections named archives are understood.

In the following sections, I examine conventional archives, Archives 2.0, and queer archives and their attendant values. Throughout, I explore how the DALN and its values both align and push against these different conceptions and values of archives.

Conventional Archives: locked, dusty basements and attics

This section will explore widespread understandings of conventional archives and the values associated with those understandings, beginning with the ways in which popular culture portrays archives and then tracing these perceptions to the influential theorists and history of archival studies. In “Just what is an archives, anyway?” on the Smithsonian Institution Archives website, Jennifer Wright (2010) says that, “Many people hear the word ‘archives’ and immediately picture a facility, often an image of a dark, dusty room, probably in an attic or

10 There are distinct class issues involved with access to archives and resources based on university campuses. I will provide a personal example, although it is not about archives per se: my grandfather, Frank Kuzawa, was a voracious reader and was particularly fascinated by mathematics, psychology, and physical sciences. He spent a lot of time at public libraries, but did not feel that he was allowed to enter the university libraries and bookstores because he was not a college student and never attended college. He would, during his lunch time or during weekend visits to the main public library in downtown Cleveland, ask college students to purchase books for him at the university bookstore or when the university library would have book sales. Although he was a smart, self-taught man, his identity as a blue- collar worker (and child of immigrants) was, in his perspective, too far removed from what was expected or allowed in a college environment (even the bookstore). 56

basement, with rows of shelves full of old and fragile boxes and volumes,” safeguarded by an archivist or librarian. In other words, conventional archives are understood as centralized, restricted, and tangible collections of (primarily paper-based) records that are historical, old, and rare or unique, maintained and protected by experts.

Popular culture has grabbed on to the image of archives as restricted, expert-controlled,

and centralized spaces, and perpetuates the stereotype of archives as a dusty collection of

records containing the Truth that is only accessible to a privileged few. Popular culture defines

what archives are for the general public because “…the unfortunate but realistic fact [is] that

relatively few individuals from the general public are overly familiar with archives,” (Buckley,

2008, p. 99; see also Theimer, 2011). Buckley (2008) notes that archives are often in the

background of popular books, movies, and television, from science fiction and fantasy to

suspense and mystery to teen and children’s entertainment. For example, The Lord of the Rings:

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) features Gandolf “searching archives for proof that Frodo has

the One Ring;” The Borne Identity (2002) uses archives as a plot device; several movies in the

Indiana Jones franchise feature archives and archival materials11; and “Dr. Who and Torchwood mention archives in several episodes” (Buckley, 2008, p. 96). Even children’s media features archives: the children’s series Redwall has “a Recorder who frequently consults the Abbey’s archive for advice;” and the children-focused Transformers “has a firefight in an archives”

(Buckley, 2008, p. 96). Even if the archives play a small role—such as providing background for a scene—these popular depictions shape how the public-at-large understands or envisions archival spaces.

11 On the March 29, 2015 episode of genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are?, actor Sean Hayes enters into a large room containing thousands of naturalization petitions, and his immediate response is, “This is like the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc!” 57

Buckley highlights four common qualities that define pop culture representations of archives: 1) archives protect an ultimate Truth; 2) archives are closed spaces and using archives is a solo, interiorized experience; 3) records in archives are “lost” or “buried” and the archive user must uncover or discover them; and 4) the search for the archival record is ultimately the search for self and/or Truth (Buckley, 2008). The primary value emphasized here is restriction

(materials in one physical building or space, hidden meanings lost or locked away, single Truth).

The qualities mentioned by Buckley are central to a large portion of fictional, popular depictions of archives as well as non-fictional archives because they reflect the reality of many archives.

For example, the TLC reality show, Who Do You Think You Are? (WDYTA) traces the family histories of celebrities, and each episode features a variety of archives and archival materials. Like fictional depictions, conventional archives on WDYTA are almost always restricted and require experts to access records. Though the fictional depictions highlighted by

Buckley (2008) seem to emphasize self-direction and the personal (e.g. uncovering materials in archives is a solo experience, determined by the users’ needs and purpose), the archives featured throughout WDYTA reflect the more common reality of using conventional archives: an

expert grants or denies access and often provides information to users rather than the users

exploring the archives on their own. When celebrities visit archives, there is always an expert

(an archivist, a historian, or librarian, usually) who facilitates access. For example, the

September 3, 2013 episode features country musician Trisha Yearwood, but she does not head to the British National Archives to access records on her own—she meets with an archivist who locates relevant records for her as well as helps her make sense of the materials found.12 In

12 Also, almost all of the experts who help celebrities navigate archives and archival materials are not experts employed by the archives in question. So a historian from the University of Pittsburgh, for example, may fly to France to help a celebrity make sense of records held by a French archives because 58

many archival spaces, the celebrities and the experts are required to wear white cotton gloves in order to touch materials or they are only able to look at photocopies of records because the originals are deemed too fragile to be handled by anyone but experts (i.e. a representative of the archives).13

From Buckley’s list of qualities and the illustration from Who Do You Think You Are?, we can infer the archival values that they represent: restriction (need permission to access; records are located in singular space, even if spread out among drawers or floors of a building); and expert/pre-determination (only one Truth; archivists determine availability and use). The above- mentioned archival values survive because they reflect the historical reality of archives. Turning to the history of archival studies—the theoretical foundations of archives—provides a clearer sense of how and why popular depictions of archives have endured.

Conventional archival practices and values in the U.S. have developed from the work of two archival theorists: Briton Sir Hilary Jenkinson and American Theodore Schellenberg.

Stapleton (1983) asserts that these men “…stand out as the giants of their profession,” shaping historical and contemporary understandings of archives (Stapleton, 1983, p. 75; see also

Eastwood, 2003; Kumbier, 2014). Both men have provided the foundation for public (and specialist) understanding of archives (Stapleton, 1983).

Jenkinson (and his A Manual of Archive Administration (1922 and 1937)) is, according to

Eastwood (2003), “one of the most influential archivists in the English-speaking world” (p. vii).

Jenkinson’s goal was to establish archival techniques and principles to professionalize the field. that historian specializes in the particular era of French history. This sends a particular message as well: even though these people are not employed by the archives in question, they are still experts and therefore qualified to go into the bowels of the archives to find materials for celebrities to view. 13 In some other archives, both the expert and the celebrity are allowed to handle centuries old records without gloves, which demonstrates that there are varying degrees of restriction and access in different archives. 59

A Manual of Archive Administration pre-dates the massive increase in modern governmental and administrative records brought on by world wars and growth of the governmental sector14,

so it does not account for the amount and types of records commonly dealt with in modern

archival studies.

In contrast, Schellenberg’s Modern Archives (originally published in 1953, reissued in

2003) provides a critique and extension of Jenkinson’s work, and establishes “the unique archival outlook” of the United States (“Schellenberg,” 2011). Part of this unique outlook is recognizing a wide range of records and materials that should be considered archival. Stapleton

(1983) claims that Jenkinson focuses on rigid fundamentals for the field, whereas Schellenberg argues that a rigid approach is “…a hindrance for working with modern records” (Stapleton,

1983, p. 75). Jenkinson argues that only records that provided evidence of transactions (routine procedures and policies, legal and business activities) are archival; collections of historical papers may be useful to a historian, but they are not archival in Jenkinson’s theory (Pearce-

Moses, 2005; Jenkinson, 1937; Schellenberg, 2003). Schellenberg, due to his focus on modern records, has a more open understanding of archives and archival records, and one of his goals is to foster thinking about the complexities of archives and archival science in the modern age.

Schellenberg’s Modern Archives—unlike A Manual of Archive Administration—has been reissued in the 21st century, which speaks to the continuing influence and relevancy of his work to contemporary archival practices. Part of Schellenberg’s continued relevance may be the comparative flexibility of his theorizations.

14 Although Jenkinson’s monograph was published after World War I and republished during the Great Depression, his text deals with much older materials instead of modern records (Stapleton, 1983). Many of the principles outlined in A Manual of Archive Administration are applicable beyond these types of records, but at the same time, his text does not address some of the unique issues that come with modern records. 60

However, both Jenkinson’s and Schellenberg’s theories fall on the left or more conservative side of the binary values listed in this chapter (restriction, impersonal, expert- directed—see Figure 3 below). For both theorists, archives are restricted spaces for physical records, which an expert has determined are important for the official public record. Both see the archivist and archives as protectors of Truth (as determined by experts); they both argue that archives exist to maintain a historical record of governmental and institutional materials and are therefore “official,” procedural, and public15 in nature rather than personal (Stapleton,

1983). Both theorists argue that archival materials are not consciously developed, created, or collected (Stapleton, 1983, p. 76; also, Jenkinson, 1937; Schellenberg, 2003). Jenkinson (1937) says, materials accumulate “…and [reach] their final arrangement, by a natural process”

(Jenkinson, 1937, p. 238). In other words, archival development is passive: because there is

only one Truth and materials accumulate naturally, the archivist is more or less a vessel for

ensuring the continued preservation of the Truth. This means that the status quo is left

relatively undisturbed.

15 Jenkinson and Schellenberg emphasize that archives exist to maintain public (i.e. governmental) records. They also acknowledge that archives contain “private” records as well; private records are those held by non-governmental organizations such as historical societies and not simply personal collections of items. That is, private records are also vetted by a trained professional—in the case of historical societies, a historian (Stapleton, 1983). Jenkinson claims that archives are neutral or impartial whereas Schellenberg acknowledges that no archive can be impartial because what is recorded and what is preserved are determine by individuals, who bring their own values to the process. However, he also argues that archivists are highly trained and therefore provide a great service, even if impartiality is impossible. 61

Conventional Archives* Values Structures

Restriction Impersonal Expert-direction

Access/ -research and -experts (archivists, Use academic-based librarians, subject experts) determine -credentialed or who may access otherwise qualified researchers -experts determine what uses materials can be put Contribution/ - limited to items -assessment and -experts determine Access deemed worthy or description of materials what is worthy of interesting enough by are done by an expert preserving and experts rather than the creator or describing contributor -all descriptions are -descriptions provided created by experts -contributions tend by experts rather than toward transactional by contributors -tend to be paper-based materials (financial statements, meeting minutes, official communications, etc.) Audience/ -official archives, -often located in Location academic and research university libraries and libraries official/governmental spaces, which means -audience to those who only certain people are familiar with these have access spaces -experts determine who appropriate audience is

Figure 3: Values in Conventional Archives

*Examples: The National Archives; The Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program; The Ohio State University Archives. See: Jenkinson, 1937; Schellenberg, 2003; Society of American Archivists; Stapleton, 1983

Although Jenkinson and Schellenberg do not always agree in their theories and conceptions of archives and archival science, the distinction between the two men’s philosophies is mainly one of emphasis, particularly revolving around the role of experts in the

evaluation of records and the purpose of archives and archivists (Cook, 1997, 2000; Stapleton,

1983; Society of American Archivists; Tschan, 2002). Records, according to the SAA glossary, are

what are collected in archives—they are “written or printed work,” “data or information that

has been fixed on some medium,” (Pearce-Moses, 2005). Records are appraised before they are included in an archives, and appraisal refers to “…the process of determining whether records and other materials have permanent (archival) value” (Pearce-Moses, “Appraisal,” 2005; also see “Managing Internet,” 1999). Jenkinson argues that appraisal happens by the record creator, before records come to the archive; it is not the archivist’s job but the record creator’s job to determine what is relevant to a record (Jenkinson, 1937). To a certain degree, this allows for self-direction on the part of the creators.16 However, because Jenkinson only considers official

and transactional documents (such meeting and organizational documentation), the “self” is

most often an organization or institution (and generally governmental or originating with the

state). So Jenkinson may value self-direction, but it is not a personal move based on a singular

self because for Jenkinson, archival records are not personal in nature. In contrast, external expert (i.e. archivist) determination is central to Schellenberg’s conception of archives; he argues that one of the most important jobs of an archivist is to appraise records and determine what should be saved and what should be destroyed (Belovari, 2013);17 this is a personal or

16 In many ways, this aligns with the practices of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives: creators determine what is important and needs to be archived. 17 Ultimately, this difference between Schellenberg and Jenkinson can be traced to the different materials 63

individual choice based on larger institutional goals and values.

Another point of distinction between Jenkinson and Schellenberg is the emphasis on the purpose and service of archivists and archives. On the one hand, Jenkinson establishes a restricted, impersonal understanding of access and use of archives and archival materials. He claims that the archivist’s and archives’ first duty is to the records themselves rather than to the users and research that will be performed with the archives—although he does concede that without research and users there would be no archives or archivists (Jenkinson, 1937). On the other hand, Schellenberg argues that research and wide use should be the primary concerns for archivists and archives because records gain their value from secondary uses by researchers, whether that is for research, information, or evidence purposes (Schellenberg, 2003). Archives, in other words, are spaces where records are preserved for the long-term because they have a value to culture and/or society. Secondary use—the continuing value of a record beyond its original purpose—has become one of the central tenets of modern archives (Pearce-Moses,

2005). In some ways this is a more open and personal understanding of archives, but still, restriction and experts are still crucial to this conception of archives.

Keeping public service and research central to archives means the need for flexibility in archival principles and techniques because issues of service and research are context-dependent

(Stapleton, 1983). Schellenberg argues that the archivist “…has a definite need to redefine archives in a manner most suited to his [sic] own requirements” (2003, p. 13). In some ways,

and time periods in which the men focus their work. Jenkinson focuses on medieval materials and antiquities, when extensive and clear documentation was not as common or easy. Further, his focus on antiquities and medieval materials means greater distance from the records and therefore a greater difficulty in making judgments about what is relevant and has enduring value. Schellenberg deals with modern records such as military and governmental documentation; not everything saved from these functions is important or meaningful enough to preserve.

Schellenberg’s arguments have paved the way for the evolution (or the opening up) of how archives are understood, even as his work still maintains relatively restricted understandings of what qualifies as archival materials and who has the expertise to appraise and preserve archival materials.

Although Schellenberg’s influence can be seen in contemporary archival practices and values in the U.S., neither Jenkinson’s nor Schellenberg’s theories are completely adequate for understanding archives in the 21st century because of the impact and evolution of technology.

Jenkinson died in 1961 and Schellenberg died in 1970, before the widespread availability of personal computers and other digital technologies that have greatly impacted every aspect of the modern world, including archives and archival practices.

In many ways, the DALN is unlike the archives of Schellenberg and Jenkinson. There is no physical space and anyone with an internet connection and the URL could find and access the

DALN’s records—there is almost no restriction on access and use. Further, the DALN’s records are not about preserving transactions or the workings of the state. Each record is personal, and most are created explicitly for the DALN, with the foci determined by the narrators, which pushes against the concept of natural accumulation and the belief that an archivist makes the decisions on what is most relevant for an archives. At the same time, being wholly online restricts who can use, access, and contribute to the DALN (i.e. those with the appropriate technological literacy). The directors of the DALN do function as experts; they have the power to reject submissions based on the mission of the DALN. However, these choices are not based on concepts such as uniqueness, rareness, or level of interest but rather based on whether a submission is personal and about literacy broadly construed. The DALN, as a digital archives of personal records, may be understood as an evolution of conventional archival practices and

values as practiced by Schellenberg and Jenkinson.

In order to gain a sense of the evolution of archives and the role of technology in shaping popular and academic understandings of archives, I turn to online archives, also called

Archives 2.0. Exploring Archives 2.0 is crucial because the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives is an archives that exists wholly online. Developing a sense of how online archives are theorized and understood both within popular culture and within the archival profession helps place the

DALN into the larger historical continuum of archives and archival studies.

Archives 2.0: sittin’ on the net

When anyone talks about archives in our current, 21st century moment, we cannot escape the ubiquity of (digital) technologies and how these impact archives. In this section, I explore common understandings of Archives 2.0 and the values associated with those understandings, with a focus on popular and academic Archives 2.0, and the challenge of born- digital materials for archival studies. Then I explore where the DALN, as a 100% digital collection, fits into the popular and archival/academic understandings of technologically/digitally-based archives.

Although Archives 2.0 are different from conventional archive to a certain degree,

Archives 2.0 retain many of the same values as conventional archives. For most archivists, the emphasis is on the purpose of archives (preserving memory) while for the general public, the emphasis is on access and the location of archives (online). Monks-Leeson (2011) argues that

“…archives are often characterized within the profession in terms of their relationship to evidence and memory” whereas “for [the general public] today, archives are arguably most visible online, where they are popularly understood as a gathering place for old and valuable material” (p. 56, p. 39). Manoff (2004) argues “Archival discourse has…become a way to address

some of the thorny issues of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge production and the artificial character of disciplinary boundaries” (p. 11). Manoff suggests that the rise of archives and cross-disciplinary attention to archives are not just about storage and preservation of materials, but instead ways to make sense of how different disciplines produce, develop, and disseminate knowledge about themselves, other disciplines, and the spaces where disciplines meet.

Discussing modern archives means engaging with a variety of technological changes and issues, such as Web 2.0 resources and functions (e.g. social media, cloud computing and storage) and born-digital content (Evans, 2007; Monks-Leeson, 2011; Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi,

Shallcross, et al., 2012; Theimer, 2011). Archives 2.0 are commonly theorized as conventional archives-plus-Web 2.0: digital surrogates of conventional physical archival material offered online, sometimes with Web 2.0 usability such as commenting, saving materials into a favorites list, and so on (Manoff, 2004; Monks-Leeson, 2011; Theimer, 2011). However, Web 2.0 allows

“…users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast…to the passive viewing of content”

(“Web 2.0,” 2013). The binary presented here—user-generated content (i.e. self-directed and personal use) versus passive viewing of content (i.e. expert-directed and controlled use)— indicates that though Archives 2.0 might model some aspects of Web 2.0 such as creating a favorites list or commenting, Archives 2.0 still exist within the values and theorizations of conventional archives.18

18 If Archives 2.0 are about archives+Web 2.0, then it would mean more than placing surrogates online, and instead would be about embracing the affordances of Web 2.0, making archives more open, accessible, social, and diffuse. Huvila (2008) argues that the central qualities of online archives or technologically-enhanced archives are: decentralized curation and use; user-centricity (rather than 67

Archives 2.0 raises the questions of where archives exist, who can access and contribute to archives, and what is appropriate for contribution to archives (Theimer, 2009, 2011).

Although there is growing attention to the affordances of web-based technologies, much of the

literature in library and archival studies still tend to position archives and archival materials—

including Archives 2.0—in conventional ways (Theimer, 2009; 2011). Access and location may be

the areas most impacted by placing archival materials on the World Wide Web because being on

the Internet generally means that a wider range of people from around the world may access

the materials. This is a significant issue for archival studies because Internet-based access tends

to mean a lack of (physically) centralized, controlled access, and within the archival profession,

there is still a concern with “tightly controlled access to the files” (Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi,

Shallcross, et al., p. 15). Although a user of a digital collection may have to provide the

appropriate credentials to access records (generally a username and password), there is nothing

preventing someone from sharing their credentials so that a non-credentialed person may

access the files, nor are there many other controls for restricting how records may be used if

they are able to be saved locally on a user’s machine.

The centrality of technology in modern living has impacted how we understand what archives mean. Digital technologies such as email and social media sites are the most common and personal interactions people have with the concept and term archives. As Eichhorn (2008) claims, “…definitions of the archive continue to loosen. For a new generation of readers and writers, the archive may be known only as a site of virtual storage.”19 At this historical moment,

record-centricity); contextualization through reflexivity. However, Huvila does not use the term Archives 2.0. 19 The Society of American Archivists’ glossary acknowledges that archive is a common term and concept in computing, but implies that this understanding of archive is only loosely related to the archival profession. 68

Yuk Hui (2013) argues, “We are [all] archivists, since we have to be. We don't have choice. This decision is already made, or determined by the contemporary technological condition” (Hui,

2013). Email accounts become the virtual box of letters under the bed: the default for most email programs is to retain all communication, preserving the electronic letters between users and the world. Further, as we develop a virtual presence online, we curate personal archives of artifacts on social media sites from Facebook to Good Reads. Social media spaces and email can become personal, self-created archives that often exist long after we stop adding to or abandon those spaces.

In these technological spaces archive is often used to mean “a backup” or the process of

“stor[ing] data offline,” or “…to indicate that a file has changed since it was backed up” (Pearce-

Moses, 2005, “Archive”). Email programs, such as Gmail, allow users to “archive” emails: “It's like moving something into a filing cabinet for safekeeping, rather than putting it in the trash can” (“Archive mail,” n.d.)20. The generations raised with email may primarily associate archives with virtual cabinets of items not important enough to display but significant enough not to delete, which is a far cry from the conventional understanding of archives as centralized, physical, and restrictive spaces of unique artifacts vetted by experts, as described by Buckley

(2008) and suggested by the SAA glossary (Pearce-Moses, 2005). Although the email-based conception of archive may only be “loosely related” to archives as I (and the archival profession) have been discussing it, I must still acknowledge this popular use of archive because the myriad

20 This use of archive also lacks the sense of permanence and enduring value is the hallmark of conventional archives. 69

ways in which the term is used within the broader culture impacts how people may understand the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives as an archives.21

To return to the television show Who Do You Think You Are?, most episodes begin with a search of the website Ancestry.com. Ancenstry.com is a common type of Archives 2.0 in that the website provides digital surrogates of materials such as birth and death certificates, immigration records, and census materials held by different archives, libraries, and governmental offices. 22 Similar to conventional, physical archives, Ancestry.com has a degree of restriction: access to many materials require users to create a free account (user name and password) with the website. Though minor, this step still functions as a degree of restriction.

Further, the materials on Ancestry.com—similar to many Archives 2.0—are both centralized and decentralized: all of the records for a particular family lineage are dispersed across many different archives, libraries, and governmental offices, but become centralized through the placement of digital surrogates on the Ancestry.com website. Ancestry.com, then, functions as a virtual storage space for digital surrogates of physical records. It is an additive approach:

21 These broader, technology-based understandings of archive(s) contribute, I believe, to why OSU’s IRB determined that the DALN was no longer under their purview (as discussed in the previous chapter): in 2015, archive(s) often mean long-term, digital storage of materials that may be accessed both by the creators and others. 22 Further, in some episodes, celebrities and experts use more specialized Archives 2.0, such as websites on library and archives intranets that contain scanned copies of materials such as property sales, police records, school records, and more. Intranets are inherently restrictive. That is, in being accessible on intranets—on certain machines in the archival or library space rather than available on the world wide web—nearly erases all openness that being digital offers because use and access are centralized and restricted to specific spaces. According to the Canadian IM Forum Internet and Intranet Working Group’s “Managing Internet and Intranet Information for Long-term Access and Accountability Implementation Guide” (1999), control is the primary reason that libraries place electronic/digital materials on intranets rather than the Internet. Having materials on intranets means there is less risk with materials being misused or misunderstood because the material cannot be as easily shared or altered (“Managing Internet,” 1999). In this way, digitized materials on intranets are treated in ways similar to non-circulating library materials, such as reference books and maps (AIMS Working Group, 2012; ARL Working Group, 2009; Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al., 2012). So even technologically enhanced Archives 2.0 can be relatively restricted, with digital materials treated similarly to physical materials. 70

conventional archives and records digitized and combined with some of the affordances of Web

2.0.

Instead of using an additive approach (conventional archives + Web 2.0), Palmer (2009) and Theimer (2011) argue for a re-imagining of how we understand the relationship between technology and archives.23 They contend that technology is facilitating changes to the profession and to understand technology as simply an added layer stunts the possibilities for Archives 2.0.

Theimer (2011) claims “Archives 2.0 is an approach to archival practice that promotes openness and flexibility. It argues that archivists must be user-centered and embrace opportunities to use technology to share collections, interact with users, and improve internal efficiency” (2011, p.

60). In a similar way, Palmer (2009) claims that Archives 2.0 should be “less about the integration of Web 2.0 technologies into online finding aids, and more related to a fundamental shift in perspective, to a philosophy that privileges the user and promotes an ethos of sharing, collaboration, and openness.” The emphases on innovation, flexibility, transparency, and the role and importance of users shaping archives are reimaginings of the structures and values of archives.

Despite Theimer’s and Palmer’s calls for a more complex understanding of Archives 2.0, there is little attention to their view within archival studies scholarship and professional practices. Perhaps the term archive(s) is used widely because of its familiarity, when we should be using another word to talk about technologically-enhanced archives. According to Manoff

(2004), “Alan Liu [as a respondent to a panel on literary studies in cyberspace at 2002 MLA conference] declares that the term archive has become a metaphor for what we are not yet able to grasp about the nature of digital collections” (Manoff, 2004, p. 10). In other words, we use

23 Ancestry.com and the Ellis Island/Port of New York archives (searching available through the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation website) are examples of an additive approach. 71

the term archive to describe the accumulation of digital materials because we do not yet understand how collections and their uses function in the digital environment. However, in the

13 years since Liu’s claim, it seems as if archive is no longer used as only a metaphor for what we don’t understand. Instead, the widespread use of archive to describe digital collections has shaped and expanded what archive means and looks like. Theimer (2011) says, “…terms like…Archives 2.0 refer to new ‘versions’ of a concept” (p. 59). So Archives 2.0 is not simply a metaphor, but could be an evolution in how we think about and interact with archives. The

DALN, as a digital collection, is an example of how archives have (and could) evolved. I argue that the DALN could be an archives that facilitates the “fundamental shift in perspective” that

Palmer (2009) suggests is needed to impact archival structures and values in meaningful ways, in part because the DALN both embraces and pushes against the values and structures of conventional and Archives 2.0 (see Figure 4).

Archives 2.0*

Values Structures

Restriction/ Impersonal Expert- Openness direction

Access/Use - online, so public access and use but restricted to those who have access to a computer and knowledge on using the web

Continued Figure 4: Values of Archives 2.0

Figure 4 continued

Restriction/ Impersonal Expert- Openness direction

Contribution/ -restrictions often revolve - similar to -most Archives Accession around copyright conventional archives 2.0 are digital surrogates of -similar to conventional -descriptions provided conventional archives by experts rather than materials, so this by contributors is similar to conventional archives.

-experts determine what is worthy of preserving and describing

-descriptions provided by experts rather than by contributors Audience/ -on the web for general Location public; behind password- protected walls; or on university websites

Although popular collections such as YouTube may be used as archives by some users and groups, it is not necessarily an archives (i.e. it is not used for historical preservation or items of enduring value but rather used as a type of cloud storage). Unlike most collections considered Archives 2.0 in the archival world, one may delete contributions and remove one’s account from YouTube whereas Archives 2.0, like conventional archives, are focused on long-term preservation and do not allow items to be removed from the archives.

* Ex: Ancestry.com, QZAP: Queer ‘Zine Archive Project; Mass Observation Archive; ONE Archives; See: Eichhorn, 2008; Hui, 2013; Monks-Leeson, 2011; Theimer, 2009, 2011.

The widespread use of archive(s) to describe different types of collections signals that archivists and others can no longer rely on conventional understandings and practices and still remain relevant or reflective of the wider culture and cultural practices. Max Evans (2007)

argues that in our technological moment, “archivists must fundamentally shift the way they think about their roles and develop alternative means and methods for doing archival work”

(Evans, 2007 p. 387). Although Archives 2.0 has the potential to be a reimagining of archives, in practice the items available online tend to be surrogates that can be “linked back to their original” physical, record (Monks-Leeson, 2011, p. 56),24 rather than collections of materials assembled online or materials that are born-digital without an analog equivalent (Anderson,

Bastian, Harvey, Plum, & Samuelsson, 2011; ARL Working Group, 2009;Evans, 2007; Mayer,

2013; Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al., 2012; Theimer, 2009, 2011). Although digital surrogates online provide a different, more open way to access collections housed physically somewhere, it does not “fundamentally shift” thinking about archives or what they should/could contain (Evans, 2007, p. 387). Many Archives 2.0 populate their sites with materials from conventional archives, so conventional contribution and accession processes are nearly identical to conventional processes and values because they are simply conventional materials digitized.

Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives, asserts that archival world has been slower to accept and adopt the digital as a primary platform even as the public has embraced the move to digital, online access. In the process, the archival profession has lost or ignored its commitment to social responsibility. Prelinger (2009) claims,

The archival world lost its sense of mission while reiterating what seem to be eternal

cultural divides between access and openness, between control of records and

24 Monks-Leeson (2011) differentiates between “internet archives” or “archives created online” and “online content of archival repositories” in that internet archives tend to focus on developing a cohesive collection of materials centered on a theme, and “…they promote certain ideas and viewpoints through the marshaling and visibility of documents, photographs, and other digital surrogates” (Monks-Leeson, 2011, p. 39). However, central to both is surrogacy: the assumption is that digital items correlate to tangible items stored somewhere. 74

proliferation, and between casting archivists or archival users as central figures in archival

practice. Worries about copyright holders (whether known, unknown or suspected),

about “losing control” of collections, and about the qualification of members of the public

to see and use archival materials kept most archives from offering materials online. (2009,

p. 268)

Conventional archives’ consistent binary battles are between experts and lay people and between openness and restriction. The power dynamic of access hinges on issues of worthiness: who and what is worthy for inclusion and who is worthy of access, all of which are subjective assessments based on the sociocultural position of those in control of the archives (Cook, 2000,

2007; Corti, 2007). Over time the meaning and look of “social responsibility” has shifted due to technology and the changing nature of preservation and access, and it seems, according to

Prelinger, that the archival profession has not kept up.

Perhaps another part of the reason why archives and archivists have been slower to embrace the affordances of technology for archives stems from the relative lack of digital born materials in conventional archives. Certainly, digital-born materials are part of many collections, but digital-born materials are not a significant part of many conventional archives and most online archives originating from conventional archives. Erway (2010) claims “…there are very few instances where users [of libraries or archives] can access born-digital collections” often because the institutions do not hold such materials (p.4).25 Although working with web 2.0

25 According to Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al. in the Association of Research Libraries’ “SPEC Kit 329: Managing born-digital special collections and archival material” (2012), “library and archives profession lacks a common definition of what born-digital content is” (Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al., 2012, p. 11). Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al. suggest that born-digital content is primarily understood by research libraries as multimedia content; under the article heading “Born- digital materials collected,” they note that among the research libraries surveyed, the most common “born-digital” materials are “photographs, audio and video recordings, texts, and moving images…About a 75

materials is being discussed in the archival profession, it is not necessarily being put into practice at this point for a variety of reasons. 26 However, Evans (2007) argues that the

“…Information Age means many more records…[and] suggests to the rest of the world that all

information will be easily and quickly available,” which ultimately requires a “re-engineered

archives” (Evans, 2007, p. 387, 388). In many ways, the DALN is an example of a “re-engineered

archives” in that it is a collection of primarily digital born materials that allows anyone with the technological know-how to access and contribute to it as well as search, download, and save a

copy of records contributed to the DALN.

Though there are differences between the core values of conventional archives and

Archives 2.0 (particularly in relation to issues of access and location), conventional archives and

Archives 2.0 are more similar than not (see Figure 4 below). Incorporating technologies into

archives only does so much to impact the underlying values of the archives. Theimer (2011)

argues, “…I see nothing in the philosophy of Archives 2.0 that rejects or even challenges the

accepted tenets of archival principles” (p. 67). However, I am interested in how a “philosophy of

Archives 2.0” might challenge conventional archival principles, particularly in relation to issues

of access and use; contribution and accession; and audience and location. How might Archives third of the respondents collect websites, email, and databases” and only a handful collected any type of social media (Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al., 2012, p. 12). The libraries participating in the report concentrate on born-digital materials that require legacy technologies (such as hardware and software no longer in use), which require users to visit the library in order to access the materials on dedicated workstations. Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al. (2012) also reveal that only two-thirds of the respondents to the Association of Research Libraries’ survey offer online access to (some) born- digital materials and just under half provide in-library access on dedicated computers; less than two dozen provide portable media that can be used on computers within the library (but cannot be checked out of the library for use in other spaces). 26 For example, funding is almost always tenuous, and many institutions do not have enough funds (or personnel) to implement the preservation of more complex, digital objects; 2) technological access and knowledge are required in order to preserve and work with web 2.0 materials; 3) there is such a backlog of conventional, physical materials and data (at least 60 years, according to Greene & Meisser), and therefore adding complex digital media objects is not necessarily the most pressing concern (Evans, 2007; Greene & Meissner, 2005; also cf. Buckley, 2008). 76

2.0 facilitate a decentralization of knowledge through greater openness, emphasis on the personal, and self-direction?

YouTube might be one of the best-known public Archives 2.0—even if Prelinger (2009)

argues that YouTube (and by extension similar sites such as Flickr) is not quite an archives. He

argues, “…YouTube is not itself an archive. Preservation is neither its mission nor its practice.

But what good does it do us to insist on this point” since for the general public, YouTube is an

archives, a space to preserve and share videos (Prelinger, 2009, p. 268). He concedes that

YouTube “might as well be an archive; that in the public mind it is not simply an archive but an

ideal form of archive; and that it problematizes and threatens the canonical missions of

established…archives throughout the world” (2009, p. 268). Prelinger argues that, despite not being an archives according to archival studies’ measures, YouTube has ultimately facilitated a shift in how archives are understood, primarily based on the technological affordances of an online, public collection.

To a certain degree, YouTube is an archive—just as the collection of older blog posts on

WordPress and older private messages on Facebook are types of modern archives. Mentioning that YouTube is not quite an archives, however, is important for my purposes (and for Prelinger) because part of my goal is to trace the various conceptions of archives and their values. I contend that the DALN, as a 100% digital collection of records closely associated with the traditional institutions and positions of archives (i.e. academia) as well as non-academic communities could be understood as a bridge between conventional archives and (popular)

Archives 2.0 such as YouTube.

Though Prelinger almost grudgingly concedes that YouTube is considered an archives by the broader culture, scholars from other fields (such as digital media studies and cultural

studies) do not seem to question whether something like YouTube could be or should be considered an archives. Skinnell (2010), for example, in “Circuitry in Motion: Rhetoric(al) Moves in YouTube’s Archive” explores YouTube as an example of Archives 2.0. Skinnell’s theorizations of YouTube and Archives 2.0 reflect (to a certain degree) Palmer’s and Theimer’s discussions of

Archives 2.0 in that the emphases are on flexibility and openness. However, Skinnell is concerned mostly with popular, non-academic or non-scholarly archives, whereas Theimer and others in archival studies are more focused on archives maintained by research- and academic- focused institutions.27 Skinnell centers his discussion on YouTube and Archives 2.0 because they

are kairotic:

With the rise of digital environments in which billions of people around the

world participate, archives have taken an increasingly important role in peoples' lives.

Scores of traditional libraries and archives have begun to supplement their physical

holdings with digital collections; other archives, such as “The September 11 Digital

Archive,” are exclusively digital; and Archive.org (“The Internet Archive Wayback

Machine”) even archives older versions of websites that have changed or disappeared.

(Skinnell, 2010)

In particular, Skinnell claims that YouTube is “archetypical” of Archives 2.0 because of its

flexibility and social and democratic (i.e. open and self-directed) nature. He argues, “Whereas

archives have traditionally been limited to materials deemed useful and valuable by archivists,

YouTube’s archive accepts any content that does not specially violate the company’s policies…”

27 Certainly popular and academic Archives 2.0 are not mutually exclusive—but Archives 2.0 is a distinctly academic term not in wide use beyond the archival profession and academia. 78

which tend to be focused on issues of copyright and length.28 The main values shaping

YouTube—and the most useful aspect of YouTube—are self-direction and what Skinnell calls

“spreadability” (and what I would call openness), by which he means the ability for YouTube videos to be shared widely with anyone. Openness and self-direction are key values to YouTube as an archives: anyone can share videos with anyone else, without dealing with “authorized overseers” (Skinnell, 2010). And indeed, the DALN’s submission policies follow the openness of

YouTube; instead of copyright and length, the concerns are the connection (however loose) to literacy.

Although Skinnell calls YouTube as the archetypical Archives 2.0, I agree with Prelinger that many of the most popular Archives 2.0 that Skinnell seems concerned with (such as

YouTube and Flickr) are not necessarily archives per se. Both of these examples function more as cloud storage than as spaces of long-term preservation. Contributors can delete materials at- will, and one of the defining features of archives (as noted earlier) is permanent or long-term preservation. I would consider Skinnell’s other examples of online archives—The September 11

Digital Archive and Archive.org—as Archives 2.0 because both are focused on long-term preservation of memory and materials. Archive.org’s mission is “universal access to all knowledge”—in other words, to preserve and make accessible digital items for the long-term, particularly older versions of websites or websites that no longer exist. The long-term mindset is missing from YouTube—but present in the DALN. This is another way that the DALN exists between conventional archives and Archives 2.0 between academic understandings and personal, non-academic understandings of archives.

The DALN can be considered an Archives 2.0 in that it is a collection of nearly 100%

28 Although Skinnell (2010) specifically mentions length, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that are longer than the 10 minutes Skinnell identifies as the maximum length. 79

born-digital items that exists online. However, the DALN’s practices and purposes also push against the values and structures of Archives 2.0, many of which retain similar values and

structures of conventional archives. The DALN moves between the values and structures of

conventional archives and Archives 2.0, both embracing and resisting the binary concepts laid

out earlier in this chapter. I contend that the DALN’s queer embrace of both/and can provide another way of thinking about the possibilities for archival values and structures. Further, I contend that the DALN demonstrates what it means to have a queer value system and therefore what a queer archives that is not about queer people or queer culture might look like. In the following section, I detail what queer archives are, including the values and structures that typify queer archives.

Queer archives: a little from column a, a little from column b

Queer values are about a re-imagining of relationships, values, and knowledge. Queer archival values, then, are about re-imagining the values of archives and what a manifestation of those values might look like. Like the differences between Jenkinson and Schellenberg, the differences between queer and conventional and Archives 2.0 values are ones of emphasis. This section explores the ways in which queer archival values can challenge traditional archival values. Queer values can disrupt the relationship between archives (conventional and 2.0) and their values by embracing an alternative—both/and rather than either/or. As the previous chapter emphasized, queerness thrives in the spaces between common concepts and understandings (Harper, White & Cerullo, 1990; Renn, 2010; Warner, 1993). Jacqueline Rhodes

(2004) in “Homo orgio: The queertext manifesto” claims that to identify as queer means to refuse to accept the assumed relationship between signifier and signified, and I contend that queer archives—including the DALN—help disrupt the signifier/signified relationship of archives.

Queer archives do not exist in the pop culture imaginary in the ways that conventional archives and technologically/digitally-based or –enhanced archives do. So in order to get a sense of what queer archives might be, I turn to queer studies and archival studies rather than popular culture, and in particular, to the work of scholars who pay attention to queer archives in their

work. Queer scholars, like scholars in other fields, often look at archives in order to talk about

and explore particular things about queer studies and queerness. Much of the scholarship about

queer archives conceptualizes them as archives that contain records of LGBTQ lives and LGBTQ cultural productions, with little attention to what it might mean to conceptualize archives that are not exclusively about LGBTQ lives as queer (see Alexander & Rhodes, 2012; Archivaria #68,

2009; Cvetkovich, 2003, 2012; Halberstam, 2005; Rhodes & Alexander, 2012).

A queer approach to archives (and the world) means valuing not either/or but both/and—what Boellstorff (2010) calls surfing the binaries. According to Danbolt (2010) in

“We’re here! We’re queer?“ when queer theoretical works meet activism, there tends to be an exploration of the middle space between the material and conceptual. He argues,

The archival impulse in recent queer theoretical work seems to stand in this juncture

between the discursive and the materialist, where theoretical questions as to how the

archive structures the way we understand and write history have been fueled by

revalorizations of the material and conceptual boundaries of traditional archives.

(Danbolt, 2010, p. 95)

Queerness surfs between the different realities, binary values, and conceptions that shape archives. Understanding queer archival values is about moving between the discursive and material, between theorizations of archives and the realities of archives, between conventional

values and queer values. Queer archives and queer values exist in response to exclusionary conventional archives and values.

As detailed in the previous sections, conventional archives and Archives 2.0 can have

relatively narrow understandings of what belongs in archives, who can contribute to archives,

and how items end up in archives. Nesmith (2002) asserts that at the beginning of the 21st

century, leading archivists in the U.S. argued that the archivist’s role—that is, the expert’s role—

in mediating archives and archival records “…must increase dramatically if archiving is to adapt

to the computer age,” and ultimately, the digital age seems to encourage “a reassertion of

conventional archival roles, rather than a dramatic break from them” (2002, p. 39, p.40). This

increased involvement is an attempt to control records and archive in digital environments—

environments that resist easy control. In contrast, queer archives manifest in a wider range of

foci and configurations of archives; they are available both online and physically, in public

spaces and academic spaces, which impacts degree of access, use, audience, and location. The

DALN, with its open submission policy, focus on the personal and communities, and support

from academic institutions, is an example of how an archives might bridge the gap between

popular and academic resources.

Although the work of scholars such as Cvetkovich and Halberstam is more concerned

with queer archives as repositories of records by and about LGBTQ people, their work can still

be useful for imagining and understanding the potential for queer archives as a concept.

Cvetkovich’s (2012) essay, “Queer archival futures,” is primarily an examination of archival

exhibits produced by/about LGBTQ subjects, but she provides a useful set of questions for

thinking about queer archives. Cvetkovich (2012) asks:

…what kind of archive [do] we want: a traditional archive with paper documents and

records, or one that uses ephemera to challenge what we mean by archive? Inclusion

and assimilation into existing archives, or a separate (but equal) archive? Or do we want

an entirely different version of an archive, one that perhaps lies outside a bounded

spatial enclave? What (and where) is the queer archive? (original emphasis)

Her title is queer archival futures, and her essay and attempt to answer the above questions are useful for understanding queerness as a set of values and an aesthetic rather than only a sexual or personal identity. Cvetkovich’s questions are about re-examining what is worthy of archives,

what should count as archival material, where archives exist, and how they are accessible. She

indirectly points to some of the binary values that underlie archives as I have discussed them.

In a similar way, Halberstam calls for expanding our understandings of what archives are, to move toward understanding archives as theories of “cultural relevance.” In A queer time and place (2005), Halberstam argues

[T]he notion of an archive has to extend beyond the image of a place to collect material

or hold documents, and it has to become a floating signifier for the kind of lives implied

by the paper remnants of shows, clubs, events, and meetings. The archive is not simply

a repository; it is also a theory of cultural relevance, a construction of collective

memory, and a complex record of queer activity. (Halberstam, 2005, pp. 169–170)

Halberstam, like Cvetkovich, talks about archives produced by and about LGBTQ people, but also points to something beyond personal identity: archives are not just repositories but are complex histories of activities, ideals, values, and memories. Both Cvetkovich and Halberstam are concerned with the values of archives: how do queer archives create meaning, and what is their relationship to (conventional and 2.0) archives? It is important to note that at no point do

Cvetkovich or Halberstam specifically differentiate between online archives and conventional archives; both are simply referred to as archives. However, Halberstam says “paper remnants,” which indicates that she (in this particular instance at least) is thinking of conventional archives.

Further, although both scholars discuss values and ethics associated with queer archives, their works concentrate more explicitly on the content of archives (what is documented and preserved about LGBTQ lives and LGBTQ cultural productions) rather than the structures or processes of archives.

In many ways, Cvetkovich’s approach in “Queer archival futures” is philosophical and ontological; she focuses on the ways in which queerness manifests in archives and archival projects. She provides three tenets that queer archives often rely upon; these tenets also correspond to the binary archival values discussed throughout this chapter:

• creative understandings of subject matter and genre, including the genre of the

archive (openness);

• emotional connections and expressions (personal and self-direction); and

• a degree of visibility and invisibility (openness/restriction; self-direction/expert-

direction) (Cvetkovich, 2012).

Cvetkovich (2012) argues that queer archives and queer archival projects are marked by use of

“affective and personal investments…” which work “…to produce new and unpredictable forms

of knowledge including new understandings of what counts as an archive and hence what

counts as knowledge” (Cvetkovich, 2012). So although Cvetkovich is concerned with archives

produced or curated by LGBTQ people, the tenets she highlights revolve around the binary values that shape queer archival discourse, regardless of whether queer people are the focus of the archives or not.

The tenets Cvetkovich highlights may manifest in highly diffuse, decentralized archives

(such as archives as they are discussed by Halberstam), and/or a wider array of materials and subjects based on personal and community histories (such as the Lesbian Herstory archives).

Therefore contribution and accession may be more self-determined, personal, and multi- authored (such as GrassrootsFeminism.net); and audiences may be wider due to the greater flexibility in location, contribution, and so on (see Figure 5).

Queer Archives*

Values Structures Restriction Impersonal Expert-direction    Openness Personal Self-direction

Access/Use -accessible only -experts determine during specific times what materials to make and places; accessible to which users -use for any purpose (personal or -all materials accessible academic) to all users

-able to handle materials Contribution -anyone with -transactional records -anyone with materials /Accession materials related to (organizational related to the archives’ the archives may minutes, membership focus may contribute contribute roles, etc.) -in some cases -personal records description is done by (photo collections, experts journals, etc.)

Continued

Figure 5: Values of queer archives

Figure 5 continued

Restriction Impersonal Expert-direction    Openness Personal Self-direction

Audience/Lo -anyone with an -both general public cation interest in the subject audience and experts

-online, available to anyone anywhere -also located in with internet academic spaces

-physical, located in public, minimally restricted space or in academic or research spaces with more restrictions

Queer archives can be physical or online. Depending on the collection, one side of each binary may be emphasized more. As noted in the previous chapter, a queer value system privileges openness, the personal, and self-direction, all of which are one half of the binary values that shape the discourse around archives. Queer archival values provide an example of what Boellstorff’s (2010) calls “surfing the binaries:” although queer values are central, queer archives move between the binary values that shape archives, moving from conventional archival values to queer archival values.

* Ex:s DALN; Occupy Archive; Lesbian Herstory Archives; Grassroots Feminism.net; ComFest Archives. See: Danbolt, 2005; Halberstam, 2005; Cvetkovich, 2003, 2012

An example of an open and creative understanding of archives and subject matter is the

“transnational archives, resources and communities” site GrassrootsFeminism.net (see a screenshot of the site in Figure 6). GrassrootsFeminism can be considered a queer archives in that it preserves materials for long term access; exists wholly online, with no corresponding physical, centralized space; and many contributors and leaders for the site are part of academic communities.

Figure 6: Screenshot of GrassrootsFeminism.net’s Digital Archives. Some of the topics in the Digital Archives are visible in the dropdown menu. (Digital Archives, n.d.).

Although site is unaffiliated with any university or official archives (for example, under the

Acknowledgements and Credits heading “Funding” there is a blank space), all of the people featured in the “About this” section have advanced degrees in or related to archives and archival work, and many are currently affiliated with universities (“About this and us,” n.d.). This

suggests at least an informal connection to the academic and suggests that the archives functions as space to surf between academic and expert understandings of what archives are and what their purposes may be on one side and community and personal understandings on the other.

The content of the GrassrootsFeminism’s Digital Archives reflects the purpose of the site: “To gain insight into and to document the cultural spaces girls and young women create and the meaning they have, it is vital to look closely at their own cultural spaces - and not only at media produced for them” (“About this and us,” n.d.). The range of materials within

GrassrootsFeminism’s Digital Archives reflects the values suggested in purpose statement: archives are tied to communities and resources, so we cannot (and should not) separate these concepts or materials—archives should reflect and embrace self-directed, personal submissions of materials. For example, GrassrootsFeminism.net allows users of the site to determine whether their personal materials are appropriate for the site. Under the heading “Digital

Archives,” there are links to personal and community-based e-zines (from across Europe and

some from North America); podcasts and radio programs (such as Fem.fm, a Belarusian/Russian

podcast focused on post-Soviet countries and feminist activism); Ladyfest festival information

from around the world; popular magazines (such as Tulva, from Finland); and academic, peer-

reviewed journals such as Woman: A culture review (U.K.). These items are an open, creative

interpretation of what archives might house, based on the interests of those who use

GrassrootsFeminism.net. As Danbolt (2010) suggests, the moment of activism and archiving

provides a space to explore both the material and discursive realities surrounding a topic or

issue, and I argue this also provides a space to examine the various values and structures that

generally shape archives. Overall, GrassrootsFeminism.net exists in the space between activism

and archiving, and it uses the values of openness, the personal, and self-direction as the basis

for determining what is and should be preserved in archives preserves. For GrassrootsFeminism,

this results in archiving and displaying personal and emotional connections and knowledges.

The professional literature in archival studies generally ignores the role of emotions and emotional connections in developing and maintaining archives (Cvetkovich, 2012, 2003;

Matienzo, 2013; Sherratt, 2012).29 Sherratt (2012) asks, “Why are we so reluctant to acknowledge that archives are repositories of feeling? Is emotion meaningless because it can’t be quantified, dangerous because it can’t be controlled, or does it simply not fit with the professional discourse of evidence, authority and reliability [?]” Although emotions may be central to why materials are kept or processed in particular ways (Nesmith, 2002), it is unusual to see archivists (or librarians) make those emotional and personal connections overt.30 Nesmith

(2002) argues that in our postmodern moment, there is an acute awareness of how everything is mediated in some way, by some one or some thing. Cvetkovich (2012) claims that queer archives privilege emotional connections, and queer archives “…articulates the passions and social networks, both intimate and political…” For Cvetkovich, one of the major contributions of queer archives is the overt celebration of emotions and the personal components of archival records, providing a sense of how archives are mediated by both the emotional and the personal.

Though GrassrootsFeminism.net is not explicitly about queer people and their cultural productions (though its Digital Archives contains both), it functions as a queer archives because

29 Cvetkovich is the only one of these three scholars who explicitly ties an embrace of the emotional in archives to queerness and queer archives. 30 In many ways, I see this as similar to academic research and the personal. As I explore in Ch. 3, the personal and emotional are often the basis for academic research projects, but the personal components are often edited out of the final product, obscuring the personal and emotions ties between the scholar and her work. 89

it embraces queer values and archival structures. Another archives that could be considered a queer archives is Occupy Archive (occupyarchive.org), a digital archive of materials and stories related to the activist Occupy movements across the world. Brown & Pickerill (2009) suggest that activist movements are, to some degree, emotional movements, and different activist/activism spaces provide more or less space for “emotional and affective engagements”

that are key for sustaining activist movements (p. 24). The Occupy Archive documents and

preserves materials related to the largely non-academic activist Occupy movement,31 and at the same time, the Occupy Archive is maintained by a university (George Mason University’s Roy

Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media). In preserving personal materials including ephemera, videos, and photographs, the Occupy Archive highlights the affective and emotional connections and experiences of those involved in the movement. This meeting of activist and archivist/academic impulses provides a synergy that allows contributors and users of an (queer) archives such as Occupy Archive to surf between the binary values that shape archives overall because it does not belong to only one realm or the other.

Emotion is just one of a variety of tactics for expressing queerness within the confines of dominant structures. Cvetkovich’s final queer archival tenet—strategic visibility and invisibility— most obviously demonstrates the queer value of surfing binaries. Visibility and invisibility are types of openness (visible) and restriction (invisible)32 and tend to be central to minority

31 Schuessler (2012) notes that many academics have embraced the Occupy movement, both by becoming active members in the activism and by researching and publishing about the movement. However, the Occupy movement is not based in academic spaces and was not started by academics. 32 In most archives, museums, and some libraries, large portions of the collections held by institutions are invisible, not accessible, or restricted (sometimes not even categorized and cataloged) which means swaths of holdings can be literally and virtually invisible to the public (Davy, 2008; DeGenaro, 2007; Dewey, personal communication, 1998; Ferreira-Buckley, 2008; Schultz, 2008; Ulman, 2013b; Yakel, 2010). The invisibility of decades of uncatalogued (and therefore inaccessible) materials is often understood as a negative (but unavoidable) thing in the archival field because archival materials gain their 90

activism and survival, particularly for queers. Rhodes and Alexander (2012) claim, “Agency for queers, then, sometimes becomes possible in the dominant public sphere only to the extent to which they can position themselves rhetorically as both challenging [i.e. visibility] and maintaining [i.e. invisibility] the lifeworld structures and narratives of the dominant culture.”

Alexander and Rhodes (2012) point to the necessity for queers to surf or move between visibility and invisibility, between supporting and challenging dominant cultural values and structures, and this is true generally and specifically for archives. As explored in the previous chapter, queerness, by definition, is a challenge to dominant conventional structures and values systems, and according to Boellstorff (2010), surfing binaries involves moving between the conventional and the queer. In order to be legible and therefore able to impact conventional archival values means acknowledging that conventional values are one half of a set of binary values.

Cvetkovich’s (2012), Bly & Wooten (2012), and others note that diversity, local communities, and historical realities shape queer archives. However, “Traditional archival theory…” Terry Cook (2007) says, “…may work against diversity, overlook local community needs, and fail to appreciate the historical contingencies inherent to practice” (p. 37). For a

greatest value when used and accessed by researchers (Greene & Meissner, 2005; Schellenberg, 2003). At a basic level, for most conventional archives, the tension between visibility and invisibility is logistical32 (where and how to display the contents of archives, which can take a significant amount of space, whether physical or virtual) as well as curatorial (which items have the greatest enduring value or widest appeal or meet the requirement set by curator X or institution Y). For Archives 2.0, lack of Internet access and technological literacy can be a major reason for invisibility/restriction because if one cannot access the Internet, then one cannot access archival materials placed online. For Archives 2.0 that exist on intranets (such as collections of digital surrogates made available at library workstations), invisibility cans stem from restricted access to some libraries (cf. Nelson, Shaw, Deromedi, Shallcross, et al., 2012). Many conventional archival collections are invisible to portions of the population because they are housed in spaces that are literally or figuratively restricted (due to location, open hours, or required credentials), and there are typically limited funds for promoting collections beyond a small circle of specialists. In other words, invisibility for conventional archives and archives 2.0 are not necessarily purposeful or strategic, and invisibility is not widely valued as a positive thing.

queer archives, though, recognition by everyone is not necessary. “Queerness is often transmitted covertly” (Muñoz, 1996, p. 6), so queerness does not need to be recognized in order to operate and exist.33 A queer value system—and therefore a queer archival values system— acknowledges that there is a strategic benefit in intentional restriction and openness in many areas, unrelated to sexuality or gender identity. As audience members, observers, or outsiders, we may not understand the purpose or benefit, which may be understood only by the creator, individual, or member of the community in question. For queer-identified people, there can be a delicate balance between being recognized as queer and blending in. In some contexts, being visible as a queer can be literally dangerous, and as a result, queers have developed a variety of in-group signals that provide visibility to other queers but can be imperceptible or not understood by non-queers.34 Visibility and invisibility are crucial to these communities for

33 Because “queerness is transmitted covertly,” identifying as queer is not a prerequisite for experiencing queerness.

34 Avoiding the use of pronouns when discussing a romantic partner, for example, is a classic way for queers to avoid outing themselves to non-queers, but for other queers, the lack of pronouns often announces the speaker’s queerness. For an example of non-gendered pronoun use to avoid being outed, see the movie Chasing Amy (1997). The main character, Alyssa, begins dating a man after exclusively dating women for years. When talking about her new boyfriend, she avoids gendered pronouns, and almost immediately her lesbian friends question why she is playing the “pronoun game.” In Alyssa’s case, this is because she did not want to reveal that she was dating a man and risk being seen as a traitor to lesbians; the other women pick up on this because it is such a common tactic used in LGBTQ communities to maintain invisibility in potentially hostile climates. Name-dropping is another way to subtly signal queerness; mentioning LGBTQ bars, icons, “meccas” (such as Key West, Provincetown, or Fire Island), or noting that someone is family or a friend of Dorothy (a reference to gay icon Judy Garland’s character in The Wizard of Oz) are also ways of verbally balancing on the line between visibility and invisibility. If the other people in the conversation don’t understand the reference, the speaker is not necessarily outed, but if the speaker understands the reference, then there can be a moment of shared understanding, a degree of invisible visibility. During the 1930-1960s, working class lesbians in Buffalo, New York would sometimes tattoo small blue stars on their left wrists as a signal to other women that they were lesbians (it was more common among butch-femme communities)(Kennedy & Davis, 1993). Other examples are historical symbols such as pink and black triangles (used by Nazis to identify gay men and lesbians, respectively), green carnations (ala Oscar Wilde), labryses (weapon of the Amazons), paw prints (used in bear communities), and rainbows—although the rainbow has become the nearly universal symbol for LGBTQ communities and rights. The Hankie Code, where one puts a specific color handkerchief in one’s left or right back pocket to signal sexual proclivities, is another example of invisible visibility; although 92

safety, but also for maintaining group/community identity and bonding. I argue that this balance is a queer value and as such strategic visibility (openness) and invisibility (restriction) are central

to queer archives in general.

For an example of a queer approach to restriction and openness (manifesting as

invisibility and visibility), we can turn to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, based in Brooklyn, New

York. The archives is housed in a literal house—a brownstone in Brooklyn—and nearly every space in the house is used to display and/or store archival materials. Even the hallways feature

“lesbiana” (ephemera such as stickers, march banners, event flyers) and the bathroom features a large collection of buttons (“Lesbian Herstory Archives: Virtual Tour,” 2013). The LHA recognizes its unique position within the world of archives:

Most people think of “an archives” as a dreary, dusty and dark place filled with boxes of

papers of interest only to a small group of academic researchers and writers. Erase that

image from your mind. The Lesbian Herstory Archives is a magical place—part library,

part museum, a community gathering space… (“Lesbian Herstory Archives: Virtual

Tour,” 2013).

Calling the LHA “magical,” “library,” “museum,” and “a community gathering place,” establishes the LHA as surfing between more restricted, formal, and impersonal conceptions of archives and

anyone may see a red or checkered handkerchief in someone’s pocket, only those familiar with the practice of flagging would be able to understand the significance of the signal. Within leather and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sado-masochism) communities, a leather cuff (i.e. bracelet) or choker (i.e. collar) is often used as a visible signal that is not understood in the same way by those outside of the leather and BDSM communities.

archival materials and more open and personal understandings of what an archives is and what its purpose and audience may be.35

Although there are “collections” within the LHA, the division is according to material type (books/monographs; audio-visuals; periodicals) or genre (biographical; organizational).

Davy (2008) notes that while there may be an overarching organization to LHA, overall, much of the materials are uncategorized/undercategorized. This results in a type of restriction

(invisibility) as well as a type of openness (visibility) and self-direction: without detailed finding aids, materials are virtually invisible (restriction); at the same time, the lack of detailed categorization but full access to all materials (including those being processed or not yet processed) means that there is a large degree of openness and self-direction for those using the archives. Like Davy, one can find materials in different places in the archives and draw them together through one’s own framework and purposes—and even lead a user (such as Davy) to contemporary people and their memories of events. This latter move may be less common in more conventional configurations of archives because access to and use of records tend to be restricted. This restriction may limit how people think about the possibilities for using archives and their holdings. Because openness is so central to queerness, there is a multitude of ways to express and exercise openness (see Figure 5 on p. 84-5).

The DALN is an example of 21st century, queer archives because it embraces an oscillating path that reflects our 21st century, multiplicitous technological moment. The DALN surfs between the values, structures, and conceptions of conventional and Archives 2.0, embracing the queer middle ground that values both/and. Paying attention to the ways in

35 Feminist historian Cookie Wollner (2014) noted in a Facebook post that LHA is the only archives where she’s been offered tea while she sifted through the records—most conventional archives forbid food and drink. 94

which the DALN converges with and diverges from the variety of archives outlined in this chapter can help us better understand the DALN as a queer archives. In the following section, I turn to the DALN and provide an analysis of its values and structures, tracing the queerness of and in the DALN.

Queerest of the queer, the strangest of the strange: Tracing queerness in/of the DALN

Comer and Harker (2015) note, “…the DALN is shaped by tensions,” which “resists easy access,” and I argue that the tensions they point to are the ways in which the DALN navigates and moves between the binary values that surround archives. This movement, these tensions, are central to the DALN’s queerness—and this movement also can make it difficult to engage with. I have identified binary values that shape archives (restriction/openness;

impersonal/personal; expert-direction/self-direction), and although queer values tend to be reflected by the latter value in each binary, part of a queer value system is recognizing that an either/or approach (i.e. the standard for binaries) does not reflect reality. A queer value system understands movement—that ability to surf between extremes, to hold two opposing values simultaneously—as paramount (Boellstorff, 2010). Comparing the DALN’s structure and values to conventional archives, Archives 2.0, and queer archives reveals the ways in which the DALN relies on both sides of the binary values that shape the discourse of archives in order to create meaning.

Because it is digital and entirely online, the DALN is open and decentralized because anyone, anywhere with internet can (in theory) access and contribute to the DALN and its materials. Simultaneously, because it is digital, it is restricted and centralized—there is a single site to access all of the DALN narratives and one must have the appropriate level of technological literacy to access those narratives. The DALN is personal in that all narratives must

be first-person, personal accounts, but it is also impersonal in that DALN narrators often treat

and discuss literacy as an ahistorical, acultural phenomenon that just exists and impacts their

different experiences. The impersonal/personal binary also highlights the tension between

expert- and self-direction in that some narrators in the DALN position literacy as something impersonal that impacts individuals personally and is within the realm of experts (for example, see HoratioCraver, 2009; Jody, 2009). So both the narratives within the DALN demonstrate the tensions between binary values, and the DALN itself embodies aspects of each side of the archival binary values laid out in this chapter. At its core, the DALN is a queer archives because of its existence between conceptions and values of archives and because the values and structures both embrace and resist the values and structures of conventional and 2.0 archives.

I argue that one of the largest tensions (and a barrier to easy access) in the DALN is between visibility (openness) and invisibility (restriction). What or who is visible or invisible, allowed or barred access, and what values are invisible or visible in the DALN as a whole and within individual narratives? Unlike other archives, the tension between visibility and invisibility does not rest solely on expert, curatorial decisions or a lack of space (see Davy, 2008).36 The

openness of the structure and materials, such as the demographic information form that

contributors complete, is a central source of the restriction/openness tension in the DALN (see

Appendix A for a copy of the demographic and keyword form); contributors can choose which information to provide (or not provide) and can provide whatever terms they would like to use to identify themselves and their contribution, from demographic information to keywords. The open-ended, self-determined forms and self-archiving nature of the DALN can be a major

36 Space is still a concern, though. For example, in 2011, contributors and field researchers could not upload narratives to the DALN because it had filled the digital storage amount provided by the Ohio Digital Resource Commons.

frustration for users (especially academic and those performing research) because there is no consistency in terms or the amount of data provided with each narrative. However, this openness also highlights the tension between personal and academic (i.e. impersonal) and between self-direction and expert-direction.

For example, during a workshop on literacy narratives and the DALN at the 2010

Conference on College Composition and Communication, a workshop participant expressed frustration that every record does not have the same information available such as basic demographic information (race, ethnicity, gender, age, and so on) or a standard selection of keywords. The participant argued that without this basic information, what could be done with or said about the narrative would be greatly limited and it would make comparing narratives difficult, stunting the research possibilities of the DALN. She asked, perhaps rhetorically, how could requiring this basic information or providing a controlled list of options possibly be problematic? Her concern was really about expert-direction, accession, and use: how are records described and made available and by whom?; how can records be used and for what purposes? Researcher’s uses of the DALN—that is, academic expert’s—seem to be more important to this participant, trumping the self-direction that structures the DALN and its narratives.37

At the most basic level, the DALN defies conventional archival theories, practices, and values because the contents of the DALN are not natural accumulations of records as Jenkinson

(1937), Schellenberg (2003), Hunter (1997), and others describe archives’ contents. Hunter

(1997) claims, “Archival materials…are never explicitly created—no one in an institution says,

37 Ulman (2013b) acknowledge that the DALN’s data is “messy,” but suggest that any “cleaning up” of data such as correcting perceived errors or regularizing spelling would be problematic: “And if the data originated directly from subjects, altering their original data changes not only the usefulness but also the nature of the information.” 97

‘Today I think I’ll create some archival records.’ Archives grow organically as part of the creation of record in the normal course of an institution’s business” (p. 8). In the case of the DALN, contributors do create literacy narratives for the express purpose of being placed in the archives. Contributors are told that their narratives will be preserved for the long term (I often say, “until the end of the Internet or the State of Ohio, whichever comes first”). So at a basic level, the DALN relies on openness and a creative understanding of archives: individuals consciously create archival materials, despite Hunter’s (and others’) assertion to the contrary

(i.e. they develop records to be placed in the DALN); the focus of stories is self-determined

(within the large category of literacy); and these records are individually authored, personal stories rather than records of institutional workings. The purposefulness—the knowledge that what one is creating is intended for an archives—defies both conventional and Archives 2.0 practices. This purposefulness does align with queer understandings of archives as noted by

Cvetkovich (2012) and others, such as contributors to Make Your Own History, edited by Bly &

Wooten (2012).

However, similar to most conventional archives, the DALN is not completely in the public, non-academic realm. Research figures prominently into the history, development, and use of the DALN, which aligns it with conventional archives, such as the National Archives, and with some Archives 2.0, such as Ancestry.com. Although the DALN values openness and self- direction, there are still restrictions and expert-determined controls over contribution to the

DALN. These restrictions are dissimilar to the restrictions usually found on conventional archives, though. For example, any contribution to the DALN must be personal (first-person

story)38 and must be related to literacies in some way whereas conventional archives typically focus on whether the records are unique and useful for people other than the creator of the record. Although there is a gatekeeper/expert who vets contributions to the DALN, “worth” or

“value” is not part of the determination whereas worth and value are both major factors for a record’s inclusion in conventional archives.

In many ways, because of the DALN’s digital existence, it is similar to some Archives 2.0:

it is open, self-determined, and widely accessible. Relatively quick, digital access to artifacts and

materials has become the expectation rather than the exception, and born-digital collections

such as YouTube have become the de facto standard of access for any collection that exists

online (Prelinger, 2009). For what good is an archive that no one or only a select few can view?

The DALN is similar to (popular and queer) Archives 2.0 such as YouTube and

GrassrootsFeminism.net, in that there is no centralized physical space that corresponds to the

digital files available online. Access, contribution, audience, and use are open to anyone with an

Internet connection and knowledge of the sites (whether YouTube, GrassrootsFeminism.net, or

the DALN).

The DALN aligns closely with what Prelinger posits is the newer, digital conception of

what archives can and should be. Prelinger argues asserts that YouTube—regardless of whether

we consider it an archives or not—may facilitate “…an understanding that archival access is

inherently social…” (2009, pp. 271-2).39 I argue that the DALN also has an inherently social

38 The DALN’s guidelines and directions for submitting never state, ‘all narratives must be first-person stories,’ but the prompts and definitions of literacy narratives all center on personal memories and experiences with reading, writing, composing, language and so on. Step 1 Compose/Tell your story uses you and your to encourage the reader to think about literacy on a personal level.

39 I would include Flickr in this claim as well. Both sites allow users and creators to comment, favorite, and otherwise personalize their experiences on the sites. 99

model and operates within an understanding of archives and archival work as social. For example, DALN narratives are often contributed during social and professional events, in busy spaces; specific communities are targeted for collection events; small groups of volunteers coordinate collection events; much of the publications about or using the DALN are multi-

authored. Finally, and perhaps most queerly, one of the core concepts shaping the DALN— literacy—is socially defined and understood rather than definitively defined by the archives or it directors.

The DALN’s refusal to provide a singular definition of literacy and acceptance of a broad conceptualization of literacy goes against the academic grain. For example, the DALN narrative

“Getting called fag” by Keith Dorwick (2009), at first may not seem to be about literacy as it is generally understood; for most of the narrative Dorwick’s focus is recounting the first time he was ever called a fag and his development as a young gay man in 1970s Illinois. However, this story sets up his ultimate point: language—the words we use and identify with—is the basis for

our knowledge, the basis for what we know about ourselves and the world around us. Although

his narrative is not about reading and writing alphabetic text, it is about language, knowledge

production, and the interplay of language and worldviews, which is a broader, but still

acceptable interpretation of what a literacy narratives can be about. Another DALN example is

Adam Apple’s “From a drag king to just a king” (2010); Apple focuses on his experiences as a drag king performer and his transition as a female-to-male transgender person. In some ways

the narrative could be considered more of an autobiographical sketch tracing Apple’s

transgender identity than a personal literacy narrative. However, the core of his narrative is about language and learning—how to read gender and identity as inherently multiple and

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complex in a society that is based on binaristic notions (and language) about gender and identity. In this way, Apple’s narrative is a literacy narrative because it is about reading the body and reading the world. If the DALN restricted narratives to only those that explicitly discussed reading and writing alphabetic text, Dorwick’s and Apple’s narratives might be excluded because they are based on a more generous understanding of what literacy is and looks like. Letting the concept of “literacy narrative” be self-determined on a personal basis permits an open interpretation of the genre literacy narratives. As a story meant for an archives, this self- direction also means openness in understanding the purpose and genre of archives.

Additionally, self-directed and personal interpretation of literacy, literacy narratives, and what is appropriate for an archives impacts the social meaning of literacy and archives as the narratives circulate in spaces outside of the DALN.

In general, the DALN is open in how materials are accessioned (i.e. obtained and described) and displayed; Cvetkovich (2012) would call this unique curatorial and exhibition practices. In the DALN, all narratives are always already accessible or “on exhibit.” Most archives and repositories only have a small selection of materials exhibited or available to the public during any given time. In conventional archives and most Archives 2.0, an archivist makes curatorial decisions on what to make accessible to the public based on perceived or assumed interest in and value of the materials (Chute, 2012, personal interview; Dewey, 1998, personal communication; Ulman, 2013a). But the structure of the DALN means that all contributions are always already accessible. Further, the DALN is self-archiving (i.e. self-determined)—narrators provide as much or as little demographic and other data as they would like, using their own

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keywords or metadata,40 with minimal interference from those who maintain the archive. This

openness means that contributors to the DALN can have inventive understandings of what

literacy is, does or looks like and may have imaginative understandings of what should be or is

appropriate for an archives and the use of archival materials. Users of the DALN then decide which narratives are important, interesting, or relevant to their own purposes. Although this latter process is similar to how people use other archives, the difference is that all narratives submitted to the DALN are available to choose from because unlike conventional and Archives

2.0, few submissions are rejected (less than a dozen since the DALN’s founding in 2008) and none are rejected because they are not interesting enough or unique enough (Ulman, 2012, personal interview).

Along the same lines, some of the scholarship produced about the DALN demonstrates open, self-directed curatorial and publishing practices that the DALN may encourage through its digital existence. 41 For example, each exhibit that is part of the collection Stories that speak to

us (2013), edited by Ulman, DeWitt, & Selfe, provides video and/or audio clips of the narratives

being analyzed, and in most cases, links to the full narratives are provided. Most scholarship that

analyzes or uses personal literacy narratives only provides excerpts of the narratives used;

readers rarely have access to the full narratives (see Selfe & Hawisher, 2004; Sohn, 2006). As

Ulman (2013a) notes, “Unlike previous projects that collected literacy narratives primarily to

conduct and publish research on the narratives—the original records of which remain in

40 Alana Kumbier, tweeting ideas from an Association of College & Research Libraries 2015 presentation by Missy Roser, Sara Smith, Dustin McNutt, and Mike Kelly from Amherst College: “@amherstlibrary: metadata can get under-represented groups into digital archival record Students suggested terminology to help. #acrl2015.” 41 The publications and pedagogical uses of the DALN, of course, do not (and cannot) reflect the “original collection in its entirety” (Corti, 2004), but selections of items from any collection will always be partial.

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scholars’ files,” the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives puts the literacy narratives into the public–and therefore widely accessible–domain. Access to complete narratives allows a degree of openness and transparency of access that is relatively uncommon for academic work. Readers do not have to rely on the expert scholar’s interpretation; readers can view the original narratives and determine for themselves the value and meanings of those narratives. Further, because the DALN is open access, the expert author does not even need to provide access to the complete narratives; if readers have the name of the narrator or narrative, then they may find the narratives in the DALN on their own, without assistance from experts and/or scholars.

Stories that speak to us (2013) is an example of how the DALN, as a digital research resource, can be exhibited in innovative ways and the collection reflects the queer values of

DALN. However, Stories that speak to us (2013) and other scholarship involving the DALN also reveals the restricted nature of the DALN and its narratives. If one does not have the social and cultural capital of the educated class—if one has not be exposed to the terminologies and complex language structures often used in academic writing—then analyses and academic uses of the DALN may be inaccessible due to the language and concepts used.

Like conventional and Archives 2.0, the DALN values secondary research use of the archives, but research and others’ use of the narratives do not trump the self-direction of the narrators. The directors and (most of) the network of DALN field researchers and facilitators recognize that because the DALN is self-archiving and anyone can contribute to the archive, it is up to those contributors to determine what information they want to reveal. Self-direction is more important than what researchers might be able to do with a record or narrative. The mission of the DALN is not to impose researcher’s (often academic, expert) views on the narratives but to give the control to the narrators themselves.

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Self-direction contributes to visibility and invisibility because contributors can make their narratives more or less accessible to others. Over and over, Ulman (2012, 2013a) emphasizes this point: in order for the DALN to be successful (i.e., contributors and users from a range of backgrounds), the process for contributing must be as simple and straightforward as possible, and this places emphasis on the contributors: what terms and which stories will make sense for their participation in the project? As a result of this self-direction, some narratives are virtually hidden because they do not have much or any searchable data such as keywords and demographic information. For example, at the 2010 TransOhio Transgender and Ally

Symposium, a woman recorded a narrative with explicit instructions that she did not want any information (such as demographic information, the symposium name or key words) other than her name attached to her narrative. This means that unless one knows the contributor’s name or the date on which she contributed her narrative, the narrative is practically impossible to find. A user would have to know beforehand that the narrative exists in order to do this type of search. However, even if so-called hidden narratives in the DALN are difficult to find, they are not completely impossible to find, and a queer value system recognizes that the play between visibility and invisibility can be important for survival, community, and knowledge production, even if these are not visible or understood by viewers or users.

As noted earlier, Cvetkovich (2012) argues that emotions are a central value of queer archives, and literacy narratives, by their very nature, tend to focus on the social networks and the often-emotional connections we have to learning and language. It would be difficult— perhaps impossible—for the DALN to escape from emotions and personal connections because the DALN rests on personal stories. Not only are the stories submitted to the DALN emotionally- and personally-laden, but field researchers for the DALN also often target communities, groups,

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and events that they are personally and/or emotionally connected with. This connection is reflective of individuals’ “affective and personal investments” (Cvetkovich, 2012). The title of

Ulman, DeWitt, and Selfe’s (2013) collection about the DALN—Stories that speak to us— encapsulates the emotional and personal nature of the collection and the DALN as a whole.

When something “speaks” to us, we are using a metaphor to explain the emotional and personal connection we develop toward something (such as a personal literacy narrative). These personal, emotional connections are central to all aspects of the DALN and can impact why certain narratives end up in the DALN, both in terms of the communities that are targeted for collection efforts and the stories that are told.

My own efforts to solicit narratives from LGBT, queer, and feminist communities have been based on my desire to use what Cvetkovich calls “affective and personal investments to queer the archive and to produce new and unpredictable forms of knowledge…” (Cvetkovich,

2012). As a self-identified feminist queer, my reasons for seeking out members of these communities are partially based on my personal and emotional commitments to increasing visibility and disseminating knowledge about and from these communities. I believe that the

LGBTQ and feminist communities have unique perspectives and understandings of the world, and I believe that encouraging the contribution of personal literacy stories from these communities can provide evidence of “new and unpredictable forms” of literacy and ways of understanding, viewing, and using literacy. In the process, narratives from these communities then impact the constitution of the DALN and the messages and meanings of literacy that the

DALN can provide to those who use it and contribute to it.

Another example of using personal and emotional connections to grow the DALN are the collection efforts made by Dr. Melanie Yergeau. From 2008-2011, Yergeau was a field

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researcher for the DALN. From the beginning, she sought narrative contributions from those on the autism spectrum but had a hard time identifying contributors. As a result, the first narratives

she helped facilitate were simply colleagues in her academic department. Once she became

more involved in the Columbus, Ohio disability community, she was able to encourage those on

the autism spectrum to contribute narratives. Yergeau claims that she soon began to better understand the ways in which personal literacy narratives from autistic people could provide alternative narratives—and therefore alternative knowledges—of literacy, disability, and autism.

She says,

What had previously only existed for me as a virtual community [of autistic people] was

now a f2f community, and the people I was befriending and working with had such

powerful literacy stories. (And they weren't stories about overcoming disability, which is

what most pop[ular] narratives about autism and literacy tend to be. These were stories

were about the politics of access and neurological difference.) (personal

communication, 2013)

The power of these personal, emotional stories influenced the focus of Yergeau’s research, including her dissertation—Disabling Composition: Toward a 21st-Century, Synaesthetic Theory of Writing. Becoming more active in the disability community in Columbus, Ohio while working with the DALN and the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy program provided Yergeau with “a metalanguage, a way in which to think about how I think and how my body operates in the world.” She was able to access the personal stories more easily, both in terms of finding individuals willing to share their stories and in terms of being able to articulate her own literacy experiences as a neuro-divergent person. Yergeau surfs between the binaries that shape archives in general and the DALN in particular. Because of her personal connection to the

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community as a member, others trusted her with their personal and emotional stories, and because she gained expertise in the academic language and nuances surrounding literacy and archival research, she became more attuned to not only her own experiences but to the experiences of others. She moves between the personal and impersonal academic, between expertise and expert-direction (such as academic research) and self-direction (identifying

participants and communities based on personal connections and investments).

The personal, self-directed, and social nature of literacy means that the affective is

always present, whether it manifests verbally or physically, or in the narrator or in the viewer.

The narrative “Literacy and grief” from Katherine DeLuca (2009) and “Learning to read and write” from Rhonda Schlatter (2009) both illustrate the personal and emotional nature of the

DALN. In the former, DeLuca fights tears as she recounts the role that literacy and reading has played in her family, particularly during her brother’s funeral. DeLuca’s title includes the word

“grief” which we tend to associate with crying and strong emotions, but in Schlatter’s narrative, her crying is less expected because there are no clear cues from the title or keywords about the

emotional nature of the narrative. Schlatter cries during her narrative because telling her story about learning to read from her brother brings up a range of emotions from the past and present; for this narrator, her emotions regarding her brother are now tied to her emotions about literacy. “Archives are our memories,” Schwartz and Cook (2002) argue (p. 18), and memories are often about emotional connections and triggers. The DALN’s structure and values provides a space for contributors to explore and display those memories and emotions, and in the process, I argue that these emotional stories shape the DALN into a more personal, open, and queer archives.

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Schwartz and Cook (2002) argue, “Archives validate our experiences, our perceptions,

our narratives, our stories.…Users of archives (historians and others) and shapers of archives

(records creators, records managers, and archivists) add layers of meaning, layers which become

naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned” (p. 18). When an archives—such as the DALN—

allows the general public or everyday users to shape the content and reach of archives through

their contributions, I argue it can disrupt the “naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned”

values and structures that shape archives. The layers of meaning created by contributions, publications, and other uses of the DALN and its narratives are not necessarily “naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned” because of the multiplicity and contradictory experiences and knowledges that exist side-by-side in the DALN.42 The DALN, then, exists as a queer archives that allows users and contributors to move between the binary values (and structures) of conventional archives, Archives 2.0, and queer archives, demonstrating the artificiality of the

“naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned” archival practices established by the archival profession and popular culture depictions. For academic users outside of archival studies, as the following chapters examine, the DALN provides the space to question and push against conventional expectations and values of archives, research, pedagogy, and practice.

Concluding: Peering beneath the cracked veneer

In this chapter I have identified the underlying values of the archival profession in order to understand the values that shape archives, their structures, and their practices, from conventional and Archives 2.0 to queer archives. Further, I have provided an overview of what archives with queer values might entail, with particular attention to the DALN. Openness, the

42 Certainly, as Bryson (2013) points out, the literacy myth is dominant within the DALN, but the prominence of the myth of progress within the DALN is not the result of or due to the DALN itself but due to the pervasiveness of the myth within popular culture and the social order. 108

personal, self-direction and movement between these values and their binary opposites are all central to the DALN’s structure, function, and possibilities. Each of these binary values provides the space for the DALN to be used and understood by different audiences for different purposes. Even though the Society of American Archivists emphasize the importance of wide access to archives, the material realities of most conventional archives (and some Archives 2.0) makes access difficult for non-experts or people who are not “bona fide researchers,” as the

Mass Observation Project’s website emphasizes. My goal in this chapter has been to demonstrate how the DALN may provide a different way for understanding what archives are and can be through its undulation between different binary values that shape archives as a whole.

The DALN provides an example of how composition might be able to walk the line between academic and personal, using values from both in order to open and queer the classroom in productive ways. The subsequent chapters address the following questions: 1) How have composition teacher-scholars positioned/used the personal, literacy narratives, and archives within composition scholarship, and how might they use the DALN to push against these approaches/understandings of archives and personal narratives in classrooms?; 2) Does the queer nature of the DALN shape or manifest itself in teachers’ perceptions of the DALN and how teachers use and discuss the DALN in their classrooms? If so, how and why, and if not, why?

The goal is to better understand the intervention that the DALN could make and has made in composition studies, to peer beneath the cracked veneer of archives and the personal in composition studies to see the DALN, the queerest of the queer.

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Chapter 3 Academically personal, personally academic: Personal storytelling, archives, & composition studies

...small stories in so-called hidden places matter... And one of the reasons they matter, I think, is because they implicate and they complicate what we generally think is the larger story in this country, which is the story of people who do have political and economic power. Katherine Boo, 2012, as quoted in Neary (2012)

The archive, after all, is clearly just such a “collective production” if not of truth, certainly of particular kinds of knowledge and truth claims. Blouin & Rosenberg (2011)

Archival research is a special case of the general messiness of life. Lawrence Stone, as cited in Blouin & Rosenberg (2011)

The previous chapter focused on situating the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives within the larger context of archives and archival studies as a way to establish the DALN’s values and position as a queer archive. In this chapter I explore how archives and personal literacy narratives have been traditionally positioned and explored within composition studies scholarship. Turning to composition studies scholarship allows me to establish the ways in which composition teacher-scholars may use the DALN to push against and queer conventional approaches to and use of archives and personal narratives within composition studies.

In the 21st century everyone seems to love storytelling and archives, from academics to business leaders to the average citizen (Alterio & McDrury, 2003; Barrett, 2006; Christiansen,

2011; Denning, 2001, 2004; Holt, 2012; Longhurst, 2008; Rives, 2006; StoryCorps, n.d.; TED, n.d.). 109

Personal storytelling provides an outlet for voicing personal experiences and knowledge, and

archives, as Blouin and Rosenberg (2011) assert in the epigraph, are collectively produced to

reflect specific claims to knowledge and truth. The overarching questions for this chapter are:

• How have composition teacher-scholars positioned and framed the personal,1

personal literacy narratives, and archives within composition scholarship?

• How might composition teacher-scholars use the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives as a composition resource to push against conventional approaches

to and understandings of archives and personal narratives?

My purpose for this chapter2 is to examine scholarship in composition studies in order to

demonstrate the ways in which the DALN not only fits into the conversations (and conventions)

already happening in composition studies about personal narratives and archives but also the

ways in which the DALN may be used by teacher-scholars to push against those conversations

(and conventions). Queering these conversations means opening up the possibilities for literacy narratives, archival research, and composition classrooms, both expanding established knowledge and creating new knowledge.

As established in the previous chapters, the DALN is a queer archives partially because it is made up of thousands of non-experts’ personal literacy narratives, all of which are self- directed and contain thousands of small stories both related and not related to the larger literacy story being told by narrators and the grand narratives3 of literacy. The grand narratives continue partly because they smooth over the nuances of individual and community experiences.

1 I am defining the personal as relating to first-person, subjective experiences and knowledges developed from these experiences. 2 The chapter following this one centers on how teachers have used the DALN in classroom and the pedagogical possibilities for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.

3 The concept of “grand narratives” comes from Lyotard (1979). 110

nuances of these small stories could challenge larger cultural narratives about literacy, education, and learning. Small stories, according to narrative theorist Georgakopoulou (2006), is

an “umbrella-term that covers a gamut of under-represented narrative activities, such as tellings of ongoing events, future of hypothetical events, shared (known) events, but also allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell” (p. 123). Though Georgakopoulou claims that small stories are about recent or current events or near future events, I assert that small stories can also be about the recent (or distant) past. 4 Small stories are not just “under-represented

narrative activities,” as Georgakopoulou claims; small stories are the stories from the under-

represented, as the epigraph from Boo notes, and these small stories may complicate and

challenge the large stories in our society. As I explore throughout this chapter, personal literacy

narratives have been a part of composition studies for decades, but the small stories that shape

personal literacy narratives are often subsumed by attention to the big picture, to the larger

cultural narratives—and the researcher’s agenda. Because the DALN functions as both an academic and non-academic archives of personal (small) stories, it provides teachers and students with new possibilities for research and engagement. I argue that the DALN’s queer values (openness, personal, self-direction) and structure, when combined with its explicit focus on small stories (stories about literacy based in personal experiences) may allow teacher- scholars and students to use the DALN to create more open understandings of composition scholarship and classrooms, and in the process, queer composition studies, expanding the boundaries of classrooms and research.

4 Narratives about the recent and distant past can also contain “allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell.” A couple illustrations from the DALN: Phil Martin (2012), during his narrative, directly says that “that’s a story for another time,” indicating that the topic at hand has more stories he could tell, but he is not revealing those stories now, perhaps because they might function as a non-sequitur to the larger narrative he is trying to tell. Kate Bornstein, in hir 2009 DALN narrative, hints toward stories ze is not/is refusing to tell when asked about her memories regarding hir childhood experiences. 111

Storytelling and archives: Making knowledge come alive

Storytelling has become a popular mode of communication and cultural commentary,

but defining storytelling is not quite straightforward. Similar to the term archives, defining

storytelling is complex; as the National Storytelling Network (NSN) notes, “…the word

‘storytelling’ is often used in many ways” because “…story is essential to so many art forms”

(What is Storytelling?, n.d.). Dudley (1997) from Australian Storytelling says “Writing a definition

[of storytelling] is like pulling the wings off a butterfly to see how it flies.” The NSN defines

storytelling as using vocalization,5 words, and movement (such as gestures or lack of gestures)

to convey a story, and storytelling always involves “interaction” between the speaker and

audience (What is Storytelling?, n.d.). However, because “Storytelling does not create an

imaginary barrier between the speaker and the listener” (What is Storytelling?, n.d.), storytelling

also encapsulates those instances when the audience might not be present during the telling, such as digital storytelling and the storytelling that happens in the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives. The Media, Activism and Participatory Politics Project (MAPP) “…define[s] storytelling as a shared activity in which individuals and communities contribute to the telling, retelling, and remixing of narratives through various media channels.” MAPP’s definition reflects the digital and social nature of storytelling as it happens in the DALN because the definition emphasizes the remixing of narratives and the use of different media, both of which are components to the DALN and how teacher-scholars and students deploy it. Literacy narratives are, in many ways, a personal remixing of the grand narratives of literacy as these grand

5 Dudley (1997) argues that many discussions and definitions of storytelling are focused on oral storytelling, and the definition provided by the National Storytelling Network is predicated on the oral sharing of stories. The National Storytelling Network’s use of “vocalization” as a defining component of storytelling is problematic as it could be seen as excluding groups who cannot speak but can be storytellers such as those in deaf and hard-of-hearing community or those who are mute. The use of “vocalization” also demonstrates that the NSN is concerned with oral storytelling rather than written. 112

narratives provide the context (explicitly and implicitly) for each personal literacy narrative.

Personal storytelling, as I am using the concept, is the process of sharing personal experiences and events with real or imagined audiences through words (and sometimes images and sounds), sometimes (but not always) with a specific purpose such as providing information or illustrating a concept.

Overall, the usefulness of personal storytelling is multifaceted. According to Denning

(2001), storytelling is a technology that is accessible and has “wide and deep appeal” because storytelling reverses the “conventional order of things” (Denning, 2001). He says:

The conventional wisdom is that people who interact on the lowest level talk about

other people; on the next level people talk about things; and on the highest level of

interaction, they talk about ideas. The pursuit of storytelling involves setting aside this

thinking as prejudice and recognizing that storytelling is the way we learn most things

about the world. (Denning, 2001)

Though discussions of things and ideas are part of personal storytelling, personal storytelling tends to be about people, and according to “conventional wisdom” this is the lowest level of thinking, the least prestigious, and the least complex. However, Denning (and others) suggests that effective storytelling is a complex task. Denning (2001) claims that storytelling develops and

“rebuilds authenticity” in age where copies and inauthenticity are the norm; it allows people to re-connect with what they know and how they know it; and storytelling helps us understand the deeper meaning and significance of stories in shaping our lives and the world around us

(Denning, 2001). In other words, storytelling helps us address the fine gradations of experience and knowledge, and as a method of learning and communication, personal storytelling helps us

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to better understand how we know what we know and how others know what they know, and the gaps and overlaps between these knowledges.

Storytelling’s mass appeal, the almost “hard-wired” and “innate” (Denning, 2001) desire

to share one’s stories has meant that storytelling has become pop culture’s darling, from the

proliferation of TED and TEDx talks to the growth of public storytelling efforts such as Story

Corps and the It Gets Better project (It Gets Better, 2013; Rives, 2006; StoryCorps, n.d.; TED,

n.d.). These widespread, popular understandings of storytelling follow Denning’s conception of

storytelling as personal and central to understanding and connecting with ourselves and others.

In Corporate America, storytelling shows up in business strategy and self-help books and in

articles focused on the needs of employers (see Denning, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011; Forman,

2013; Holt, 2012; Longhurst, 2008; Pannapacker, 2013). Just as “The TED Commandments” of

TED talks include the directive to be personal and to “Show us the real you…[and] tell stories”

(“Inviting + preparing speakers,” n.d.), Denning, in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005),

asserts that personal storytelling is central to being an effective leader and successful in

business. In the field of education, storytelling appears in scholarship and classrooms, from K-12

and art education to information technology and medical education to sociology (Alterio &

McDrury, 2004; Barrett, 2006; Christiansen, 2011; Chung, 2007; Isbell, Sobol, Lindauer, &

Lowrance, 2004; Srivastava & Francis, 2006). Storytelling seems to fulfill a gap in these different

contexts; it allows specific knowledge and truths, especially personal knowledges, to emerge

and gain life. Denning (2001) says, “Storytelling somehow fits our turbulent times,” in part of

because storytelling provides room for diversity and difference. Storytelling can help us better

understand these “turbulent times” by providing ways of understanding the distinctions and

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similarities between different experiences. Joan Didion claims that “We tell ourselves stories in

order to live,”6 and it seems that storytelling is one way to make disciplinary and organizational

knowledge live both for those within the discipline or organization as well as for those external

to it, including unknown, future listeners and users.

In ways similar to storytelling, Manoff (2004) argues that archives have “…become a way to address some of the thorny issues of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge production and the artificial character of disciplinary boundaries” (Manoff, 2004, p. 11). Storytelling communicates knowledge while archives preserve that knowledge, and both provide spaces to grapple with our own and others’ knowledge and experiences. 7 Georgakopoulou (2006) claims that storytelling “…can enable the shift from the precious lived and told to the messier business of living and telling” (p. 129). As noted earlier, storytelling requires an audience (whether imagined or actual), so storytelling moves experiences from static memories to living, breathing entities that take on life as they are shared, providing ways for institutions, ideas, and people to live, to gain life for others.

Archives and storytelling help provide context for the “general messiness of life” as the epigraph from Stone asserts—and in the case of the DALN, archives and storytelling provide context for the messiness of literacy. The DALN, as an open access, queer archives of personal

(and often small) literacy stories, may provide teachers and students the literal and metaphorical space to dive into the mess of their own and others’ personal stories and the mess of archives for both personal and academic purposes. The DALN’s position also means that its

6 This phrase is the first line of Didion’s 1979 essay collection The White Album, as well as the title of her 2006 collection of nonfiction, which includes The White Album. 7 As noted throughout Chapter 2, archives may preserve knowledge, but that does not mean that they are passive. Archives shape knowledge by validating (i.e. preserving) some knowledge and communities and excluding other knowledges and communities. 115

narratives may provide a different understanding of what archives and storytelling are, can be, and can do for people. When items are created and submitted to the DALN, the DALN becomes part of the storytelling process, shaping what and how stories are told.

In our technological moment, storytelling and archives are intimately related in that a lot of storytelling happens digitally online and in the process the stories are preserved. For example, StoryCorps is both a storytelling and an archival organization. That is, StoryCorps collects the personal stories of individuals and preserves them so that others may access them.

Though many of the recorded stories are available online at storycorps.org/listen, all of the stories are archived by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington

D.C. Further, there are over 100 “community archives” (primarily located in public libraries) that preserve and provide access to StoryCorps stories recorded by members of that community

(StoryCorps|Archive Partners, n.d.). StoryCorps’ homepage asks, “100 years from now, what will

it mean to have recorded and preserved the voices and experiences of everyday people?”

Although this is a rhetorical question, Didion, Denning, and others provide part of the answer.

Personal stories can provide insights that are not discernable from organizational and official

records, so to record and preserve—to archive—the stories of ordinary (and not-so-ordinary)

people means to capture an essence of the sociocultural historical moment of when and where

the story takes place and is told. As Boo (2012) notes, archives generally contain the stories of

“those who have economic and political power” (Boo in Neary, 2012), so when StoryCorps, the

DALN, or any organization preserves the stories of the average person (i.e. those who do not

necessarily have socioeconomic and political power), there is a possibility to tap into alternative

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perspectives not present in the grand narratives (Lyotard, 1984)8 that traditionally dominate

archives.

Archives function not only as spaces of preservation but also as spaces for

understanding different communities, disciplines, sub-fields, knowledges, and contexts. Scholars

and disciplines from across universities not only engage with archives and their materials but also create their own archives, and outside of the university, community and non-university

organizations and individuals develop archives to record and preserve the histories of their

communities or their own personal histories9 (Blouin & Rosenberg, 2011; Cvetkovich, 2012;

Eichhorn, 2013; Fagerholt, 2009; Johnson, 2010; Head, 2010; Morris, 2006; Simon, 2002;

Stander, n.d.). Looser uses of the term archives function in a similar way. So, for example,

Halberstam’s (2005, 2011) use of archives to refer to dispersed materials connected by common

themes (such as materials about Brandon Teena or about failure), may emphasize the ways in

which loosely connected, dispersed materials may provide insight into and knowledge about

particular subjects, themes, or populations.

I argue that personal storytelling and archives—and in particular, the Digital Archive of

Literacy Narratives—may be used by teachers in the composition classroom to provide more nuanced frameworks for talking about literacy. For example, teachers may use the DALN, its narratives, and related scholarship to expose and address many of the often implicit binary values that shape the discourse surrounding archives and academic research, as discussed in the

8 The grand narratives of literacy include: literacy is ahistorical, acultural, and neutral; literacy is a panacea for social ills and inequalities, and if literacy does not alter the social ills or inequalities then it is a failing of the individual rather than evidence that literacy is not a cure-all or that the impact of literacy is more complex than the grand narrative allows. 9 For example, though zines (self-published/DIY magazines) are ephemeral, the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) focuses on preserving and disseminating queer-produced and/or queer-themed zines. Nan Johnson (2010) discusses her personal archives of materials. 117

previous chapter: restriction/openness, impersonal/personal, and expert-direction/(non- expert)self-direction. As established in Chapter 2, “Archives traditionally were founded by the state, to serve the state, as part of the state’s hierarchical structure and organizational culture”

(Cook, 2001, p. 18; cf. Jenkinson, 1937; Schellenberg, 2003). In contrast, the Digital Archive of

Literacy Narratives (and other more community-centered archives such as StoryCorps and It

Gets Better) provides an archival space for small stories—personal narratives from ordinary people that have been largely ignored in many other archives.10 Turning to personal storytelling and queer archives—particularly in classroom contexts—is one way to direct attention to the little stories, or the contextualized knowledges not always accounted for in the grand narratives found in many archives.

Innumerable types of stories are shared through storytelling, and literacy narratives are one type of story commonly used to provide personal, cultural, and critical commentary about literacy, education, and learning. Although all literacy narratives are a type of story, I am most interested in personal literacy narratives. Throughout this chapter I will refer to personal literacy narratives rather than just literacy narratives because I want to distinguish the stories told by individuals and groups of individuals from the larger literacy narratives of cultures, communities, and disciplines.11 The latter tend to be narratives of literacy (Daniell, 1999), and these narratives

of literacy are (generally) Lyotard’s grand narratives: they are composed of institutional and

ideological knowledge (in this case, knowledge and beliefs about literacy) that legitimate certain

10 Certainly many archives feature personal materials and narratives, but the DALN is different in that contributors compose their stories specifically for an archives, for preservation. Many personal materials in archives other than the DALN were never meant to be preserved for the public (such as personal diaries) or were only meant for a small audience (such as personal communications) (cf. Daniels, 1984). 11 I am using “communities” to mean larger, multifaceted groups of people connected in some way, such as race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender expression, politics, values, discipline, and so on. This is different than “groups of individuals,” which is a subset of communities that do not contain or represent their communities. 118

stories or knowledge over others. Personal literacy narratives, however, tend to be little narratives, or what Katherine Boo calls “small stories in hidden places”—which means the claims

and stories are contextualized within specific experiences that may not match the larger cultural

narratives about the same issue (Alexander, 2011; Daniell, 1999; cf. Georgakopoulou, 2005;

Lyotard, 1984). For example, the personal literacy narrative from HoratioCraver (2009) discusses the narrator’s struggles with education and learning disabilities; though she struggles to obtain a passing grade in her community college composition courses, she still sees herself as a writer and a literate success based on her extracurricular experiences writing and publicly sharing her fan fiction.

Personal literacy narratives have become common components in composition studies because they provide an insight into the social realities of literacy—literacy practices and values, of both individuals and communities as well as larger cultural literacy narratives. Williams

(2003/2004) notes that teachers use literacy narratives to “uncover cultural constructions of literacy…to foster multicultural understanding…to complicate students’ [and teachers’] definitions of literacy…[and] also offer [teachers] insights about potential student resistance” to pedagogical choices and understandings of literacy (p. 342). Personal literacy narratives allow students, teachers, and researchers to explore what could be considered the niches or nuances of literacy experiences and knowledge. Attention to personal literacy narratives may allow teachers to focus on the smaller, less dominant stories that may be revealed during such narratives, providing the opportunity to contribute to (and potentially expand and queer) the larger cultural narratives and foster more inclusive classrooms and research. I contend that the

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, due to its structure and values, is particularly well-suited

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for being used in this way. The following section explores the role of the personal and personal stories in composition studies scholarship.

Academic and Personal: Stories, the DALN, and composition studies

The personal is all over composition studies, both in scholarship and in the classroom.

But the personal appears in very specific ways. The love/hate relationship is reflected in the widespread use of the first-person personal in composition scholarship, prominence of first- person narratives in composition course content, and the simultaneous denial of the first- person for students (Spigelman, 2004). For example, many composition courses rely on memoirs and autobiographical writings for the content of the course (from Frederick Douglass and Harriet

Jacobs to Victor Villanueva and Mike Rose), and autobiographical essay prompts are common at the beginning of composition courses (K.P. Alexander, 2011; Fulkerson, 2005; Spigelman, 2004).

Yet the first-person personal that we find in composition course readings and in introductory assignments is eschewed once students begin to develop research projects, because for students, the personal “…is inappropriate for academic discourse” (Spigelman, 2004). Unless someone is already an expert (an established, published teacher-scholar), the first-person is often deemed unsuitable for academic writing, even in composition studies.

In order to push against traditional notions of personal narratives and archives, I argue that composition teachers may use the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives as a resource and model in their classrooms. The DALN may provide an explicit space and framework for understanding the personal and personal storytelling (such as personal literacy narratives) as parts of larger academic research projects that are common to college composition courses. So much of our work in the humanities is based on the personal, even when not explicitly so.

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Critical theory, for instance, is personal—based on the personal experiences and knowledge of individuals—but positioned, composed, and presented as something that sprung fully formed and separate from the personal of the theorist. For example, from interviews and non-academic work we know that much of Foucault’s inspirations for his theories and philosophies stemmed from his experiences in sub-cultural spaces and practices of gay men and other communities, such as bathhouses and BDSM. However, his theories do not explicitly name these spaces or practices as the inspiration for his widely read and engaged with publications. Even beyond critical theory, valued scholarly work—such as the work in feminist studies and composition— often begins with the personal and relies on the personal to narrate and shape the text, argument, and evidence (see Jarratt & Worsham, 1998; Kirsch, Maor, Massey, Nickoson-Massey,

& Sheridan, 2003). However, Spigelman (2004) and others note (and the following section explores) that relying on the personal is reserved for already established experts (such as senior scholars) or is written out of the final draft (Bishop, 2003; Bloom, 1998; Harris, 1997; Paley,

2001; Spigelman, 2004). I argue that teachers could use the DALN and scholarly work based on the DALN in the classroom to provide examples of how the personal shapes the academic and how the personal may provide a starting point for scholarly research.

Composition’s love/hate affair with the personal

Composition studies’ love/hate affair with the personal can be traced throughout the history of the discipline. Extended focus on the personal of students and attention to the role of the personal in writing tend to be associated with what is commonly called expressivist pedagogy. Expressivism rose to prominence in the 1960s, a response to the growing diversity and changing needs of college students (Reynolds, Dolmage, Bizzell, &Herzberg, 2012; Salinas,

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2010). According to Richard Fulkerson (2005), expressivism, along with critical/cultural studies and procedural rhetoric, is one of the “three alternative axiologies” central to composition studies in the 21st century (p. 655). Turning to Fulkerson and the dominant axiologies in composition studies can help us better understand how and where the DALN, as a resource for teachers and students, might make an impact in composition’s already established philosophies.

Although Fulkerson presents expressivism, critical/cultural studies and procedural rhetoric as distinct, the three axiologies are not necessarily incompatible, for the boundaries between them are permeable. For example, critical cultural studies places exploring social inequalities and societal power structures at the center of the composition classroom; in procedural rhetoric, students explore “the relationships among language, knowledge, and power in their fields”; and expressivism focuses on individual student consciousness raising and personal exploration

(Fulkerson, 2005, p. 671). Each approach desires some type of deeper understanding of one’s world and the role of power and language in that world, and to a certain degree, each is concerned with how individuals view and understand themselves in relation to power and language (see Elbow, 2002). However, Fulkerson presents only expressivism as concerned with the personal of students. Although he does not directly reject the usefulness of expressivism, he does claim that expressivist classrooms are not concerned with improving student writing

(which many might see as the purpose of composition courses) but instead the focus is with self- expression, self-exploration, and “writing as healing or therapy” (Fulkerson, 2005, p. 667).

Without directly claiming there is a preferred or superior axiology of composition, Fulkerson suggests expressivism is less important by spending significantly less time exploring it: he spends six and a half pages discussing critical cultural studies, eight pages discussing procedural rhetoric,

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and just two and half pages discussing expressivism. Indirectly, Fulkerson dismisses the worth of

personal stories for composition, and his position reflects common threads in composition

studies as a discipline: the personal, especially the personal of students, is simply not academic enough (see Bishop, 2001; Harris, 1997; Paley, 2001; Spigelman, 2004).

Expressivism is “hopelessly infected by narrow and usually pejorative connotations,” according to Peter Elbow, one of the compositionists and theorists typically associated with expressivism and embracing the personal of students in the classroom (Elbow, 2002, p. 18).

Elbow claims that “…the term ‘expressivist’ was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit” rather than by anyone commonly associated with the concept (Elbow, 2002, p. 18). As a result, it has become difficult to discuss the role of the (students’) personal in academic spaces and classrooms in meaningful and nuanced ways. Elbow argues that although there are a variety of ways for the personal to manifest in the composition classroom, for the most part, composition scholarship tends to reflect a relatively simplistic approach. As suggested by Fulkerson, personal writing is regularly positioned as something distinct from (supposedly) impersonal academic writing. Elbow, however, argues, “’Personal writing,’ as a single term, tempts one to assume a single entity corresponding to it—instead of recognizing how the personal and nonpersonal are often mixed”

(Elbow, 2002, p. 18). In composition studies, the personal is locked into a binary hierarchy that positions the personal and the academic as opposites, with the impersonal (or non-personal) academic being more highly valued.

However, it is possible to surf between the impersonal(academic)/personal binary and between the axiologies that Fulkerson presents. I argue that teachers could use the DALN to

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inspire and facilitate this movement. As Jaime Armin Mejía (2006) notes in his College

Composition and Communication response letter to Fulkerson’s essay, each of Fulkerson’s axiologies could be used in a single composition class, beginning with a personal narrative or story (the personal connection to the topic or issue at hand); exploring what others have said on the topic and writing responses to those texts; and leading to a more traditional academic research project designed by the student that explores broader conversations, connections, and concerns of the given issue. The final project, although traditional in the sense of a thoroughly researched project, begins with the student’s personal experience and thoughts on the subject matter. All the while questions about relationships between texts, arguments, and individuals remain central to each assignment.12 I agree with Mejía that a single class could rely upon each axiology, and I contend that the DALN could be the basis for these moves. For example, using the DALN as inspiration and as the potential publication venue, students may develop their own personal literacy narratives in order to understand the role of literacy, language, and power in their lives (expressivism13); they could then explore DALN narratives focused on cultures or communities similar to or different from their own as a way to better understand the role of literacy in maintaining or upsetting inequalities and socio-cultural norms (critical cultural studies); and finally, throughout the entire process, students could explore the relationships between “language, knowledge, and power” as they manifest in personal narratives in the DALN

(procedural rhetoric). Making the personal the center of a composition pedagogy is not

12 It seems like Fulkerson might question whether Mejía presents an expressivist classroom just as Fulkerson claims the classroom Spigelman (2004) describes is not really an expressivist classroom. For Fulkerson, if a course moves away from the personal of students in any way and focuses on the improvement of writing rather than simply personal empowerment then it is not an expressivist classroom. I argue that this is a very narrow—and prejudicial—view of expressivism. 13 I agree with Elbow (2002) that the term expressivism has become so tainted that using this term is not to the benefit of compositionists or teachers because it is associated with non-critical, non-academic, and therapeutic approaches to writing. 124

necessarily a “naïve” understanding or approach to teaching writing; making the personal the center14 can be a way to scaffold the intellectual work that is often the goal of composition

courses (Paley 2001), and I contend that the DALN is one way for teachers to facilitate this move.

Villanueva, in the collaborative essay “The politics of the personal,”15 argues that, “The personal cannot be ignored, even if it can be denied” (Brandt et al., 2001). This resonates with

Elbow’s point: the personal and the academic are not separate entities but are bound together in a variety of ways. Like Elbow, Villanueva suggests that the personal is devalued in the university (including in composition) partly because of hierarchical, binaristic thinking, where in the binary of the personal and the impersonal (academic), the latter is more highly valued

(Brandt et al, 2001, p. 52).16 Ultimately, as Spigelman (2004) notes, the history of the (first- person) personal in composition studies is common while simultaneously political and hierarchical. Spigelman (2004) argues that,

…the question of the personal in composition remains stunningly political. Scholars who

prize the telling of personal stories for their colleagues may emphatically oppose writing

instruction that would allow the same for students (Bloom, “Why Don’t”; Bishop,

“Suddenly” 271). From the opposite side, they may allow for personal writing instruction

14 As noted earlier, the personal is central to humanities work, but it is also central to most intellectual endeavors. Elbow (2002) notes that even within the sciences, there is an implicit understanding that personal, intuitive thinking is often the basis for scientific theories or discoveries, even if the final published product writes out the personal (p. 7; also see Medawar, 1982; Rocke, 2010). 15 The essay is a “symposium” featuring contributions from Deborah Brandt, Ellen Cushman, Anne Ruggles Gere, Anne Herrington, Richard E. Miller, Victor Villanueva, Min-Zhan Lu, and Gesa Kirsch. Like many conversations about the personal in composition, the focus is not on students but on the personal of scholars, and the degree to which the personal should be a part of scholarship. 16 Recent scholarship that uses the DALN and/or personal narratives (e.g. Scenters-Zapico, 2010; Stories that speak to us, 2013), demonstrates that the personal and academic can be used together successfully and still be considered useful scholarship that contributes to the discipline. However, these projects are composed or edited by established, senior scholars, and though they use the personal of others (heavily non-experts) rather than a first-person personal, which in some ways maintains the binaries mentioned throughout this dissertation.

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for students but claim, as Joseph Harris does, that it is inappropriate to academic

discourse, which demands more direct and focused attention to the scholarly topic

(“Person” 51-2). (p. 14)

Spigelman highlights the double standard of the personal in composition studies: teacher- scholars encourage colleagues (experts) to share and publish their personal stories and even provide the space to teach personal writing to students, but overall, composition disavows the usefulness of the first-person personal in academic spaces for non-experts or non-scholars such as students.

Regardless, the personal is still always already present in classrooms and scholarship.

Though Harris claims that the personal is inappropriate for academic writing, at the same time he argues “The key question is thus not if a writer draws on personal experience but how”

(Harris, 1997, p. 52). He recognizes that the personal is inevitable, so the issue is how to use or control the personal in academic settings. In the academic realm, he argues, there are three main expressions or “competing aspects of the personal”:

the first has to do with content, with the relaying of autobiographical information about

the person writing; the second with the position an author takes toward his or her

material; and the third with how a writer creates a sense of voice or presence through

his or her prose. (Harris, 1997, p. 48).

Although Harris, like others, suggests that he sees the value or usefulness in each of these uses of the personal in academic writing, he also seems to suggest that the final use of the personal—the personal through voice or presence of the self in prose—is superior and the most

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academic (and therefore the best) use of the personal.17 Harris asserts that “More often, though, we get too much of the author and not enough of the scene” (p. 53). I believe that Harris points to one of the main critiques of expressivism and using personal stories in composition classrooms: the assumption that attention to the personal necessarily means a lack of critical rigor and attention to broader social and cultural contexts.18 Certainly personal stories have the potential to be uncritical and focused on the personal to the exclusion of the broader context and realities (indeed this is a significant critique of the It Gets Better Project, see Puar, 2010), but that does not mean that personal stories should be removed from academic contexts because of this possibility. I argue that part of the goal and purpose of composition studies is to help students move toward a critical synthesis of their own (and others’) personal experiences and a critical examination of the larger world. Teachers may use the DALN as a resource to potentially queer composition precisely because the DALN’s structure and values provide the space for both the personal and the academic to exist and thrive side-by-side rather than in a hierarchy. Working with the DALN and related scholarship such as the edited collection Stories that speak to us (2013) could help students and teachers better understand how the personal and the (impersonal) academic might be synthesized critically.

The DALN’s requirement that stories be first-person personal stories means that quite often the social and cultural context is secondary to the personal experiences of the narrators.

17 Harris praises Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital because Braverman does not focus on or use his personal experiences as a laborer to make his argument. Harris notes that Braverman acknowledges this, and his goal for doing so was to make it easier for others to verify his claims and so that his arguments would hold more weight and not be seen as mere “’sentimental attachment’” (in Harris, 1997, p. 49). Both Braverman and Harris perpetuate the idea that an explicit discussion of and reliance on personal attachments, motivations, and examples for academic work produce arguments that are less committed, more subjective, and “merely” sentimental rather than rigorous and scholarly. At the same time, Harris (and Braverman) also emphasizes that rigorous and useful academic work often begins with the personal and indeed this is desirable—as long as it is relegated to the background of the final product. 18 Certainly this belief is what made me hesitant to embark on this dissertation journey, as discussed in the introductory chapter. 127

Some of narrators in the DALN are often “guilty” of providing of providing “too much of the author and not enough of the scene” (Harris, 1997, p. 53). Many narratives in the DALN are almost entirely focused on their own personal experiences, with little or no contextualization within larger social or cultural scenes.19 Yet Harris’ resistance to “too much of the (student) author” seems to be about more than just a myopically personal approach and instead about the shifting focus from the larger, more “important” context and scholarly concerns. In “The politics of the personal” (2001), Brandt claims that when she gives presentations about her work, audiences generally want to know more about the subjects of her research rather than Brandt’s own interpretations of their personal stories and experiences. Her response to audiences’ desire to know about the subjects of research rather than her (i.e. a scholar’s) interpretation reflects the expectations of many scholars (and teachers): “It’s not about them [the narrators of the stories]. It’s about me [the scholar]!” (Brandt et al., 2001, p. 43). For Brandt (and many other teacher-scholars), what seems more important (and is more highly valued) is what they, the experts, have to say about the narrators and their experiences.20 This sets up a binary where the

19 For example, the DALN narrative “Short Bus” from Al Smith (2010) relates how his mother refused to let his school label him as a slow or remedial learner by intervening when the school principal tried to place Al on the “short bus” to attend the special school for developmentally and intellectually delayed students. The narrative’s metadata reveals that the story took place in Arkansas, but the narrator does not discuss the larger social context of being an African-American in Arkansas in the middle of the 20th century narrative (for another example, see Singh, 2011). 20 Brandt, for example, generally does not provide access to the oral histories (personal narratives) that are the basis of her work; in fact, she purposefully extrapolates data in ways that allow them to viewed independently from the oral life histories as a whole, and as a result, the nuances and context of the narratives—the personal of the narratives—are lost for readers, making personal narratives more impersonal. However, both the expert and the narrator are important, and scholarship that relies on personal narratives is about (or should be about) both the narrators and the scholars. In some ways, this is about data display and providing readers with more information so that they can analyze narratives for themselves. In other ways, this is about the role that research subjects and narrators should have in research produced about them or with their narratives. The move to have narrators review and approve of scholarly interpretations before publication and listing narrators as co-authors are ways that scholars have attempted to disrupt this power dynamic. 128

narrators of personal narratives have less importance than the expert and her interpretation of the narratives.

As a queer archives, the DALN may be used by teachers to de-center traditional experts.

Allowing and encouraging first-person writing (such as the personal literacy narrative) as part of the learning process is not incompatible with Harris’ goal of moving students toward developing a clear personal style and voice. I argue that beginning the academic research process with the

DALN and first-person narratives and/or incorporating the DALN and personal narratives throughout the research process could help teachers demonstrate that nearly all academic work is rooted in personal experiences and positions of the authors, regardless of rank or prestige. I believe this move can demystify literacy and authority, opening the classroom to a wider range of perspectives. As noted earlier, instructors currently use autobiographical texts as part of the learning process, but the DALN contains personal stories that are relatively non-traditional.

Unlike traditionally published and polished autobiographies (such as those by Douglass,

Villanueva, or Rose), many narratives in the DALN are more raw or less polished than published narratives; DALN narratives are from relatively ordinary people; and not all DALN narratives are traditional literacy success stories. Perhaps most significant for composition studies and for classrooms is that students are able to contribute to the DALN, which provides a different understanding of who can and should exert the personal in academic and archival spaces.

Personal literacy narratives and composition studies

Although the personal in composition is complex and political, the personal literacy narrative assignment and literacy narrative texts continue to be popular in composition studies scholarship and classrooms. Personal literacy narratives (whether published and/or student-

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authored) provide both teachers and students with small narratives that can provide perspectives and knowledges about literacy that are different from the grand narratives of literacy (Comer & Harker, 2014). Comer and Harker (2015) note that personal literacy narratives became common features in composition courses, both as assignments and as readings, in the early 1990s.21 Eldred and Mortensen’s “Reading literacy narratives” (1992), for example, is noted as one of the first pieces of composition scholarship to advocate using both fiction and non-fiction literacy narratives in the composition classroom as a way to help students

“…discover insights and inspirations” about literacy (Comer & Harker, 2015). However, Eldred and Mortensen focus only on reading and analyzing published literacy narratives (i.e. exemplars) rather than students composing their own personal literacy narratives. When instructors focus on exemplars, it can more firmly establish the binary values of literacy, where the expert

(teacher and author) and his/her attendant skill over the novice (student/self) are privileged. I

argue that the DALN could be used by instructors to challenge the privileging of experts and larger cultural narratives of literacy. The DALN’s small story and non-expert focus, continual growth and evolution as well as the (mostly) unpolished nature of the DALN’s narratives may mitigate the risk of DALN becoming yet another exemplar that reifies the larger cultural narratives of literacy.

Many critiques of the exemplar approach can be found in New Literacy Studies (NLS), which argues that the autonomous view of literacy positions literacy skills as both culturally neutral and a guarantee of upward mobility and success. The autonomous view camouflages the ideological and cultural forces that impact sociocultural success (including what “success” or the

21 As noted earlier, expressivism, the axiology most closely associated with the personal in the classroom (according to Fulkerson, 2005), is generally traced to the 1960s. However, expressivism has been associated with personal writing and personal narratives and not necessarily personal literacy narratives. 130

path to success looks like), leaving in place hierarchies of power and value (Barton, 2003; Street,

1994, 2006). K.P. Alexander (2011) says, “One consequence is a view of literacy as utilitarian and

practical, a means to an end rather than something that can serve other purposes, such as

pleasure, satisfaction, self-awareness, self-expression, or learning for learning’s sake” (p.623).

For example, Scott (1997) asserts that focusing on exemplars may only work to reinforce the binary divide between student writing and narratives and writing and narratives from experts; he compares this approach to Friere’s discussion of the banking concept of education which promotes passivity in students (Scott, 1997). One way to counteract these “unintended pedagogical consequences” (Comer & Harker, 2015) is by focusing on student-composed literacy narratives. When students compose their own literacy narratives, they are being “…encouraged to think of themselves as experts on the type of literacy education they experienced” (Corkery,

2005, p. 152), and this can “…foster self-reflection and confidence” in students (Comer & Harker,

2015).22 Though Comer and Harker seem to suggest that personal literacy narratives can be pedagogical and personally useful for students, composition scholarship (including Comer &

Harker’s article) generally pays more attention to literacy narratives’ usefulness for teachers.

Indeed, Comer and Harker (2015) note that personal literacy narrative assignments tend to be popular in composition because, “literacy narratives seem to educate teachers by offering increased understanding of students’ literacy background and beliefs.” Comer and Harker’s claim reveals a generally unspoken undercurrent in composition scholarship concerned with literacy narratives: the emphasis is on what instructors gain from having students compose literacy narratives and less about the benefits students may reap from composing personal

22 For examples, see Alexander, 2009; Anokye, 1994; Bishop, 2000; DeRosa, n.d.; Kinloch, 2010; Kirtley, 2012; Scott, 1997; Soliday, 1994, 1997; Spigelman, 2004.

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literacy narratives.23 As discussed in the following section, since 1997, only 30 articles from

College Composition and Communication explicitly focus on literacy narratives24—and only two of those articles (K.P. Alexander, 2011; Branch, 1998) spend significant time exploring what students might gain from composing personal literacy narratives. It seems as if the personal literacy narrative functions as a pedagogical device for helping instructors better know their students rather than a pedagogical device that helps students develop academically. Overall, personal literacy narratives seem to be perceived as less useful than other genres for preparing students for (impersonal) academic composing expectations because personal narratives are positioned as subjective, less rigorous, and unconnected to research (cf. Carson, 2007; Gallop,

2002; Nash, 2004; Paley, 2001; Park, 2004; Spigelman, 2004).

However, I contend that the DALN and related scholarship may help instructors demonstrate the ways in which personal literacy narratives may provide foundation for more traditional academic work. Teachers could use the DALN to help students imagine an audience beyond the confines of the classroom, fellow students, and teachers, positioning both the personal as academic and literacy as more than academic. 25 I maintain that the DALN’s queer characteristics make it well-suited to helping teachers facilitate movement between the

impersonal academic and the personal, between experts and non-experts or selves, and this movement between these binary concepts demonstrates that although the binaries exist and impact classrooms, the concepts are not mutually exclusive. In order to better understand the

23 It is not unusual for academic scholarship to focus on the teacher/scholar-side of things since those creating scholarship are generally teacher/scholars. 24 In contrast, there are over 70 articles about “critical pedagogy” during this same time period. 25 Students should never be required to submit to the DALN as this goes against the open, self-directed values of the archives. Submissions should always be the result of the narrator choosing to submit to the DALN and not a requirement (or extra credit) for a course. For specific ideas and discussion about the DALN in the composition classroom, please see the next chapter. 132

ways in which DALN could be used by teachers and students to queer composition studies, the following section explores literacy narrative-focused scholarship in the leading composition journal, College Composition and Communication.

Literacy narratives in CCC

I have chosen to examine CCC because not only is it the leading journal in composition studies but also because the associated conference, Conference on College Composition and

Communication, is the “…world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition” (“Welcome,” 2014). In other words, scholarship from CCC is a significant force in shaping the knowledge and norms of composition studies as a discipline. Examining scholarship from CCC over the past 18 years26 reveals that although literacy narratives are a topic of concern, there has been little sustained attention to the pedagogical uses of personal literacy narrative assignments in the classroom. Overall, the attention to literacy narratives in CCC tends to be brief and descriptive, with few analyses of how literacy narratives function in the classroom or how personal literacy narratives might help students meet the goals of college composition, including the development of academic literacies and research.

A search of College Composition and Communication articles published since 1997 for literacy narrative and literacy narratives yields 30 hits.27 Certainly some of the other articles that use the term narrative may discuss literacy narratives, even if that specific phrasing is not used.

However, what is most important for my research is explicit discussions of literacy narratives.

For example, as noted earlier, one article, “Narratives of literacy: Connecting composition to

26 The search was performed using Literature Online through OSU Libraries; it allows one to search issues from 1997 to the present. Of the search results, two are introductions to an issue (Yancey, 2013 and 2011) and two are book reviews (Miller, 2005; Gilyard, 2005) so they are not examined here. 27 A search for narrative produces 314 hits, but I am only focusing on instances of literacy narrative because I am concerned with this particular type of narrative. 133

culture” by Daniell (1999), is concerned less with personal literacy narratives and more with

narratives of literacy: the cultural and disciplinary narratives about literacy that shape

composition and literacy rather than personal literacy narratives produced by individuals.

Though Daniell provides a clear sense of the sometimes unspoken undercurrents that impact

understandings and expectations of literacy, she does not examine the role or purpose of composing personal literacy narratives in composition classrooms. In a similar way, in more than half of the hits (18), the term literacy narrative or literacy narratives is used only as a descriptor to establish the genre of a piece of writing or assignment, or the terms appear only in the article’s citations.28

Since 1997, the authors of seven CCC articles use unpublished and/or student literacy narratives as examples or evidence for their claims (K.P. Alexander, 2011; J. Alexander, 2009;

Bowen, 2011; Downs & Wardle, 2007; Hammill, 2007; Hawisher & Selfe, 2004; Ortmeier-Hooper,

2008). Composition scholars using literacy narratives as evidence or examples is not surprising because the literacy narrative is a common assignment in college composition classrooms and therefore scholars are likely to have a lot of interaction and experience with literacy narratives

(K.P. Alexander, 2011; Comer & Harker, 2015). At the same time, the use of unpublished student narratives as evidence in the leading composition journal highlights the double standard for experts (i.e. teachers and scholars) and non-experts (i.e. students). Ritchie and Ronald (1998),

Spigelman (2004) and others note that students are often discouraged from using the personal as evidence in their writing , even as established scholars are celebrated (i.e. published) for using

28 See: Alexander & Wallace, 2009; Bernard-Donals, 2005; Cushman, 2008; Desser, 2008; Eldred, 1997; Gleason, 2000; Hesse, 2010; Hoang, 2009; Grobman, 2009; Kill, 2006; Kopelson, 2008; Launius, 2009; Reid, 2009; Selber, 2004; Williams, 2010; Parks & Pollard, 2010; Soliday, 2004; Stenberg & Whealy, 2009; Young, 2004. 134

the personal as evidence.29 Personal literacy narrative-focused articles from CCC tend to address insights about literacy in general (and students’ lives in particular) that teacher-scholars gain from examining the personal literacy narratives. To paraphrase Brandt, it’s about the scholars’ interpretations, not about the narrators of the stories or what the narrators gain or learn from composing their narratives. I am not suggesting that scholars no longer interpret or analyze personal literacy narratives in their scholarship, but I am suggesting scholars consider shifting some focus from their interpretations and what they gain as teachers to focus on non-expert

(student) interpretations and what they gain from composing and reading literacy narratives.

Teacher-scholars, in their classrooms, may turn toward personal narratives30 from non-experts and students, and I argue this may allow students to develop their own personal understandings of literacy and the role of the personal in academic spaces.

Ultimately, only three articles published in CCC since 1997 explicitly and extensively engage with personal literacy narratives in the writing classroom or make personal literacy narratives the center of the research: Hawisher and Selfe’s (2004) “Becoming literate in the information age” (with Moraski and Pearson); K.P. Alexander’s (2011) “Successes, victims, and prodigies”; and Branch’s (1998) “From the margins at the center.”31 In each of these essays, literacy and literacy narratives are at the core of their arguments, and student or unpublished personal literacy narratives are central evidence for their claims about literacy.

29 For example, Ritchie and Ronald’s participant Thelma says, “It would appear to me that I must reach this established status [tenured, published faculty, like Jane Tompkins] first before I can safely experiment” and use the personal in academic work (brackets in original, p. 236). 30 Using “raw” narratives, such as minimally mediated or edited DALN narratives, strips away expert interpretation and focus. Instructors may use the DALN to provide a queer alternative to traditional methods (such as expert-mediated/published scholarship or published and polished literacy narratives from experts) for thinking and learning about literacy. 31 Downs and Wardle (2007) engage with student writing, but their purpose is to provide a model for thinking of first-year composition as “Introduction to Writing Studies,” and literacy narratives only play a small part in the discussion of understanding and presenting writing as a specific and specialized discipline. 135

To begin, Hawisher and Selfe’s (2004) essay provides case studies of two personal technology literacy narratives and a rationale for paying attention to literacy narratives in order to understand the contexts in which people use and understand literacies. Hawisher and Selfe’s attention to the personal contexts for stories about literacy illustrates how sustained attention to personal literacy narratives can be an academic endeavor. By co-authoring with individuals who tell literacy narratives highlighted in their research, Hawisher and Selfe interrupt the binary that privileges experts over non-experts by including both/and.32 However, classroom or

classroom application of literacy narratives appears to be outside the scope of their research, so

there is not much discussion of what students might gain from studying and composing personal

literacy narratives. Attention to the “so what” for instructors is important because it helps

position personal literacy narratives as useful for composition instructors and students.

Ironically, though, Hawisher and Selfe’s focus is still on why personal literacy narratives might be

personally useful and informative for teachers and students, with scant attention to how or why

personal literacy narratives might be academically or pedagogically useful for both teacher-

scholars and students. I argue that this is where the DALN may be used to intervene: teachers could use the DALN and related scholarship to illustrate how students might surf between academic and personal expectations and uses for personal literacy narratives. As a resource, the

DALN is uniquely positioned between traditional academic and personal/community resources, providing a space to discuss when and where the academic and personal might and should inform one another.

To a certain degree, the connection between personal contexts and larger cultural (and

32 However, despite being co-authors on an academic article, the “academic” work of analysis and situating the personal stories into larger cultural contexts is not performed by the literacy narrative authors, but instead performed exclusively by the experts, Hawisher and Selfe. 136

academic) literacy narratives is the focus of K.P. Alexander’s (2011) “Successes, victims, and

prodigies: ‘Master’ and ‘Little’ Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre.” To identify

common master and little cultural narratives that shape the literacy narrative assignment genre,

K.P. Alexander explores unpublished student literacy narratives written to fulfill a college

composition course assignment. She argues that personal details and contexts can move literacy

narratives from generic stories that rehash cultural ideals to more contextualized and complex

personal literacy narratives. The literacy-as-success master narrative dominates literacy

narratives (both published and unpublished), and this master narrative tends to be abstract

rather than specifically illustrated by examples (i.e. little narratives) from the narrator’s life.33

Alexander uses “little stories” in ways similar to Georgakopoulou’s (2006) and Boo’s (2012) uses

of “small stories”: contextualized personal stories that can often push against dominant cultural

narratives.34 These sometimes-overlooked stories provide a richer and more complex understanding of the master or grand narratives that dominate conversations about literacy and education. In literacy narrative assignments, K.P. Alexander (2011) claims that the goal should

be to focus on the “little narratives.” Although Alexander claims that these little narratives tend to be supportive of the master narrative of literacy-as-success, the little narratives are concretely grounded in specific examples and instances from the narrator’s life, providing a more complex and personal understanding and experience of literacy rather than a straightforward adoption of the master narratives.

33 Alexander identifies several little narratives, including “victim,” “outsider,” and “rebel.” However, she identifies these as little stories based on published scholarship. 34 Small or little stories should not be romanticized as unproblematic or a panacea to limitations of the master or grand narratives. Little narratives can be simplistic; often have limited applicability; and they can be just as uncritical of larger power structures as the master/grand narratives are. However, I still contend that little narratives are useful for gathering a wide range of experiences and identities ignored or glossed over by the grand narratives. 137

Alexander (2011) provides “pedagogical recommendations” for instructors to help students be more critical and concrete when talking about literacy and narrating their own experiences (Alexander, 2011, p. 627). These suggestions range from having students compose their narratives in multiple modes to having explicit class discussions about master and little narratives common to the literacy narrative genre. The latter suggestion, Alexander says, could

be followed by analysis of published literacy narratives from experts (e.g. bell hooks, Frederick

Douglass, Victor Villanueva)35 to identify the master and little narratives; Alexander then suggests that students turn to their own written narratives to examine the instances of master and little narratives, with the goal of revising their own literacy narratives to emphasize the little, or contextualized, narratives (p. 628). Providing exemplar texts is a common move in education

(including composition) because they provide a model to work from. However, by focusing on

published literacy narratives from experts such as Douglass or Villanueva, students are still

reading success narratives36; these are people who may have struggled but ultimately, they write and publish their success stories. Corkery (2005) echoes this when he says, “the narrators of published literacy narratives are successful writing professionals, and novice writers may find them difficult to identify with” (Corkery, 2005, p. 9). Despite the inclusion of little narratives, the exemplar authors are still experts, and the narratives are still success stories. Unlike the highly edited and polished exemplars from experts such as Douglass or Villanueva, the DALN’s minimally edited experiences of average people may make the little narratives easier for students to see and relate to. When teachers turn to the DALN, they demonstrate that non-

35 Experts include published authors and others who are known for their writing and communication. 36 Though it is possible that some published narratives may not be success narratives, in general, having your personal narrative published is inherently a success narrative: the author’s thoughts and ideas are given legitimacy by being published, and publication is often a mark of success for writers because it means one’s writing can be read by a wide range of people. 138

expert voices are important and add to our knowledge about literacy, disrupting the expert/non-expert(self) power hierarchy.

One of K.P. Alexander’s goals is to challenge literacy-as-success because it encourages

“naïve and partial understanding of literacy and one’s relationship to it” (2011, p. 611). What I

find problematic about this position is that it discounts students’ personal experiences and understandings of literacy in their lives. Because some students do not (yet) have the academic training (or expertise) to understand the nuances of literacy and the powerful cultural narratives that impact our lives does not make students’ stories inherently naïve. In taking this view, K.P.

Alexander privileges experts and reinforces the hierarchy of expert/non-expert. Positioning the

literacy-as-success trope as necessarily naïve is also at odds with the exemplars from hooks,

Douglass, and Villanueva, all of which to a certain degree rely on literacy-as-success even while

complicating the master narratives.

Another concern highlighted by Alexander is that as a school assignment, students may

also construct literacy narratives that meet what they think are the expectations of the

classroom, especially an English classroom which values and supports literacy; the prompts

themselves may encourage telling versions of the master narrative of literacy-as-success

(Alexander, 2011; Corkery, 2005). Although literacy-as-success narratives can simplify and erase

the realities of literacy, it is the master narrative for a reason—many people believe that literacy

(whether school or community-based) has been central to their success (however they measure

it). This seems especially true for college students, who have passed numerous literacy-based

tests (both literal and metaphorical) in order to access the college classroom.

To a certain degree, K.P. Alexander is relying on what Branch (1998) calls the “traditional

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literacy narrative” of teachers: the instructor is the protagonist who is knowledgeable of the

nuances of literacy, recognizes or determines student needs, and guides students to a more

complex and meaningful understanding of literacy in their lives by providing them with the tools

for (literate) success (Branch, 1998, p. 208). In contrast, Branch’s (1998) purpose in his CCC

article “From the Margins at the Center: Literacy, Authority, and the Great Divide” is to provide

an alternative to these “traditional literacy narratives” produced by literacy teachers; Branch

argues that these common teacher-authored narratives re-inscribe the binary of expert/non- expert, with the literate and literacy positioned as autonomous, culturally-neutral saviors of the non-experts, which is demeaning to students (1998, p. 209). He says, “Resisting the binary between literacy and illiteracy requires a challenge to the traditional role of the literacy teacher, since the simple presence of that teacher acts to emphasize the split” (Branch, 1998, p. 221). His essay functions as a way for literacy gatekeepers (e.g. composition and writing instructors) to critically examine the ways in which they may inadvertently reinforce the divide between themselves and their students—the so-called knowledgeable and the ignorant, the experts and novices, the formally educated and the undereducated.37

Though Branch desires to create an alternative, more complex teacher literacy narrative, he actively resists providing a model that can be replicated by other teachers. Providing a model would only reify the position of the teacher-as-literacy-expert and the published literacy

37 Although the divide between experts (highly literate) and non-experts (illiterate or less literate) and the traditional teacher literacy narrative is not exclusive to a particular grade-level or level of student learning, there is an “…undeniable stigma attached to non-reading [or low-level reading] adults in this country” which means a greater risk of positioning the teacher as the literate savior of the ignorant (Branch, 1998, p. 221). However, I believe that Branch is more easily able to provide an alternative to the teacher-as- savior because of the unique population he serves. Although they are undereducated adult students at a community learning center who have varying literacy abilities, they are also not willing to completely buy- in to the grand narratives that literacy saves all—partly because they see a conflicting reality in their personal communities (Branch, 1998). 140

narrative “…as a pedagogical podium from which to lecture about the proper goals for education and how to achieve them” (Branch, 1998 p. 212). Instead Branch relies upon student

literacy narratives that are about not only their personal literacy experiences but also their specific experiences in the program within which Branch is teaching. This specificity provides a built-in “reality check”: Branch is not able to develop a hero complex because the students actively resist that vision of their classroom and of Branch. Students, through their narratives, simultaneously demonstrate and question their progress and the success of the program and literacy acquisition. In Branch’s classroom, the personal literacy narrative is used to better understand where literacy fails or is inadequate for students and ultimately, the personal literacy narrative assignment is used to complicate the expert-focus of both personal literacy narratives in general and the teacher literacy narrative in particular.

Branch’s location in a community classroom rather than in the university classroom provides the theoretical and literal space for students to push against those traditional narratives. The community literacy center is a queerer space for examining literacy than the college classroom because of its (and its students’) distance from conventional formal education.

The students at the literacy center may more easily question the usefulness of literacy acquisition and literacy learning because they tend to be further removed from mainstream educational literacy narratives (Branch, 1998; Daniell, 1999). Within the university classroom, this distance can be more difficult to achieve since the students at four-year schools tend to be overwhelmingly part of the majority, steeped in the grand narratives of literacy (Alexander,

2011; Daniell, 1999).38 Yet I believe that it is possible to push against literacy master narratives in traditional academic settings to develop complex, contextualized literacy narratives. In fact, I

38 Of course there are plenty of nontraditional students at four-year universities. However, even nontraditional and underrepresented students are mired in the grand narratives of education and literacy. 141

argue that it is necessary and crucial that composition teachers push against master narratives if we are to expand and open the classroom to a more diverse range of students and experiences.

Part of the opening up process is paying particular attention to what students (and others) gain from composing personal literacy narratives. In the following section, I examine ways that the

DALN may be used by teacher-scholars to disrupt the traditional power hierarchies in composition classrooms.

The DALN and personal literacy narratives in the classroom

I argue that the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives may be used in the classroom to address the concerns and pitfalls raised in my analysis of CCC articles mentioned above. Because the DALN is a queer archives and a non-traditional, open venue for publishing and sharing academic and popular knowledge, DALN narratives provide diverse understandings of what success looks like and the degree to which literacy can help bring that success. The DALN’s queer structure and values disrupt conventional binary values of not only archives but also personal literacy narratives as they have been used in composition scholarship. Teachers can use the DALN as a classroom resource to:

• provide a public space and audience outside of the classroom for students’ personal

literacy narratives and therefore position literacy as more than the property of

schools and experts;

• provide thousands of non-expert authored personal literacy narrative examples which

offer alternative or complicated views of the master narrative of literacy;

• provide alternatives to “traditional literacy narratives”—the teacher narratives that

Branch discusses as well as the cultural grand narratives discussed by K.P. Alexander

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(2011) and narratives of literacy as discussed by Daniell (1999); and

• shift attention from what teacher-scholars gain from personal literacy narratives to

what students might gain academically and personally from composing personal

literacy narratives.

Students and teachers could use the DALN to develop more complex, contextualized

understandings of not only literacy in general but also their own particular personal literacy experiences. Certainly, a teacher deploying the DALN in the classroom will not completely ameliorate the pressure and influence of the educational setting or master narratives on how students construct their narratives. However, the DALN provides a different audience, different examples, and therefore potentially provides students a different sense of what is appropriate or useful for personal literacy narratives and academic spaces.

Of course, many DALN narratives do not challenge or complicate literacy-as-success. But, there are also numerous DALN narratives that call into question the very definition and understanding of success in relation to literacy. For example, in the narrative “Reading for pleasure,” Jody (2009) says that she has loved reading since junior high school. As a punishment for poor grades, her parents took away her public “liberry card” in an attempt to force her to focus on her schoolwork instead of unassigned books—though she simply checked out more

books from the school library. She says that she loved reading in her English classes and usually

read ahead of the class. Despite her high level of reading, she says that she struggles with

writing: “But when it come to the grammar, my grades would go down. I-I can read and I can

point out things that are wrong but I cannot construct a sentence. I could not tell you a noun

from a verb.” Although her admission might seem like a kind of literacy failure, Jody presents

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herself as headed on the track to success, fulfilling the needs of her family by enrolling in community college. Jody suggests that struggling with writing is secondary because school literacy is just one more step for her to reach her goal of a new career and stable situation for her family.

DALN narratives can also help queer understandings of literacy’s power. For example, in

“Me Saved From…” by Anonymous (2009), the narrator says that she uses words and language like an anorexic or bulimic uses food: for power and control over her situation. Literacy-as-

power is central to the master narratives and narratives of literacy, but Anonymous’ comparison

to eating disorders also suggests that this cultural orientation toward literacy-as-success may be

disordered. Anonymous uses literacy to manipulate her situations, both positively and

negatively, and mastering writing and argument does not equal easy success for Anonymous.

Narratives like Jody’s and Anonymous’ provide alternatives to the traditional literacy success story. For Jody, literacy’s value is in the personal pleasure she derives from reading rather than academic or professional success; for Anonymous, literacy is power, but that power is potentially dangerous as well. The DALN’s openness means that these narratives exist side-by- side with personal literacy narratives that uphold the master narratives of literacy, such as Deqa

Mohammed’s (2009) narrative about her mother’s acquisition of English literacy; Deqa says that her family “didn’t know anything” before learning how to read and write English. Or, Julia

Nguyen’s (2013) narrative, “Knowledge is Power: A literacy narrative,” which centers entirely on school-based literacy and her family’s belief that literacy is the path to success.39 The juxtaposition of narratives in the DALN—such as Jody, Julia, Deqa, and Anonymous—can provide

39 Based on the title and format of the narrative, it appears that Nguyen’s narrative was composed for a course assignment. As K.P. Alexander (2011) notes, literacy narratives assigned in classes are often at risk of focusing on school-based success stories. 144

students and teachers with more complex, contextualized understandings of literacy that are

unmediated by experts and not easily found in other literacy narrative resources such as

published scholarship, traditionally published literacy narratives, and statistics.

The potential of the DALN lies in its queer values and queer position vis-à-vis conventional

literacy resources and archives. As a queer archives of personal stories about literacy, the

DALN’s narratives fluctuate between the binary values that define archives and the binary systems and big stories that dominate personal literacy narratives(restriction/openness, personal/impersonal, and expert(directed)/self(directed)). By simultaneously existing as an academic and a community resource, instructors may use the DALN to provide a queer model for not only literacy narratives but also archives and archival scholarship. Archives generally contain the words and experiences of those with social, cultural, and economic power, so the

DALN’s personal narratives from underrepresented and underserved populations may provide an alternative, queerer perspective of not only literacy but also the possibilities for archives.

Equally as important, instructors and students can contribute their own personal literacy narratives to the DALN, which helps the archives grow and potentially diversify.

The previous chapter focused on defining what archives and their values and structures are and situating the DALN within those values and structures, and the previous sections of this chapter turned to composition scholarship to better understand how the personal and literacy narratives have been used and discussed in the field. In the following section my purpose is to examine how composition studies’ scholarship defines and interacts with archives. This provides a disciplinary-specific understanding of archives, helping to more clearly delineate the intervention the DALN, as a resource for composition instructors and students, may make into

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the field.

Archives and/in composition studies

My overarching goal for this dissertation project is to explore how the Digital Archive of

Literacy Narratives might become a significant resource for composition studies teachers and researchers of all ranks (and with a variety of research interests both related and unrelated to literacy narratives in particular), effectively queering how composition studies understands archives, personal literacy narratives, and the role of the personal in archives and archival research. In our 21st century, technology-heavy moment, archives (and the desire to preserve histories and experiences) seem to be everywhere. Within composition studies, the “archival turn” in the field is generally traced to the May 1999 issue of College English, which was dedicated to archives and archival research (see Comer & Harker, 2015; Gaillet, 2012; Ramsey,

Sharer, L’Eplattenier, & Mastrangelo, 2010). In general, the archival turn has concentrated on preserving, reimagining, and adding to the histories of the field as well as looking to spaces outside of the field for inspiration and insight into composition, its histories, and its praxis. The

DALN, although not developed until nine years after the College English issue, could be considered part of the archival turn in the field because composition studies scholars have been a driving force in the development of the DALN.

As an archives, the DALN functions as a centralized (if virtual) space to collect, preserve, and make available personal stories related to the topic of literacy and learning. According to

Carter & Conrad (2012), “oral evidence and other relevant ‘person-based’ artifacts” are central to any work in composition and should be reflected in our archives (p. 84). They further call for

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the development of rhetoric and composition-specific archives40 that reflect the importance of

personal narratives (Conrad & Carter, 2012). I argue that the DALN may function as that kind of

archives because the narratives are “oral evidence” and “’person-based’ artifacts” (Carter &

Conrad, 2012, p. 84). Further, due to the DALN’s queer values and structure, the result may be a queerer approach to and understanding of composition, personal stories, and archives.

Archives, as they relate to research, are a focus in three relatively recent edited collections in composition: Local histories: Reading the archives of composition (2007) edited by

Donahue & Moon; Beyond the archives: Research as a lived process (2008) edited by Kirsch &

Rohan; and Working in the archives: Practical research methods for rhetoric and composition

(2010) edited by Ramsey, Sharer, L’Eplattenier, & Mastrangelo. Though the authors and editors for these collections rely upon more conventional understandings of archives and the role of archives in both composition scholarship and classrooms, the collections provide more complex views of the role and understanding of the personal, archives, and archival scholarship in composition studies. Essays in these collections are concerned primarily with archives vis-à-vis research, but they also focus on the personal and provide examples of how the personal, personal narratives, and the personal-as-evidence come into play during research generally and when using archives specifically. In some ways, these collections are a bit queer when compared to more traditional scholarly publications in that many essays provide personal metanarratives for previously published archives-focused scholarship and/or begin with personal materials and documents. Exploring the role of the personal and providing personal metanarratives for already

40 The National Archive of Composition and Rhetoric (NACR) contains nearly 4000 items and is housed at the University of New Hampshire. However, the NACR collects pedagogical and scholarly materials related to the teaching of composition and rhetoric; a majority of the collection is published books. In other words, the materials found in the NACR are not the “oral evidence” or “’person-based’ artifacts” that Carter & Conrad claim are central to composition studies but rather instructional and theoretical materials. 147

published research allow a peek behind the curtain of archival research in composition, revealing the ways in which the personal may shape archives and archival research.

I have identified three major purposes within the archives-focused composition scholarship. The following sections explore these three concerns: defining or delineating archives and archival work in composition studies; expanding composition, both its history and its future; and exploring the role of the personal in archival research.

1) Defining Archives and Archival Work in Composition Studies

As noted throughout this dissertation, defining what archives are or what their purposes are is not an easy task, but defining archives is important for understanding what is preserved, why, and to what ends. In his contribution to Beyond the archives: Research as a lived process,

DeGarno (2008) says, “Defining what constitutes two-year college archives is problematic”

(p.182), and I extend his point further: defining what constitutes an archives in general is problematic. The unspoken assumption in DeGarno’s claim is that it is easy or unproblematic to define what constitutes an archives of four-year schools or really, any archives besides those at two-year colleges. At the heart of this is definitional and metaphorical understanding: when does something become an archives or archival research, and when is it something else? Who decides what is or is not an archives, and what is the definition being used to measure whether something qualifies as an archives? And ultimately, does it even matter? I argue that it matters because archives are powerful; they provide evidence of events, perspectives, and connections.

Archives are a feedback loop of power: they preserve certain stories and materials and in that process, grant power to the knowledge and truths in the materials—and the preservation of the knowledge and truth claims justifies their power. Definitions of archives and archival work

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provide the limits of what we can imagine for archives in both for composition scholarship and classrooms.

Composition studies’ general orientation toward archives is reflected in the September

2012 “Research Methodologies” special issue of College Composition and Communication, which pays particular attention to working in and with archives. Similar to other archival scholarship in

composition and rhetoric, the September 2012 CCC special issue positions archives as collections of historical, primary resources (cf. Burton, 2005; Donahue & Moon, 2007; Kirsch & Rohan,

2008; Ramsey, Sharer, L’Eplattenier, & Mastrangelo, 2010). The journal issue provides insight into the complexities of archival work being done by rhetoric and composition scholars, but archives themselves are positioned as relatively stable and straightforward. The purpose of the special issue (like the purpose of much archival-focused composition scholarship) is not to define and explore archives qua archives but to explore how archives fit into the established research methodologies of the field. In the process, archives are indirectly defined.

In CCC special issue, Conrad & Carter (2012) contend that scholars need to consider what histories are left out of formal archives and pay closer attention to the local context within which they are researching as a way to develop stronger, more locally-responsive scholarship.41

Conrad and Carter say, “Our primary concern is future research as it supports broader community-based and disciplinary goals, especially with respect to the primary source materials collected in the course of our research at local sites” (Carter & Conrad, 2012, p. 84). Despite

Carter & Conrad’s emphasis on “community-based” goals and preserving primary sources (such as oral histories), archives are defined almost solely within the matrix of (academic) research, with little attention to archives and their uses outside of academia (which may help us better

41 Carter and Conrad do not provide a clear-cut definition of what a “formal archive” is, but we can infer that they mean: conventional archives maintained by institutions, as defined in the previous chapter. 149

understand archives’ potential). I argue that Carter & Conrad miss an opportunity to discuss, in- depth, what is archived, where, by whom, and for whose (and what kind of) use. Part of my goal in this chapter is to examine these concerns both as a way to better understand how archives are conceptualized in composition studies and to understand how the DALN does or does not fit into those establish expectations for archives. I contend that composition teacher-scholars may use the DALN to meet Carter and Conrad’s desire for greater attention to local contexts while simultaneously exploring where materials are archived, by and from whom, and for what purposes.

Gaillet (2012) asserts that “Contemporary archival researchers push the boundaries of defining what counts as an archive” (p. 29), and in the introduction to Beyond the archives,

Schultz (2008) asserts that the collection signals a shift from “…reading an archive not just as a source but also as a subject….[and] enhances our notion of what constitutes an archive” (Schultz,

2008, p. vii, p. 2). Despite these claims that composition researchers are pushing boundaries or expanding what is considered an archives, none of the collections examined here provide a direct statement of what, exactly, archives are or how traditional or conventional understandings of archives are being challenged.

For example, though Local histories and Beyond the archives provide a sense of why it is important to challenge notions about archives and archival research (primarily greater inclusion and a wider range of perspectives), there is not much attention to how or why challenging the status quo is useful or beneficial for students and scholars. The collections from Donahue &

Moon (2007), Kirsch & Rohan (2008), and Ramsey, Sharer, L’Eplattenier, & Mastrangelo (2010) do not provide direct definitions, but we can infer how the collections conceptualize archives by

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noticing the patterns across the essays: 1) archives contain primary (and sometimes secondary) materials, and 2) archives facilitate historical research (Ramsey, Sharer, L’Eplattenier, &

Mastrangelo, 2010; Salvatori, 2007; Kirsch & Rohan, 2008). In other words, these collections

(like other scholarship in composition studies) rely on conventional understandings of archives

as explored in the previous chapter (expert-vetted and –restricted spaces of physical materials), so it is not clear how these collections are pushing boundaries of archives or challenging notions of what archives are. It seems that what is challenged is the meaning or purpose of archival research rather than archives themselves.

In Beyond the archives: Research as a lived process, DeGarno seems to rely on conventional understandings of archives, when he suggests that a true archives occur when materials are housed in the same place and grouped according to topic, theme, and/or content

(p.182). At the same time, DeGarno claims that one can perform archival research without using official archives—such as his work with two-year colleges. He argues:

I have defined this work as ‘archival’ because I put the past and the present in dialectic

by means of the critique of primary texts…[these sources] constitute a historical record,

and I employ them as artifacts. To me, this is the essence of archival work. (DeGarno,

2008, pp. 182-183)

DeGarno’s essay emphasizes a common understanding of archival research, particularly as it happens in composition studies: to develop a dialog between history and the present in order to critique both and gain a better understanding of composition’s development as a discipline over time and in specific sites. DeGarno suggests that archives are broader, more complex and exist in numerous places outside of conventional archival spaces, but his essay stops short of

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critiquing or exploring how composition studies understands and uses archives and archival

materials as whole.

In the introduction to Beyond the archives, Schultz says, “...the writers [in this collection]

construct new histories…[and] present their work to readers not as fait accompli but rather as a

lived process” (p. ix). I argue that Schultz’s claim applies to all of the collections explored here:

each provides a differently nuanced view of what archival research looks like or can be through

personal explorations and stories about archives and archival research. Even though there is

little interrogation of what, exactly, constitutes an archives, there is a sense that archival

research is as varied as the researchers’ and their desires. In some ways, this is a queer view of

archival research. I argue that if teacher-scholars use the DALN, they could foster queer(er)

understandings of archival research and what is appropriate for archives and archival research in

part because DALN narratives provide a personal sense of literacy “as a lived process.”

For the most part, composition studies spends little attention to or discussion of the

genre of archives or archives as the subject of research, and instead tends to focus on archival

methodologies and archival materials. For example, in order “…to illustrate the kinds of

materials one might find in an archive,” each essay in Local histories includes an Archival Sources section rather Works Cited 42 section (Moon, 2007, p. 7). The Archival Sources sections provide a sense of what formal archives might contain, but there is little attention to the archives themselves, beyond a sense in the essays that archives are historically-focused, solitary spaces that are difficult to navigate. When using materials from a personal or family archives (such as personal mementos featured in Local histories), the focus tends to be on the personal items themselves; materials found through a formal archives that are relevant to the personal items;

42 There is a “Works Cited, Secondary Sources” section for all of the essays at the end of the book. 152

and/or the methodology for analyzing those materials. The authors in Local histories spend little time considering what it means (for composition, for archival research, for archives in general) to consider personal items (such as a box underneath a bed) an archives or to perform archival research using personal materials. I argue that this is where the DALN could come in: the DALN’s structure and values allow teachers and scholars to explicitly explore the concept of archives and what it means to use personal materials in (archival) research. I argue that composition needs to move toward this type of critique in order to impact how archives and archival research are integrated into composition studies.

2) Expanding Composition’s History and Future

To differing degrees, all three collections explored here—Local histories (2007), Beyond the archives (2008), and Working in the archives (2010)—aim to “extend, challenge, complicate, and thereby enrich the narrative [of composition as a discipline] as it has thus far developed”

(Moon, 2007, p. 3). Local histories (2007) extends and challenges composition’s known history by explicitly aligning itself against dominant history of composition, which has been myopically focused on Ivy League universities, by turning to non-elite institutions and their roles in the development of composition. In a similar move, Beyond the archives (2008) “…constructs new histories” (Schultz, 2008, p. ix) and enriches our understandings of where, when, and how composition research happens by exploring nontraditional methods and approaches to archival research in composition studies. And finally, Working in the archives (2010) complicates composition research by providing new possibilities for research foci and explicitly discussing the behind-the-scenes realities of archival research. These collections, by turning to the local

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context and thinking more broadly about what counts as archival and/or academic research, provide room to think about how we might use composition’s history to re-imagine current and future research possibilities for students and teacher-scholars.

In general, academic publications do not explicitly discuss the messy processes of research—the stops and starts, dead ends, the challenges of identifying a viable topic, and so on—unless the purpose of the publication is to specifically examine the research process. Such is the case with Working in the archives: it exposes the behind-the-scenes realities of performing archival research, including the challenges and rewards of working in and with archives. Unlike the other collections examined here, Working in the archives’ central purpose is to be a “how-to” manual for performing archival research in composition and rhetoric; it “…is a guide to the world of rhetoric and composition archives, from locating an archival source and its materials to establishing one’s own collection of archival materials” (2010, back cover). Working in the archives is more practical than theoretical; it is less a critique or analysis of archives and archival research than it is a practical guide to researching using archives. The essays focus on the history of composition studies’ and rhetoric’s uses of archives and archival materials, with sustained attention to methods and methodologies of archival research. However, Working in the archives does expand the research discussion in composition because it makes the often hidden, messy aspects of academic research explicit. For example, by providing personal narratives about the research process—small academic and personal stories—from established scholars, the collection emphasizes the ways in which the research process is both personal and potentially queer.

Along the same lines, Local histories (2007) and Beyond the archives (2008) explore the

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process of archival research in and related to composition and rhetoric, with an emphasis on retelling the dominant stories about archives and archival research in composition studies. The

major goals seem to be to challenge and expand the larger narrative about composition studies as a discipline, and in this regard the collections are successful. Each essay in Local histories concerns itself with a historical accounting of composition from a “local” or contextual perspective and begins by returning to “widely held belief that the origin of American composition as a distinguishable discipline can be traced to a small number of elite colleges”

(Salvatori, 2007, p. x). The essays demonstrate that elite institutions dominate the standard or big story of composition’s development not because the discipline didn’t exist elsewhere but because the elite institutions have had the cultural and economic power to dominate the conversation and author the large cultural narratives about composition. The authors in Local histories challenge this big narrative by returning to the cannon of composition and re-viewing and revising the known history through exploration of materials found in archives, library, and departmental collections from around the country—the “small stories in hidden places” that

Boo mentions in the epigraph (Donahue & Moon, 2007, back cover). Even though the collection overwhelmingly relies on conventional understandings and values of archives, Local histories provides examples of how small, less heard stories can enrich and challenge the known or master story of a topic or subject. I argue that the DALN and its small stories could work in a similar, but more queer way than both Local histories and Beyond the archives: the DALN’s values of openness and self-direction mean that its personal small stories may challenge and enrich not just composition, but also broader understandings of literacy.

The “beyond” of the title Beyond the archives refers to the ways in which the collection

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provides a wider view of what archival research might entail. The major strength of the collection is that it features nontraditional methods and approaches to archival research, such as visiting the geographic spaces mentioned in archival materials and interviewing people associated with the materials. Neither of these is a common practice in archival research, which tends to remain a solo process, characterized by “isolation and loneliness” (Kirsch & Rohan,

2008, p. 1). Beyond the archives lays bare the importance of the personal by providing back stories for previously published scholarship.

Although most of the essays rely on conventional archives, as a whole Beyond shows that archival work can be more than working with historical or unique materials from formal institutional archives. This provides the room for a queer archives such as the DALN. For example, most archival work does not include interviews with subjects (or people connected to the subjects) mentioned in the archival materials due to the historical nature of conventional archives. Yet during her research at the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA), Davy (2008) interviews people who attended and performed in the feminist and lesbian theater scenes in New York during 1980s and 1990s. She makes this move in order to fill-in gaps and/or subtexts that materials in the LHA only hinted toward during her archival research (Davy, 2008). The Lesbian

Herstory Archives is not a conventional archives but a queer one, and I believe that this impacts both what Davy does and how she does it. The archives itself provides the space to imagine what archives and archival research might entail in ways that other more conventional archives do not. Walking the same streets as the people mentioned in archival materials (Eubanks, 2008) or interviewing people mentioned in materials or those who knew subjects featured in archival materials (in the case of Davy, 2008) provide different and personal ways of envisioning what

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archival research can entail. I contend that the DALN, as a queer archives, provides a similar

opening for teacher-scholars and students to re-imagine what archives are, can be, and can do

for composition studies. For instance, with the DALN, students and teachers can actively

facilitate the growth and development of DALN through targeted literacy narrative collection

efforts, in the process expanding the knowledge about and from particular communities or

topics.

Local histories’ (2007), Beyond the archives’ (2008), and Working in the archives’ (2010)

attention to the local and to different ways of performing archival research provides small

stories that expand the larger narrative of composition’s history and archival research in

composition. These small stories help expand composition as a discipline. They also provide

space to imagine what the future of archival research in composition studies could look like and

do for the discipline by exposing the often hidden processes of research. By explicitly exploring

the archival research process, each collection reveals the importance of the personal when

developing and carrying out (archival) research. We can apply some of the methods used in

these collections to work with an archives such as the DALN. Because the DALN is open and

exists anywhere there is internet access (and technological know-how), it provides the

intellectual and literal space to re-imagine the conventional relationships between archives,

archival materials, and users and contributors to those archives.

3) Exploring the Personal and Personal Storytelling in Composition’s Archival Research In many ways, Local histories, Beyond the archives, and Working in the archives are examples of personal storytelling in composition. To return to The Media, Activism and

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Participatory Politics Project (MAPP)’s definition of storytelling, these collections seek to tell, retell, and remix the narratives of research and archives in composition by explicitly focusing on the personal that is typically written out of the final published scholarship. I argue that the largest contribution of Local histories (2007), Beyond the archives (2008), and Working in the

archives (2010) to composition’s research narrative is each collection’s attention to the personal

in the research process. Each provides the space for researchers to discuss the mostly hidden

and personal processes of performing academic research. As a result, the collections provide a

sense of how the personal and personal storytelling are central to successful archival research and academic research in general.

As noted earlier, the focus on the personal makes these collections a little bit queer when compared to more traditional scholarly publications, which often purposefully elide sustained personal focus. At the same time, despite providing a more complex picture of archival research in composition, these collections also demonstrate that the personal is more likely to be accepted when coming from experts (such as scholars with publication records), and that composition studies has not spent much time examining archives and archival research as the subject of research inquiries.

The title Local histories (2007) invokes the personal immediately; the local is often used to mean the contextual, the particular, the personal. Among the collections examined here,

Local histories provides the most conventional example of archival research because each essay centers on institutional archives or collections maintained by academic libraries. However, the collection focuses on the local contexts of composition studies as a way to challenge the master narrative of composition’s development, suggesting that the local context (and by extension, the

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personal context) is a way to develop more nuanced understandings of any subject.

Paying attention to the local and the personal is central to the other collections examined here, such as Beyond the archives. In the introduction to that collection, Kirsch and

Rohan (2008) claim that the essays help “promote themes of serendipity, chance discoveries,

and personal connections as key ingredients for sustained research when working with archival

documents” (p. 8). Each essay concerns itself (at least to a certain degree) with what might be

considered conventional archives (historical, physical materials housed in an institutional collection). Overall, as Beyond the archives is most concerned with the overlapping of a researcher’s personal identity/life with historical, archival materials rather than exploring how the values and conventions of archives might impact how and why we work with archives in certain ways. The division of the book supports this claim: “Part One: When serendipity, creativity, and place come into play;” “Part Two: When personal experience, family history, and research subjects intersect;” “Part Three: When personal, cultural, and historical memory shape the politics of the archives;” and “Part Four: When the lives of our research subjects parallel our own.” This division aligns with the subtitle of the book, Research as Lived Process because each section centers on the personal “lived process” of working with archives and archival materials.

Throughout Beyond the archives, authors make it clear that the personal is the impetuous for the archival projects, even if the materials used are not first-hand or personal accounts. For some scholars, the personal stems from finding family artifacts that pique curiosity about a particular group or institution (Sharer; B. Rohan). For others, it is about tracing and chasing down longtime personal interests and desires (Birmingham; L. Rohan; Vlasopolos); for some, it is about context and serendipitous exposure to materials or subjects (Gold; Kirsch;

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Sutherland). And yet for others, the personal stems from trying to discover, recover, and rewrite political, social, and cultural histories of families and different identity groups (Nitecki; Stockton;

Wider; Villanueva; Okawa; Eubanks; Powell; Davy). Regardless of the specific focus, most essays in the Beyond the archives emphasize the “the crucial significance of creating and maintaining evidence of the lives and work of dominant culture’s marginalized groups” (Davy, 2008, p. 135).

The authors attempt to capture the small, often unheard stories that are commonly the basis for academic research, and in this way the collection helps place the personal as central for strong research. In a similar way, DALN narratives capture the small stories and experiences of marginalized (as well as dominant) sociocultural communities, providing users of the DALN access to a range of “lived experiences” of literacy, some of which are not often heard in the master cultural narratives.

Personal archives that develop inadvertently over time (rather than “official” or institutional archives such as those housed in libraries and universities) are the focus for several essays in Beyond the archives. This attention to personal archives has potential to raise questions about the personal and archives vis-à-vis conventional archives and archival research, but like the other archival-focused collections examined in this chapter, the essays do not actually challenge traditional notions of archives as physical collections of historical materials housed together in expert-protected institutional spaces. For example, both Sharer and B.

Rohan spend time explaining that their families and family ephemera are the inspiration for their research and the reasons why the subject matter is important beyond their families. Yet neither author includes the personal mementos that inspire their research in their works cited nor, ultimately, make the family materials the center of their research. Both move to

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conventional archival spaces in order to develop their research projects. Although the family materials Sharer and B. Rohan use are not publicly available, they should be listed in the works cited since they feature into the research process. To not include them is to (perhaps inadvertently) send the message that these materials and archives are not as genuine or important as conventional, expert-determined/vetted archives. It is not uncommon for scholars to cite in their scholarship non-public materials such as personal communications and interviews.

I believe that failure to include the items in the works cited provides further evidence that although the collection as a whole may seek to look beyond conventional archives, the authors and essays are still enmeshed in conventional (and impersonal) values of archives and archival research.

Similar to Local histories and Beyond the archives, personal experiences with

conventional archives are also a major component of Working in the archives. The collection functions as a how-to for archival research in composition studies and has four sections:

“General Information for Using Archives;” “Accessing the Archives;” “Working with/through

Archival Material;” and “Creating the Archive as Research Process.” These first three sections each include two to three interviews with established scholars about their archival research experiences, including challenges, methods, and methodologies; the interviews provide further examples of how the personal is at the heart of archival research. The division of the book and the interviews provide a sense of the “so what” of archival research in composition: how and why do archives and archival research fit into composition studies’ larger story? How might

composition scholars access, use, and make sense of archives and archival research? The last

section of Working in the archives, “Creating the Archive as Research Process,” provides

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illustrations of how archival work can facilitate the development of personal archives of materials.

Although this final section is the shortest and does not contain any interviews, it does provide a less conventional and more queer understanding of archives. On the one hand, Lucas and Strain in “Keeping the Conversation Going: The Archive Thrives on Interview and Oral

History,” place first-person narrations and dialogues at the center of archives. On the other hand, Lynn Z. Bloom’s “Deep Sea Diving: Building an Archive as the Basis for Composition

Studies Research,” argues that composition studies should consider research in the field as contributing to the archives of composition studies. Bloom’s approach is a little queer in that it calls for the purposeful building of an archives whereas conventional understandings of archives mandate that archives not created but happen naturally over time.43 Perhaps Working in the

archives’ queerest illustration of archives is Nan Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Archivist.” The

essay is an example of personal storytelling for academic purposes. Johnson demonstrates that

researchers often build personal archives of materials during the process of researching,

sometimes without realizing it. In fact, this is central to Johnson’s methodology: collecting

materials of interest, without necessarily having a clear sense of how all of the materials work

together until a later date. It is the “look at this neat stuff and how it might be awesome for the

field” approach, which injects a sense of wonder and emphasizes personal connections (and

self-direction) to academic research.

Overall, Working in the archives contributes to and expands composition’s research narrative by making explicit the nuances of research and the role that the personal can and does play in the research process, from the initial inspiration to the final product. In some ways the

43 At the same time, placing composition research at the center of composition’s archives is exactly what the National Archive of Composition and Rhetoric at the University of New Hampshire is. 162

collection works to challenge the forced binary split between personal inspirations and connections and the impersonal expectations for published academic research by including interviews and scholars’ personal stories of research. However, because the essays are positioned as background and/or instructional rather than more traditional, analytical scholarly essays, the collection still leaves intact the implicit understanding that the personal should be written out of the final scholarly product in order for that product to be considered academic or that one must already have established publication records before bringing in the personal.

Conclusion: The personal is academic, both practically and theoretically

Instructors and scholars working with the DALN may help expand how composition understands what archives and personal literacy narratives are and can do for composition studies. Although some composition studies scholarship examines archives and personal literacy narratives as resources for composition classrooms and scholarship, both concepts are generally positioned in relatively narrow ways that privilege or center on experts and expert-direction.

When the DALN is used as a resource for composition, teacher-scholars could potentially democratize (and queer) understandings of archives and the role of the personal in academic spaces by allowing anyone to access and contribute to the project. The DALN oscillates between major binary values that shape archival discourses (restriction/openness; impersonal/personal; expert /self), showing that the options do not have to be either/or, that there is value in between extremes and both/and. The DALN’s tag line —“everybody has a literacy narrative”— demonstrates its open, democratic principle and the desire for the little narratives: all people, regardless of education, status, location, or personal identity, have stories involving literacy that can potentially shape our understanding of how literacy functions and is valued in different

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communities, times, and places. This movement—what Boellstorff (2010) calls “surfing the

binaries,” is the ultimate queer method because queer is never just either/or, but always

both/and/neither/nor. The DALN, then, could be understood as an illustration of what surfing

the binaries looks like or how it may manifest. Jeff Park (2004) in Writing on the edge suggests,

Perhaps much is to be learned by implementing both sides of the binary, and not

ignoring either perspective…theorists and educationists get caught in a ‘non-negotiable

position,’ again to borrow from Bohm. We need to actively engage in dialogue that

incorporates different voices and perspectives…[and] address issues of diversity by not

ignoring contradictions. (Park, 2004, p. 16)

As this dissertation in general and this chapter in particular has tried to demonstrate, composition teacher-scholars, students, and composition studies as a field can use the DALN to

“engage in dialogue that incorporates different voices and perspectives” as Park argues for above, and as a way to concretely demonstrate the potential of the personal for pedagogy, research, and archives. The DALN is constantly growing as individuals add their narratives to the collection; each narrative contributes to understanding literacy as a historical concept, but also contributes to our understandings of literacy as a current, contemporary phenomenon. Each contribution is an active part of the history of literacy. Outside of the DALN, StoryCorps, and perhaps the It Gets Better Project, there are few opportunities for the average person (the non- expert) to contribute to or impact the historical record. I believe this is major reason why the

DALN can be a powerful resource for composition teachers, classrooms, and scholarship.

The following chapter features an examination of how the DALN and the personal have been incorporated into some composition courses at different colleges in the United States. My

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goal is to better understand the ways and contexts in which the DALN is being used in the classroom. The data comes from and open-ended survey and follow-up communications with a small, targeted selection of composition instructors about their use of personal literacy narratives and the DALN in their classrooms.

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Chapter 4 Into the classroom, Queerly: The DALN as a classroom resource

There's a learning curve (as with all pedagogical approaches) with using the DALN in the classroom. It takes time to appreciate the many ways in which this resource is invaluable to classroom practices. Christopher, questionnaire respondent (2013)

Stories do not tell single truths, but rather represent a truth, a perspective, a particular way of seeing experience and naming it. Stories are partial, they are located rather than universal, they are a representation of experience rather than the same thing as experience itself (‘not authentic’). Barbara Kamler (2001)

Research—like life—is a contradictory, messy affair. Ken Plummer (2005)

This chapter examines how a targeted group of instructors perceive the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives and how they deploy the DALN in their composition classrooms. I wanted to elicit narratives about the DALN in order to understand some instructors’ motivations for using personal literacy narratives and the DALN in classrooms, including potential benefits, concerns, and issues. As I have explored in this dissertation, archives, including the DALN, are characterized by dominant social binaries: open/restricted, expert/self, and impersonal/personal (see Chs. 2 & 3). I contend that the DALN both resists and reflects— queers—these binaries, and I was curious if these binaries factored into instructors’ perceptions of the DALN and literacy narratives. The central research question for this chapter is:

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• Does the queer nature of the DALN shape or manifest itself in teachers’

perceptions of the DALN and how teachers use and discuss the DALN in their

classrooms? If so, how and why, and if not, why?

Because the DALN is relatively young (the first narratives were submitted in 2008), there

is not much scholarship published about the DALN, particularly scholarship focused on teachers’

uses of and thoughts about it (for examples of scholarship that engages with the DALN see:

Bryson, 2012; Comer & Harker, 2015; Ostergaard & Giberson, 2010; Purdy & Walker, 2010;

Ruecker, 2012; Ulman, DeWitt, & Selfe, 2013). Despite the relative lack of scholarship about

classroom uses of the DALN, composition teacher-scholars have been significant factors in the

DALN’s growth, promotion, and use. I created a questionnaire focused on instructors’

understandings and uses of the DALN and personal literacy narratives in their classrooms and

distributed the questionnaire to a small sample of college instructors (the full questionnaire is

available in Appendix B).1Ultimately, participants’ responses indicated that despite some reservations about the DALN, it is a useful resource (for both instructors and students) that provides personal and diverse perspectives of literacy and may be used to facilitate a wide range of classroom and pedagogical tasks.

My overall project seeks to describe why/how the DALN might be considered a queer archives, and this chapter relies on narratives elicited by my questionnaire to explore how the

DALN might queer some instructors’ and students’ binaristic conceptions of both archives and literacy-focused research. The questionnaire responses provide the basis for my suggestions for

1 My project was submitted to The Ohio State University’s Office of Responsible Research and was deemed exempt from full Institutional Review Board review on April 26, 2013 (protocol number: 2013E0185). 166

further research about how the DALN might shape teachers’ thinking about composition and composition instruction.

Surveying the pedagogy of the DALN: Comer & Harker’s survey and my questionnaire

My questionnaire is not the first attempt to gather information from instructors about

their classroom uses of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives. Katheryn Comer and Michael

Harker’s Computers and Composition article, “The Pedagogy of the Digital Archive of Literacy

Narratives: A Survey” (2015) details the results of a nationwide survey of composition instructors. Their nine-question survey focuses on delineating the DALN’s pedagogy, and asks where and how instructors incorporate the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives into their classes. Though Comer & Harker’s project is similar to mine in that it seeks to better understand how instructors use the DALN, our projects’ differences center on the scope of the questions and methodology.

Overall, both my project and Comer & Harker’s project seek to develop a more complex understanding of the DALN as a resource for composition classrooms. Having multiple studies, surveys, and questionnaires about the DALN can provide more nuanced understandings of the

DALN overall because, as Kamler (2001) notes in the epigraph, stories are always partial—no single story will ever capture all of the nuances, concerns, issues, or beliefs about a particular issue or topic. First, the similarities: both my questionnaire and Comer & Harker’s survey seek to better understand the DALN and how it is used in classrooms. We are both interested in how the DALN might “deepen and complicate pedagogical approaches to literacy narratives in composition, rhetoric, and literacy studies” (Comer & Harker, 2015). We seek to understand how the DALN can (and does) impact the theory and practice of teaching composition and rhetoric. In order to position their survey within the history of composition and rhetoric, Comer

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& Harker provide a brief overview of the history of literacy narratives in composition studies; in a similar way, I turn to the role of the personal and personal narratives in archival studies and

composition studies in order to position the DALN within the histories of those fields.

Despite the similarities between our projects, there are some distinctions. First, all of

Comer & Harker’s questions focus on the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives, with no questions about other resources or questions about demographics (such as institutional size or type). Like my questionnaire, Comer and Harker’s survey asks participants to discuss the DALN in the context of their specific courses and course objectives, but their survey does not ask participants to position the DALN among other classroom resources such as archives and statistical studies; they also do not ask for demographic information about the participants, their institutions, and courses.2 In contrast, the scope of my questionnaire is slightly different: I ask demographic questions and questions about personal narratives and other literacy resources vis-à-vis DALN. I believe this type of contextualization may provide a different perspective of the DALN-in-context as well as encourage questionnaire participants to think about the DALN as a resource in and of itself rather than only thinking about the contents of the

DALN.

The second major distinction between my questionnaire and Comer & Harker’s survey is methodology. Comer & Harker solicited participants through various disciplinary list-servs and had a total of 78 respondents, with 22 of those 78 reporting use of the DALN in their classes.

Comer & Harker’s survey contains four closed and five open-ended questions; the closed questions included an “other” option, which provides opportunity for informants to supply

2 Comer & Harker followed up with some participants through interviews, but they do not provide a standard set of interview questions. It is possible, then, that they did collect demographic information from a subset of the original survey participants. 168

information not covered by the pre-determined options.3 In contrast, I distributed my questionnaire more narrowly; I sent the survey link to a small, targeted group of instructors

(n=9) who have identified themselves publicly as using the DALN (my methodology is detailed in the following section). Comer and Harker’s larger sample size means that they may be able to draw some generalizations about uses of the DALN that I may not be able to due to my small sample size. However, for this dissertation project, my goal was not to collect generalizable data but to gain situated insight into how the DALN is perceived by some instructors in particular contexts. I wanted to undertake a preliminary, small-scale test of the questionnaire, looking particularly at its usefulness in eliciting information about the DALN and some instructors’ thoughts (and their perceptions of their students’ thoughts) about archives and literacy narratives in composition classrooms and research.

With my questionnaire, I used all open-ended questions because I sought to mimic the experience of filling out the DALN paperwork, which contains only open-ended questions. I also used open-ended questions because they generally produce narrative responses, which, according to Reja, Manfreda, Hlebec, & Vehovar (2003) can provide “…a much more diversified set of answers…. [and] the possibility of discovering responses that individuals give spontaneously, and thus avoiding the bias that may result from suggesting responses,” (p. 166, p.163). Ulman (2013b) establishes an advantage of open-ended questions in “Reading the DALN

Database: Narrative, Metadata, and Interpretation.” He notes that the DALN’s demographic paperwork does not provide specific check boxes or options for possible gender identifications such as male, female, trans, or other but instead asks, “Do you want to self-identify with regard

3 For example, Comer & Harker did not anticipate that nearly 28% of responses about specific courses incorporating the DALN would use the “other” option; these responses demonstrate “…the reach of DALN pedagogies beyond [their] own assumptions” (Comer & Harker, 2014). 169

to gender (ex: female, male, transgender)?” The result has been 39 distinct genders provided by

DALN contributors as of September 2012 (Ulman, 2013b). Of course there is no way to know how many alternative terms would have been provided if the question included check boxes for male, female, trans, and other, but the diversity in responses (from “sure. Why not?” to

“transgender, non op mtf”4) points to the affordances of providing an open-ended question.

Ulman (2013b) argues that “…standard[ized] responses [such as check boxes] may elide significant differences in the way that contributors characterize information about themselves”

(Ulman, 2013b). Contributors can provide terms and concepts that most closely reflect their own situated knowledges and might not be anticipated by or familiar to the creators of the paperwork or questions. With these affordances in mind, my survey was designed to encourage self-directed narratives: participants’ personal stories about teaching with the DALN using their own language and terms.

The nuances between my questionnaire and Comer & Harker’s survey rest upon our projects’ differing purposes and concerns, but ultimately, our findings—which are explored throughout in this chapter—are complementary. Comer & Harker’s findings reveal that “…many informants recommend delving more deeply into the DALN itself [rather than only the contents]…in order to generate conversations about issues like technology, access, user- generated content, and sustainability.…[which suggests that] the DALN, in itself, offers a fascinating artifact for study.” In part, that is my goal with this project and questionnaire: to make the DALN itself, as an archives (rather than only its contents), an object of study, with the

goal of understanding how its structure and underlying values might impact how some

4 “Transgender, non op mtf” means someone who identifies as male-to-female transgender, but does not plan on gender reassignment surgeries such as genital reconstruction and chest surgeries (non op=no operations). 170

instructors understand and engage with the DALN, archives, and literacy narratives as well as what counts as research evidence into literacy.

Method/ology In this dissertation, I have shown how and why a queer method/ology is useful for understanding the DALN as a resource, and I argue that a queer approach to analyzing questionnaire responses works for the same reasons: it is contextualized, flexible, and provides a framework for dealing with contradictions and hegemonic binaries. I take a queer approach because queerness fosters openness even as it acknowledges the restrictive structures that constitute the norm. Like the DALN, queerness both reflects and resists larger cultural norms and notions. Manning (2009) argues that “queer methodologies are vital for exposing hegemonic linear ways of being and thinking” (p. 1, my emphasis), and Plummer (2005) argues that, “In general, ‘queer’ may be seen as partially deconstructing our own discourses and creating a greater openness in the way we think through our categories” (p. 365). Operating from queer theory’s value on the particular and the individual, I developed a questionnaire and identified a small, targeted group of 9 participants who currently or have previously used the

DALN in their college classrooms; eight participants completed the full survey. My questionnaire sought to determine if and how the DALN might help disrupt or queer participants’ conceptions of archives, tools for learning about literacy, and what counts as evidence for literacy-related research.

Development and Distribution of Questionnaire

I developed 14 open-ended questions (using the survey software Qualtrics5) to elicit

teachers’ narratives about using the DALN. I wanted to determine if questionnaire participants’

5 I used the software Qualtrics for a few reasons. Unlike free public survey tools, Qualtrics is secure and responses are protected from use by others: services such as SurveyMonkey retain ownership of any data 171

understandings of the DALN and of literacy narratives were characterized by or resisted conventional binaristic thinking about archives and literacy narratives’ role in literacy-focused research. Each questionnaire response is based on personal knowledges and experiences that instructors developed through their daily lives and interactions with the DALN and students.

For the questionnaire, I developed my sample size based on convenience and snowballing. First, I identified a sample of convenience: instructors who I knew used the DALN in their classes because they have presented at academic conferences, published about the DALN, or have otherwise been publicly involved with the DALN (n=6). I identified additional questionnaire participants through a snowball sampling method (Browne, 2005) by asking the initial participants for the contact information of other instructors who use the DALN in their classes (n=3). I focused on a small, targeted sample sized based on Myers’ (2000), Madrigal &

McClain’s (2012)6, and Reichelt’s (2007)7 arguments that small sample sizes can yield richly-

provided through their services and may use materials for their own purposes (this is buried in their user agreement). Qualtrics provides a wide range of options for question type; it does not limit the number of questions or participants; and it provides a range of ways to save and display responses. Though the former points are options on services such as SurveyMonkey, access to these features requires purchasing a plan whereas I am able to use Qualtrics for free as a student and employee of The Ohio State University. 6 Madrigal & McClain (2012) argue, …it is usual to perform qualitative research with only 6 to 12 participants….because it is not possible to automate qualitative-data collection as effectively as you can automate quantitative-data collection, it is usually extremely time consuming and expensive to gather large amounts of data [from many participants], as would be typical for quantitative research studies. (Madrigal & McClain, 2012) A small sample size can provide the opportunity for the researcher to reflect more deeply on responses, particularly for personal and narrative answers (i.e. not a pre-determined response, such as with closed questions). 7 Leisa Reichelt (2007) argues: Qualitative research is not about numbers, it is about the richness of the information and insight you can get access to…and looking for patterns in [participants’] reactions and responses….The richness of the information and insight you receive even from this small sample size makes the return on investment enormous…(Reichelt, 2007) By targeting a small sample of instructors who use the DALN, I am seeking access to their partial, personal, and situated understandings of the DALN—how and in what ways the DALN exists and takes on meaning in different classroom circumstances.

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textured and detailed data. Myers (2000) argues “In many situations, a small sample size may be more useful in examining a situation in depth from various perspectives…small qualitative studies can gain a more personal understanding of the phenomenon and the results can potentially contribute valuable knowledge to the community.” Larger, less targeted sampling can sometimes yield less personal responses and may mean some participants might not be part of the specific population one is looking for.8

Along with a targeted approach to gathering questionnaire participants, I created only open-ended questions because I wanted to elicit narrative responses from the participants.

Closed questions provide a predetermined list of responses, which may limit the nuance or details provided by respondents and may result in relatively straight-forward answers.9 The general complexity of narrative responses was another motivating factor for keeping the participant number small. Reja, Manfreda, Hlebec, & Vehovar (2003) argue that narrative responses commonly provide more detailed and in-depth information. Ulman (2013b) suggests that responses to open-ended questions can result in “’messy’ data,” which may require more intellectual work on the part of the researcher, such as when someone identifies her socioeconomic class as “artist class”10, or when someone identifies their gender with both

8 For example, Comer & Harker’s survey took a broader approach by targeting relevant and appropriate list-servs rather than individuals, which provided a wider reach for their survey, but 56 out of 78 survey respondents had not used the DALN in their classes. So despite targeting appropriate list-servs, 71% of Comer and Harker’s respondents could not provide feedback or details on the survey topic (the DALN) because the participants did not have experience with using it. 9 Of course closed questions can provide an “other” check box, which can provide the space for more nuanced responses. Further, even if a participant checks off a box, the participant could understand that category or option in different ways than the researcher intended. However, unless there is a text box or other option for survey participants to detail these nuances, the researcher will not know about it because closed questions by definition do not provide the space for such narrative responses. 10 This is not to say that concepts such as working class or middle class are universally understood or identified using the same measure by everyone. However, working class and middle class are common socioeconomic class identifications whereas artist class is not, meaning it requires more effort to interpret what the individual means by using such an identification. 173

sexuality and gender terms such as “Lesbian female” (Ulman, 2013b). As a result, narrative responses may require more time and work to analyze and understand due to unpredictable personal reactions to questions (on the participants’ end) and to answers (on the researcher’s end).

All of my questionnaire questions were optional, except the first two: 1) a statement of consent, which included a description of the project and also stated that the participant was chosen because s/he had used the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives in the post-secondary classroom;11 and 2) contact information, including the name and location of the college or university where they have used the DALN. Participants could use the Qualtrics survey system to upload documents related to the use of the DALN in courses, such as syllabi, lesson plans, rubrics, and assignment prompts; participants could also email me materials if they preferred.12

I provided multiple options for materials contributions because I wanted to make it as easy as possible for participants to contribute their materials and perspectives.

Examining the Questionnaire Findings

To understand the questionnaire data, I began by reading the responses in their entirety three times and then coded the responses using a schema (examined below) based upon my previous work and analysis of the DALN, archival structures and values, and queer methodlogies

(see Appendix C for a sample of my coding). To clarify some answers and obtain more context, I communicated with some participants (n=5) through email after they had completed the questionnaire. However, some participants provided such thorough responses in the

11 This question also helped ensure that all participants had used the DALN in their classes. 12 Three participants provided materials though Qualtrics; one participant emailed an assignment prompt; one provided access to an online classroom; one participant referred me to the assignment prompts offered on the DALN website; and the remaining two participants did not provide specific materials beyond a brief description in the questionnaire text box. 174

questionnaire that I did not have any unanswered questions about their uses of and beliefs about the DALN, and thus I did not contact them via email for follow-up.

As explored throughout this dissertation, the DALN both reflects and resists simplistic

social understandings and dominant binaries of archives, archival research and literacy

narratives. Because I was particularly interested in how the DALN related to the binaristic terms

that often shape thinking about both archives and literacy narratives, I coded for six specific

concepts: openness; restriction; academic;13 personal; expert(direction); self(direction).

1) Openness: I defined openness as the ease and directness with which individuals can contribute to, access, and use the DALN archive, including the limited constraints and professional oversight of the archive. Openness delineated comments about structural aspects of the DALN as well as the processes of interacting with the DALN.

a. I used the code openness for comments about: the unlimited and undefined

understanding of the literacy found in the DALN; the range of populations

that can and do employ the DALN; the variety of purposes for which the

DALN can be used; the reach of the DALN and its narratives; the processes

of accessing, searching, soliciting, and contributing to the DALN. In some

ways, openness was the ultimate code in that openness is implicated directly

or indirectly in many of the other codes, as discussed below.

2) Restriction: I defined restriction as limiting or narrowing understandings of literacy and limiting uses of the DALN. Restriction generally delineated comments about the structural components of the DALN, including issues of access and use.

13 After initial coding, I realized that though impersonal has been useful for discussing the expectations for and values of archives and literacy narratives, impersonal is not as useful as the code academic is for characterizing and talking about my questionnaire responses because teaching is inherently an interpersonal context. As I argue elsewhere in this dissertation (see Chapter 3), when academic work— such as research—is published, it tends to focus on research as an impersonal, objective process (though composition studies is one field where the personal aspects of academic work tends to be a little more visible), so academic is related to impersonal as I have used the term in this dissertation. In order to better reflect the content of participants’ responses, I used academic as a code. 175

a. I used the code restriction for comments about: calls for greater curation of

the DALN, such as limiting metadata or allowing expert or academic users to

add tags or metadata not provided by the contributor; limiting the use of

the DALN or limiting how it is used in classroom (including using it only for

extra credit); constraints on how the DALN can be used due to curriculum

requirements. Like openness, restriction is implicated explicitly and implicitly

in many of the other codes.

3) Academic: I defined academic as understandings of literacy identified by teachers, scholars, professional organizations in professional journals, textbooks, and other formal discursive contexts. Academic generally delineated understandings about the genre and context of literacy and characterized one of the significant contexts for the DALN and research with and about the DALN (i.e. classrooms).

a. I used the code academic primarily for comments about the nature and

expectations of literacy in educational contexts (classrooms, research,

conferences, and so on) and for common scholarly, classroom, and research

resources vis-à-vis the DALN; research projects and professional

publications about literacy or using the DALN; professional conferences,

organizations, and scholars and their impacts on understandings of literacy

and the DALN’s use, dissemination, and growth; teaching students and

others about literacy in formal contexts such as university classrooms.

b. There was overlap between academic and other codes such as

expert(direction), and to a lesser degree, personal and restriction.

Comments coded academic were often about expert definitions of literacy

or expert expectations for literacy-focused research and resources. Further,

items coded academic were often about limited uses or understandings of

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literacy or the DALN. In the next section, I discuss the overlap between

academic and personal.

4) Personal: I defined personal as understandings of literacy and the DALN that focused on individual users and their particularized understandings of literacy and the value of these understandings as data for literacy researchers. Personal delineated experiences and understandings of literacy and the processes of interacting with and teaching about the DALN.

a. In my coding schema, personal identified comments about the DALN’s

constituent narratives as well as comments about literacy and literacy

research that value individual experiences as meaningful data. Comments

were coded as personal, for example, if participants mentioned choosing

and valuing narratives for instructional purposes based primarily on their

own or their students’ personal preferences and interests. Although these

choices were based on personal preferences, such instruction might also

have been shaped at a secondary level by academic, expert-based

understandings of literacy and literacy research. In other words, there was

a degree of overlap between comments coded as personal and comments

coded as academic or expert.

5) Expert(direction): I defined Expert(direction) as professional or scholarly approaches to understanding literacy and archives, including expectations for literacy- and archives-based research. Expert(direction) delineated structural expectations, limitations, and parameters for topics, metadata, and methods of study. a. Expert (or expert-direction) was used for comments about the role of

professional academics in developing and disseminating knowledge about

the DALN, including publications, conference presentations, and classroom

teaching; references to professional organizations and their relationship to

understandings of literacy and the DALN; and comments about conventional

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academic or scholarly resources vis-à-vis the DALN’s role as an academic or

scholarly resource about literacy. Though expert(direction) overlaps with

academic the major distinction is that expert(direction) centers on primarily

structural concerns about, and ways of interacting with, the DALN as an

archives: expert control or influence over metadata and related vocabulary;

expert control over access to archives such as the DALN; and expert control

over the parameters of literacy-focused and DALN-centric research. In

contrast, comments were coded academic when they focused on primarily

classroom-based experiences and understandings of literacy, literacy-based

research, and archives such as the DALN.

6) Self(direction): I defined self(direction) as the ways and reasons that individuals interacted with and navigated the DALN as an archives according to their own desires and agendas, such as their particularized explorations and understandings of the DALN as a resource and archives, including personal preferences for interacting with the archives; individual’s reasons for contributing a story and for choosing which details to include or exclude; and personal preferences for and control over how others interacted with their contributions to the DALN. Self(direction) delineated the processes of interacting with and contributing to the DALN as well as the particularized and individualized processes of developing and sharing literacy knowledge and experiences through resources such as the DALN.

a. I used self(direction) when respondents mentioned individuals’ personal

approaches to working with the DALN and the narratives it contains:

employing self-identified metadata terms to describe/characterize literacy

stories; following personal interests to search for narratives about literacy;

and identifying personal preferences for conducting research in the

archives.

b. Just as I used expert(direction) to identify structural expectations and

parameters for topics, metadata, and methods of study that were primarily

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determined or controlled by teachers, experts (such as archivists), literacy

scholars, and researchers, I used self(direction) to identify comments

primarily about how individuals determined or controlled their own

interactions with and uses of the DALN as an archives and resource,

including determining their own metadata tags (including how they

identified or chose to not identify keywords); students’ and researchers’

individual projects and processes for working with literacy-based research

and the DALN; and the logistics of working with and contributing to the

DALN. I found some overlap between the codes self(direction) and personal

as well. However, personal primarily indicated comments that place a value

on individualized understandings of literacy, literacy narratives, and the

DALN in classroom settings whereas self(direction) indicated the processes

of contributing to the DALN.

Through coding I discovered two things: 1) the above-mentioned concepts overlap, so some responses may have multiple codes (e.g., many responses are coded both personal and self(direction) because personal generally refers to the self); and 2) though participants generally did not explicitly position the DALN within binaries, the responses overall highlighted or illustrated the binaries that the DALN reflects and resists. For example, in some responses participants focused on the benefits of the DALN’s openness yet in other responses they also suggested that there be more control or restriction in order to improve users’ and contributors’ experience. Rather than see the simultaneous calls for openness and restriction as a contradiction, I understood this as evidence of the queerness of the DALN—how it both reflects and resists simplistic binaries—and the queerness of working with it.

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In the following section I turn to the demographic information of my questionnaire participants in order to provide a foundation for understanding the context of my questionnaire findings.

Demographic Information of Questionnaire Participants, Their Institutions, and Their Courses

I requested demographic information about participants’ courses and institutions, such

as location and size of institution, class sizes, types of students (e.g. undergraduate or graduate),

technology access, and so on as a way to understand the contexts in which the participants are teaching and using the DALN (see Figure 7). Between April 2013 and June 2013, nine instructors agreed to participate in my questionnaire, and all elected to complete it online through the survey software Qualtrics.14 Participants were given the option to participate pseudonymously,

and though only two participants requested pseudonymity I have created pseudonyms for all

participants for consistency.

NAME TITLE INSTITUTIONAL TYPE INSTITUTIONAL LOCATION Brian Associate • regional branch of research- • Midwest Professor intensive state university • Rural/small (commuter; 1200+ students) city Karen Adjunct • two-year college (commuter; • Southeast Faculty; 4,000-5,000+ students) –Small city Ph.D. • research-intensive state • Midwest Candidate university –Large city (commuter/residential; 50,000+ students) Beth Assistant • small, private, religiously- • Southeast Professor affiliated university • Urban (commuter/residential; 5000 sprawl students) Continued Figure 7— Questionnaire Participant Demographics

14 Due to a software glitch, at least 2 participants (Karen, Sue) did not initially receive access to the entire survey. As a result, some participants began the questionnaire in 2013 but did not complete it until 2014. 180

Figure 7 continued

Laura Assistant • research-intensive state • Southwest instructor; university branch (commuter; • Medium Ph.D. 19,000+students) city student Harold Associate • research-intensive state • Midwest Professor university • Large city (commuter/residential; 50,000+ students ) Lee Assistant • branch of research-intensive • Southwest Instructor; state university (commuter; • Medium Ph.D. 19,000+students) city Candidate Sue Assistant • public liberal arts (commuter; • Southeast Professor 5,000 students) • Small city near large city Christoph Assistant • research-intensive state • Southeast er Professor university (commuter; 30,000+ • Large city students)

Two participants were associate professors; three participants were assistant professors; two were graduate instructors (Ph.D. students at that institution); and one was adjunct faculty at one institution and a Ph.D. candidate at a different institution. Five out of the eight questionnaire participants became aware of the DALN through their roles as graduate students or faculty at The Ohio State University, the institution that hosts the DALN; one became aware of the DALN through the Digital Media and Composition Institute hosted by The

Ohio State University. Of those five, one is currently teaching at OSU and one has retired; the other three participants currently teach at different institutions and their responses were based on their experiences at both OSU and other institutions. The remaining three participants became familiar with the DALN through colleagues at their institutions who were already

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working with the DALN. Understanding how participants became aware of the DALN can help trace the reach and movement of the DALN among instructors and can demonstrate the ways

Information about institution types and locations gathered within this small questionnaire provided a sense of how the DALN might fit in to different institutional cultures, though further research is needed to extend the findings to larger populations and other institutional contexts. The participants’ institutions were wide-ranging, with undergraduate populations from 1,200 to 50,000+ students. The participants taught in six different states, including the midwest, southeast, and southwest regions of the U.S. Six teach at research- intensive state universities (both main and regional campuses); one taught at a private, religiously-affiliated university; one taught at a public liberal arts university; and one taught at a community college located near military bases.15 Six institutions were classified as primarily or solely commuter; three institutions were classified as a mix of commuter and residential.

Institutional locations were classified as: a large, urban city (3); rural or small city (1); “small city near big city” (1); medium city (2); city, with no qualifier (1); and urban sprawl (1). Within the demographic question, I included a text box so that participants could provide any additional demographic information they found pertinent. The additional demographic information I received reflected the respondents’ particular situated knowledges. For example, Karen noted

that although most classes are taught on the campus “in town,” many courses are also taught

on local military bases; she also reported that due to the college’s proximity to two military

bases, the town and college are dominated by men, with 178 men for every 100 women (Karen,

2014, questionnaire). Another participant, Sue, noted that her public liberal arts university was,

“…almost 40% minority [students], with a large population of first-generation students” (Sue,

15 One respondent provided information about two different institutions, so though eight respondents completed the full questionnaire, there are nine institutions represented. 182

2014, questionnaire). These additional pieces of demographic information provided another layer of context to participant responses, reflecting the importance of open-ended questions.

The questionnaire highlighted potential challenges or considerations that the questionnaire participants faced; further research is needed with larger populations to determine potential challenges or considerations for different institutions and populations. My questionnaire asked participants to discuss the types of technology that they and their students had access to because technology access is central to the DALN’s use in and out of the classroom. Participants suggested that at a basic level, access to technology such as computers and the internet were necessary for their classroom-use the DALN because it is an online

archives; at a more advanced level, participants suggested, access to video and audio recording

equipment and editing software was necessary if students were to collect/solicit narratives and

develop multimedia projects using DALN narratives.

Although some institutions may have more access, the questionnaire responses

suggested that the DALN has been used by these eight participants in a variety of contexts with

varying levels of technology access. More research with larger populations is needed to provide

a fuller range of institutional and technological contexts within which the DALN could prove to

be useful. In general, questionnaire respondents had consistent access to computers or

computer labs for class sessions. Six participants indicated that all of their course meetings were

in a computer lab. One respondent indicated that class meetings happened in a computer lab

only if that course was assigned to a lab classroom, although it was not clear how often that happens or how many labs are available for courses (Laura, 2013, questionnaire). Another participant taught a laptop section where each student brought a personal laptop to each class meeting; the same participant indicated that at another institution, a “laptop cart” with enough

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laptops for a class could be reserved for class meetings, but that there were restrictions on where on campus that the cart could be used (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). Karen, a Ph.D. candidate and contingent faculty member, said, “…full time instructors and their courses have priority for computer lab and laptop cart time, which makes direct instruction on [and with] technology harder” for contingent faculty (Karen, 2014, personal communication). Five respondents indicated that students and faculty had access to audio, video, and image editing software including Movie Captioner and Adobe Creative Suite; three indicated that students had access to “consumer grade recording equipment” such as audio and video recorders; and four indicated that students and faculty had access to computer labs, with no discussion of software and hardware access. Another claimed that all classrooms on their campus have “smart podiums” featuring a computer, internet access, and a projector for instructors’ use (Sue, 2014, questionnaire).

Within these varying institutional contexts, the eight respondents provided information about a total of 19 different DALN-focused courses (see Figure 8). Participants primarily used the

DALN in undergraduate courses that students take for credit. 16 In most of these courses, the

DALN was only one component of the course (16), whereas the DALN was the focus of the remaining courses (3). Two participants, Lee and Laura, solely or primarily used the DALN as

16 Two courses, cyber rhetoric and writing for new media, were a mix of undergraduate and graduate students. Only one course was geared solely toward graduate students, a graduate seminar in composition studies. Courses are both face-to-face (12) and hybrid sections (7), with eight to twenty-five students and an average of eighteen students.

Because I did not define what I meant by hybrid course, I believe that participants operated from different definitions of a hybrid class. I meant a course that has some meetings face-to-face and some meetings online; it appears that some participants understand hybrid as courses that take place face-to-face in both traditional classrooms and computer labs.

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extra credit due to time and curriculum mandates and restraints imposed by their institutions or

state (Lee and Laura, 2013, questionnaire).

Courses Using the DALN

First-Year Composition 1 1 Advanced Composition

1 Business/Workplace Writing

1 7 Digital Media/Multimedia Writing

Intro. to Digital Media Studies 1 Global Communication 1 Cyber Rhetoric

Writing for New Media 2 2 English Special Topics in Literacy 2 Graduate Seminar in Composition

Figure 8: Courses Using the DALN

The questionnaire participants taught mostly in English Departments (7), though one

participant taught a class that was cross-listed with English and African African-American

Studies, and one taught in the Department of English and Foreign Languages. The breakdown of

course offerings mentioned by my questionnaire participants were similar to the responses in

Comer & Harker’s survey: first-year writing courses (including honors sections) were the primary

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site where my questionnaire participants used the DALN (n=7) in college classrooms. However, questionnaire responses indicated that the DALN was also used in graduate courses (n=1) and mixed graduate/undergraduate courses (n=2), advanced composition (n=2) and upper level undergraduate courses, including business/workplace writing (n=2), digital media/multimedia composing (n=2), introduction to digital media studies (n=1), global communication (n=1), and

English special topics in literacy (n=1).

Though my questionnaire did not specifically ask about service learning or service- orientated use, questionnaire responses17 from Harold, Karen, Brian, Christopher, and Sue suggested that on their campuses, the DALN lent itself to service-learning and other community- focused pedagogies. Questionnaire participants (n=5) positioned the process of collecting and telling personal stories as a service to the composition and literacy studies communities as well as a service to broader understandings of literacy. Two participants specifically noted that their

DALN-focused courses contained a service-learning component. Harold, an associate professor at a research-intensive state university, said, “In all of my recent classes [using the DALN], I have included a service-learning component that engaged students in helping community groups record and preserve literacy narratives” (Harold, 2013, questionnaire). Karen echoed Harold; she indicated that she tended to make her DALN-centric courses service-learning focused, even though the courses have not been officially designated by their institutions as service-learning courses. She believed the DALN lends itself to this type of classroom use because it is so focused on communities (Karen, 2014, personal communication). The information about service learning is another example of the DALN’s queerness and why open-ended questions and open text

17 Responses to question 7 (mutipart question seeking details about courses where particapants have used the DALN); question 10 (“What has been your reason or motivation for using the DALN in the classroom?”); question 12 (“From your perspective, what are the advatages and disadvantages to using the DALn in the classroom?”). 186

boxes can be useful for questionnaires and surveys: the DALN is used in ways both anticipated and unanticipated, and if I had not provided an open text box for participants to supply additional information not explicitly mentioned in the questionnaire (such as service learning), I may not have learned about the service-learning angle that some participants used with the

DALN or service-learning projects and courses that some of the questionnaire participants taught. The open-ended questions and text box allowed the participants to identify what information and details they felt were most important to them, their students, and their uses of the DALN.

The demographic information provided by the questionnaire participants demonstrated that a variety of institutions, students, instructors, and courses may use the DALN to meet their needs, though further research with a larger population is needed to examine the DALN in different contexts. In the following section, I explore the questionnaire findings in-depth, using the codes described earlier in this chapter (openness; restriction; personal; academic; expert; self).

Findings

Overall, questionnaire responses reflected the concerns of Branch (1998), Elbow (2002), and others: there is a need to attend to the personal aspects of teaching and learning in order for education (and academic spaces) to make an impact for both students and teachers—and I argue, based on the questionnaire responses, the DALN is one possible resource that may help teachers and students to surf the binaries of academic/personal in useful ways.18 Below I

18 As a reminder, here is how I define these terms: Academic: comments about the nature and expectations of common scholarly, classroom, and research resources vis-à-vis the DALN; research projects and publications about or using the DALN; professional conferences, organizations, and scholars and their impacts on the DALN’s use, dissemination, and growth; teaching students and others in formal contexts such as university classrooms. Personal: comments about the DALN’s constituent narratives; the 187

highlight the binary tensions in participant responses that coding revealed. First I explore academic/personal; then I examine expert(direction) and self(direction); finally, I explore the binary of restriction/openness as each appears in questionnaire responses. I examine the concepts in binary pairs primarily because this dissertation is concerned with the dominant social binaries that the DALN both reflects and resists; positioning the concepts within the binary relationships that emerge across responses provides a sense of how questionnaire participants position their experiences within these binary concepts, whether consciously or not.

Academic Experts and Personal Selves

According to questionnaire responses and my own personal experiences as a teacher, teaching provides personal and academic opportunities to learn about literacy, and questionnaire participants suggested that the DALN can (and does) function as a versatile classroom resource, incorporating both the academic and the personal. All eight questionnaire participants ranked teaching and classroom experiences as most helpful (n=5) or very helpful

(n=3) for understanding literacy practices and literacy’s role in the world, with six participants specifically highlighting the DALN as a resource that helped them and their students to develop both academic and personal understandings of literacy. Harold said, “I am most interested in personal narratives about literacy [such as those found in the DALN] because they seem most relevant to classroom teaching (as distinct, say, from public policy) by highlighting the diverse experiences of individuals” (2013, questionnaire). Though Harold said he is “most interested” in personal narratives and ranks the DALN “most helpful” for understanding and teaching about

process of submitting to and using the DALN; and classroom, student, and community uses of the DALN, including teaching about or with the DALN.

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literacy, he also ranked academic journals and monographs as “most helpful.” In other words,

Harold saw the importance of both personal and academic narratives for understanding literacy and placed them on the same level of importance.

Harold’s responses highlighted a common thread throughout the questionnaire responses as a whole: for questionnaire respondents, both personal and academic narratives and resources are important for understanding the nuances of literacy. In some ways I did not

find this valuing of both personal and academic/expert narratives and resources surprising because as educators, participants are likely committed to the dissemination of knowledge and expertise, and at the same time, education and teaching are deeply personal experiences.

However, for students and other non-academics, participants suggested, academic narratives and resources—which generally rely on experts and their knowledges—may seem more visible or carry more clout.19 For example, though DALN narratives are personal and many are from

“regular” people (that is, non-academics), many DALN narratives come from academics (i.e. literacy experts), too. Brian noted that his students have wondered “…about the over- representation of professional academics on a site designed to collect narratives from ‘regular people’” (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). The perception that there is an over-representation of professional academics points to tension between academic and personal and how individuals understand these different concepts. The DALN has been created and used by teachers and other academics, and therefore many academics have contributed their own personal literacy narratives. The narratives from academics are personal—but they are also from academic experts, which may mean more weight could be given to the ideas and claims made in their narratives. However, narratives from academics are first and foremost personal, and these

19 And, as examined in this dissertation, academic resources can often have more clout among academics and experts as well. 189

expert-authored narratives can provide examples of how the personal can reflect expertise and expertise can be personal.

When asked, “How do you or have you developed your understanding or conception of literacy” (question 4), Brian (like Harold) noted that though academic fields such as literacy studies have helped shape his views of literacy, teaching and interacting with students on a personal level with personal and academic projects provided insight into students’ experiences of and knowledges about literacy. He said,

…the field of literacy studies in general has had a great impact on my understanding of

literacy, stretching it beyond simple functional literacy skills (knowing how to read and

write) to be more complex, cognitively variegated…the DALN has a different

taxonomical direction (since people who submit categorize their own content

themselves), so it offers another facet of how literacy is conceived in an ‘organic’ or

non-specialist way. This same idea, drawing upon the folksonomy generated from

outside of centers of expertise, also applies to the classroom–simply discussing how

students think of literacy, how they prioritize certain skills or habits of mind, is especially

instructive. (Brian, 2013, questionnaire)

Brian gestured toward the situated knowledges that personal narratives and discussions tend to reveal. He contended that “organic” understandings of literacy such as those found in the DALN and those that cropped up during discussions with students (i.e. that is, non-academic, personal ways of understanding) provided nuanced frameworks for understanding literacy that expanded upon more formal, academic understandings of literacy. Both Harold’s and Brian’s responses highlighted the ways in which the DALN straddles the binary of academic/personal: the DALN

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functions as a resource of personal stories that are useful for understanding literacy both at a personal level and in academic contexts.

Most questionnaire respondents (n=7) indicated that the DALN is a resource that provided unique perspectives and allowed students and researchers to explore personal frameworks and situated knowledges for understanding literacy. For example, Sue said one reason she used the DALN was because she “…think[s] it is important for students to see/hear stories from other people about the topic of literacy” (Sue, 2014, questionnaire); others’ stories can reveal the ways that those particular individuals experience literacy from their particular situated position. As Brian noted in his comment above, the “taxonomical direction” of the

DALN is different than most resources about literacy because the narratives come from individuals with varying degrees of (contextualized) expertise and knowledge about literacy, not all of which is academic. Further, Brian said, “I think using the DALN…is a great entrée into thinking more deeply and critically about the idea of literacy (the political, economic, and sociological implications behind it)” (Brian, 2014, questionnaire). “The political, economic, and sociological implications” is one way to talk about the various frameworks (whether personal or societal) that shape understandings of literacy and in turn, shape academic and personal conversations about literacy and impact the DALN’s structure and values.

The tensions between academic and personal were also evident in Laura’s questionnaire responses. When asked, “What role, if any, do personal stories play into your understanding of the following…literacy, your classes/courses in terms of content (readings, lesson plans, informal and formal activities, examples/models, research projects, assignments, research)” (question 6),

Laura responded, “Personal stories of others or my own play a vital role in helping connect with and relate to subject matter such as literacy, course content, and research. Understanding only

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the theory without real application and stories can be meaningless” (Laura, 2013, questionnaire). For Laura, personal stories had the power to illuminate academic work and make it more meaningful for all involved. However, her response to the question, “how do you introduce and describe the DALN and literacy narratives to your students?” did not reflect the personal aspect of the DALN. Laura said, “I…explain the DALN as a nation-wide [sic] database of literacy narratives intended for use by academic researchers. I stress that…the database is publicly available, though intended for academic use” (my emphasis, Laura, 2013, questionnaire). By stressing researchers and academic use, Laura placed the DALN’s value squarely in the academic, expert realm, which seemed to obscure the non-academic or personal use and significance of the DALN. At the same time, as noted above, in her other responses,

Laura emphasized the importance of personal experiences and knowledges for understanding literacy. So although Laura did not explicitly identify the binary of academic/personal, her responses reveal the tension between these concepts.

The academic/personal binary appeared in questionnaire participants’ discussions about the dis/advantages of using the DALN in the classroom. For example, when asked “Does the scale or structure of the DALN impact how you think about it or how you use it in the classroom or in research projects” (question 11), Beth said, “The likelihood that other users will draw from or remix student narratives—without notice or further consent—has, to some degree, prevented me from requiring students to contribute” (Beth, 2013, questionnaire). Beth’s response spotlighted the tension between the DALN as an academic resource containing personal content and the personal, individual rights over that content. Though DALN contributors provide informed consent and can restrict how others may use their personal narratives, Beth indicated discomfort with the DALN permission form allowing others to “draw

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from or remix student narratives” without further consent. She said that in her observations at academic conferences,20 “These documents [permission and consent forms] are not read with particular care, nor are there extensive conversations about how the contributions might be used” (2014, personal communication). Beth felt that the public nature of the DALN was not always emphasized enough during the recruitment and solicitation phases, and sometimes there was not always enough explanation of what it meant that the DALN and its personal stories might be used for academic purposes. However, Beth noted that in academic contexts—such as conferences—contributors likely had a pretty good understanding of what academic use of a

DALN narrative might entail; for the general public, the understanding of academic may be a bit fuzzier (Beth, 2014, personal communication). Beth said, “Any/all of these issues can and no doubt are easily and ethically managed with enough dialogue between recruiters and contributors” (Beth, 2014, personal communication). Beth’s concerns about academic and expert use of the DALN’s personal stories highlighted both the tension between these concepts as well as why explicit conversations about what it means for the DALN to be both personal and academic are important.

Along the same lines, questionnaire respondents suggested that discussions about the

DALN, its position among academic and popular resources, its reach, and the potential uses of

DALN narratives needed to happen before students or other contributors explore and submit narratives to the DALN. Beth claimed that in her experience, the DALN’s

20 Beth acknowledges that her observations have been at academic conferences, spaces, she says, where attendees and contributors are (presumably) more than likely aware of the nuances of academic research and the potential uses of their submissions. She says, “one hopes/assumes that researchers and teachers are handling this aspect of contribution with care…. but it seems an important consideration to highlight” (Beth, 2014, personal communication). 193

…recruitment/solicitation highlights the archival storage/static aspect more than the

likelihood of active reuse, publication, circulation…Maybe that's just a genre issue -- if

the DALN looked like YouTube, people might think differently about what they "post."

But when it looks like the academic project it currently is, [contributors] might not see

that public-ness in the same way. (2014, personal communication)21

In essence, Beth was asking, what are the implications of providing personal stories from non- experts for public, academic use? Beth’s comment reflected Laura’s framing of the DALN as well: the emphasis may be on academic use, but there is not necessarily a clear definition or explanation of what, exactly, academic use might mean or look like. For Beth, even an emphasis on the academic aspects of the DALN may not help contributors understand how their narratives might be studied and circulated in a variety of spaces and communities (both physical and virtual). Beth said, “...these stories [in the DALN] are often pretty intense and emotional

[and therefore personal], so maybe that's made me focus on contributors' vulnerabilities…so much of this is really about comprehension and consent” (2014, personal communication). For

Beth, the intensely personal nature of many DALN narratives seemed to especially highlight the academic/personal split, where academic aligns with impersonal and personal signals a degree of vulnerability.22

21 Beth’s concerns about permissions and public-ness has been, to a certain degree, addressed by IRB at Ohio State University. During a regular review of the research protocol for the DALN, the IRB determined that it had no jurisdiction over the DALN and its content. The IRB contended that wide-spread understandings of online archives and what it means to contribute to such archives means that extensive permission and consent forms are unnecessary. However, I would argue that the IRB’s stance does not completely ameliorate Beth’s concerns: the DALN still does not look like popular online archives and “academic use” is likely still fuzzy for non-academic populations. 22 The personal, intense, and emotional nature of many DALN narratives that Beth highlighted aligns with Cvetkovich’s (2013) claim that emotional, personal connections and displays are central to queer archives (also see Cvetovich, 2003; Edenheim, 2014). 194

The concepts academic and personal were evident (to varying degrees) in each questionnaire participant’s (n=8) responses. Further studies with larger populations are needed to determine whether this pattern is evident beyond my small sample size, but I hypothesize that these concepts are likely to appear in surveys of larger populations because academic and personal are cornerstones of the DALN as an academically-sponsored collection of personal stories.

The concepts academic/personal were not the only binary that appeared in the questionnaire responses. The following section explores the concepts of expert(direction) and self(direction) as they appear in the questionnaire responses.

Expert(direction)/Self(direction)

For students and others such as community members outside of schools, the processes

of using archives such as the DALN and performing research are generally about negotiating

between one’s own knowledges (selves) and the knowledge of teachers and other experts.23 Just as the DALN may be used to highlight the tensions between academic and personal, questionnaire responses suggested that the DALN is one possible resource that can help teachers to surf the binaries of expert(direction)/self(direction) in useful ways.

A majority of questionnaire respondents (n=6) noted that students seemed to like that literacy non-experts (such as students themselves) become the experts in their own literacy

23 A reminder of the code parameters: expert (or expert-direction): the role of professional academics in developing and disseminating knowledge about the DALN, including classroom teaching; references to professional organizations and their relationship to the DALN; and comments about conventional academic or scholarly resources vis-à-vis the DALN’s role as an academic or scholarly resource. Self(direction): individuals’ uses/interactions with the DALN; mentions of DALN metadata, such as the lack or abundance of keywords provided by contributors; the differences between users’ sense appropriate keywords and the contributors’ provision of terms; students’ and researchers’ individual projects and processes for working with the DALN (including instruction on using the DALN); and the logistics of working with and contributing to the DALN.

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narratives and in projects working with DALN narratives. So though Beth voiced concerns about having students submit to the DALN, she said that students generally enjoy “…the feeling that they are contributing their own [personal stories and knowledge] to public knowledge” (Beth,

2013, questionnaire). Other respondents echoed this sentiment. For example, Sue said that she used the DALN in classes because it “…provide[d] an opportunity for students to become published themselves, potentially part of someone else’s research into this topic” (Sue, 2014, questionnaire). Christopher said, the DALN “…provides an added benefit” to the classroom study of literacy: “after analyzing and engaging with narratives from the DALN they get a chance to contribute to it. There’s no other resource like this with respect to literacy and literacy studies more generally” (Christopher, 2013, questionnaire). Sue, Beth, and Christopher contended that when students submit narratives to the DALN, their personal stories become part of the public and academic knowledge on literacy that others may then use to inform their own understandings of literacy. Students become literacy experts using their own self(direction) to shape the content, implications, arguments, and accessibility of their DALN contributions. Based on the questionnaire responses, I argue that the DALN may provide one way to shift the emphasis from instructor and academic experts and expert-direction to the expertise, situated knowledges, and direction of selves—students and other so-called non-experts.

My questionnaire respondents argued (and my own experiences with the DALN confirmed) that students’ self-direction was central to using the DALN, in part because this self- direction situated the students as experts. For example, students are experts of their own personal narratives because their stories are self-directed: they choose what to include or exclude from their stories. Further, they use self-direction to become experts on different narratives and concepts when they curate or solicit a collection of narratives from a community

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that they have identified or when they work closely with DALN narratives by performing qualitative research (such as grounded coding). I argue and the questionnaire responses asserted that each of these moves place the student at the center of knowledge making—the student or self as expert. In other words, student use of and contribution to the DALN can help expose the artificiality of the expert/self binary and facilitate movement between experts

(teachers, researchers, and scholars) and selves (students and novices).24 In the process, the

binary of expert/self is not dismantled but the artificiality of the either/or choice is exposed as

false.

Ultimately, the questionnaire participants revealed that there are many ways to honor

their own, other scholars’, and their students’ expertise, and the DALN was one resource for

doing so. The following section focuses on the major tensions about structure and access that

appear in the questionnaire responses, with specific attention to self-direction and openness.

According to questionnaire responses, the DALN’s structure—its personal, open, self-directed

nature—provides advantages as well as disadvantages for users and classroom application.

Restricted Openness: Experts and Selves

As I argued in Chapters 2 and 3, the DALN’s structure (its openness and self-directed nature) contributes to its queerness as a resource and most obviously reflects and resists the dominant binaries that shape social understandings and composition studies’ understandings of archives. Because the DALN’s submission and search processes are often based on self-directed and personal choices rather than solely on expert-direction or decisions, questionnaire respondents suggested that the processes of accessing and understanding the DALN, its

24 This is where we can also see the overlap between concepts: not only can student engagement with the DALN expose the binary between experts and selves but also the academic/personal binary and the academic realm (research and study) and the personal realm (personal stories). 197

narratives, and the various ways that the DALN functions were not always straightforward or easy. These difficulties were the reason why some questionnaire participants expressed desire for greater expert-direction, restriction, or control over the DALN (such as standard keywords, requiring all contributors to provide basic demographic information, and so on), revealing the binary of restricted/open as well as the binary of expert(direction)/self(direction). However, though some questionnaire participants suggested (or wished for) more restriction over how content is added or displayed, respondents overwhelmingly suggested that one of the advantages of the DALN is its openness and the self-direction required to use and submit to it. I argue, based on the questionnaire findings, that the openness of the DALN is not only evidence of the DALN’s queerness as an archives but also one of the greatest strengths of the DALN as an archives and resource.

As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, archives are often positioned as closed or restricted: most archives are not continually growing through weekly contributions. Part of the DALN’s openness rests on its continual growth. Lee noted that an advantage of the DALN was that it is

“still growing” (2013, questionnaire) and Karen said she saw it as “large and growing and pretty deliberately open,” and as a result, opportunities for the DALN’s use are evolving (2014, questionnaire). As new narratives are added, the DALN becomes a slightly different archives each time one returns to it, providing a general sense of openness and possibility. Ultimately, questionnaire participants contended that the openness of the DALN and the self-direction required to navigate it may be challenging, but these qualities have also motivated some questionnaire participants to incorporate the DALN into their classes.

Overall, questionnaire respondents suggested that the DALN’s openness provided intellectual and virtual space for students, teachers, and scholars to explore and better

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understand literacy (and archives-based research) from multiple perspectives. Openness

appeared in the questionnaire results in a variety of ways, both directly (students “like the open

submission structure”—Brian) and indirectly (appreciation of “the availability of diverse

experiences” —Beth). In classroom spaces, according the questionnaire respondents, the DALN

functioned as a platform for students to learn about how others who are similar and dissimilar

to themselves experience literacy. Beth suggested that an appealing aspect of DALN’s structure

was its public nature or openness. She said that students “…love the variety of stories and the

feeling that they are contributing to public knowledge” (Beth, 2013, questionnaire). Classroom

work is often restricted to the confines of the classroom, with little reach into broader public

conversations. The DALN, questionnaire respondents contended, was one way for students to

share their personal knowledge and experiences beyond the walls of the classroom and see

themselves as a kind of expert and perhaps feel a greater stake in their work with the DALN.

Based on participants’ perceptions of the DALN as a classroom resource, I contend that the

DALN’s open structure provides the largest benefits (and challenges) for classroom use.

Though questionnaire participants were specifically asked, “Does the scale or structure

of the DALN impact how you think about it or how you use it in the classroom” (question 11) comments about the DALN’s structure appeared in the responses to a few questions, particularly those about advantages and disadvantages of using the DALN. For example, when asked “From your perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages to using the DALN in the classroom” (question 12), and “what are the advantages and disadvantages identified by students” (question 13), all questionnaire respondents indicated that the DALN’s openness in terms of access, submission, and content of the narratives was both an advantage and disadvantage. Brian said that the DALN’s “Disadvantages largely center on the

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interface/navigation/search capabilities” (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). Other responses reflected this same line of thinking: Beth said her students “hate the search function” (Beth, 2013, questionnaire), and Sue concurred, saying that many of her students “…dislike…the search function, particularly given that many authors don’t tag their own narratives (or perhaps even spell keywords correctly)” (Sue, 2014, questionnaire). Sue required students to “…find their own way around the archive [and some]…students can get frustrated and/or quit without finding what they need…[the DALN’s] disadvantages are the sometimes discouraging searches that may or may not yield results” (Sue, 2014, questionnaire). Because DALN contributors create their own tags, searching for narratives on a specific topic can be challenging and yield few results, even when there are many narratives that touch on a specific topic. If a contributor did not provide a particular topic as a keyword (or the keyword is spelled or entered incorrectly) then the narrative will not appear in searches. Karen said, “since users assign their own tags, they’re unevenly applied, and it can be hard to gather narratives” though she also says “I like the search function” because it allows users to search according to their personal interests (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). Without a standard list of keywords, for example, contributors use their own language, which means archives’ users (including students and teachers) must think broadly and associatively about the topic or issue that they are searching for. And as questionnaire respondents claimed, users searches may be “discouraging” because they simply do not have the same vocabulary (and experiences) as the contributors.

Questionnaire respondents’ concerns about the keyword/tags and the openness of the

DALN submission process were also about self-direction: different users will find importance in different aspects of narratives. Though Karen found value in the range of narratives (in terms of topic, length, and quality), she said, “I think…the issue is that viewers/readers sometimes

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analyze or evaluate literacy narratives differently than the creators. We have different goals for the literacy narrative” (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). For instance, Karen “…might tag something as an instance of the literacy myth or literacy sponsorship, but [she] can’t retroactively tag something” (Karen, 2014, questionnaire).25 Like Karen, other participants suggested an increased degree of control over how materials were tagged in the DALN. Though Karen did not advocate introducing a “like button to the DALN,” she did think “more curation would be useful”

(Karen, 2014, questionnaire). However, I contend that increased curation26 could work against the openness and self-direction of both DALN contributors and users, and increased curation

(including the ability to retroactively tag narratives) could add a layer of restriction: only certain

types of people (those with particular status or expertise) may feel comfortable tagging others’

narratives, and this retroactive tagging could clash with the self-direction and desires of the

original contributors. Additionally, more curation could unintentionally privilege some narratives

over others and curation would likely be based on the curator’s personal situated knowledges

rather than the contributor’s.

The challenge of identifying narratives for projects was a reoccurring theme in

questionnaire responses. Beth argued, “The difficulty of finding appropriate narratives…can be a

significant challenge” for students and researchers alike (Beth, 2013, questionnaire). Further,

Brian’s responses suggested that even when users were able to identify narratives that use

particular keywords, students (and other researchers) sometimes became frustrated with the

quality and clarity of the narratives, both in terms of the content and the format of the

25 Karen’s comment highlighted the split between experts/selves, academics/non-academics, openness/restriction: both the literacy myth and literacy sponsorship are academic concepts, so the average non-academic is likely unfamiliar with or unlikely to use these terms. 26 Ulman (2013b) argues that altering the data provided by contirbutors raises ethical and practical concerns, partially because this would shift the focus from personal self-understandings of experiences to external or expert interpretations of others’ experinces and narratives. 201

submissions. For example, Brian reported that a student was frustrated and surprised by his search of the DALN; the student asserted that he identified only two narratives concerned with farming and literacy that “…really provided useful information” for his project during Spring

Term 2012 (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). However, as of May 2014, there were 52 narratives

that use “farming” as a keyword (or farming appears in the transcripts), with 31 of those

narratives submitted between 2008 and 2011. So if the student used the search term “farming”

during Spring 2012, he would have had at least 31 narratives to choose from. The fact that

Brian’s student said that he only found two DALN narratives that “…really provided useful information” for his project suggests two things: 1) the student had “different goals for the literacy narrative[s]” than the stories’ narrators, as Karen pointed out above; and 2) “farming” may not be the search term to help the student find the information he sought.

The disconnection appeared to be between the student’s situated knowledge and purpose (his self-directed and personal goals) for using DALN narratives and the DALN narrators’ situated knowledges (their self-directed and personal goals) and purposes for submitting to the

DALN rather than a failing of the DALN as a resource. First, the definition of “useful information” that Brian’s student was working from was based on that student’s: personal (but academic) project; his self-directed search of the DALN for narratives about/related to farming; and his own situated knowledges. The student’s goals and ideas appeared to be at odds with what the

31 different narrators who used “farming” as a keyword saw as useful information for their narratives. Second, if there were at least 31 narratives using “farming” as a key word at the

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time of the student’s search, yet he claimed there were one two that were useful, this suggests that perhaps “farming” is not the keyword that will lead him to the information he seeks.27

Though the wide ranging quality and clarity of the DALN’s narratives is similar to other archives (e.g. many archives have partial records or documents, records that are partially damaged, unreadable, or otherwise less accessible, see Schwartz, 2002), Karen’s students,

…were struck by the uneven quality of video, length of narratives, and topics covered.

The diversity that I see as a strength they saw as a source of confusion—if all these

things are literacy narratives, is everything that talks about reading or writing a literacy

narrative? (Karen, 2014, questionnaire)

In other words, the openness of the DALN and its structures and functions (such as access, contribution, topic focus, and so on) may be useful for researchers, but may also be intimidating or frustrating for students, as Karen noted above. Further, with the DALN, defining what literacy and literacy narratives are (that is, defining the concepts that are the central focus of the DALN) is the responsibility of contributors, many who are literacy non-experts or novices. The open, self-defining nature of the DALN means that it relies upon the situated knowledges of contributors, and even if these contributors are literacy experts, they are still operating from a specific personal position and relying upon situated knowledges. The openness of how literacy is defined by contributors to the DALN pushed against Karen’s students’ perceptions of what literacy and literacy narratives were, apparently making it more difficult for her students to engage with the DALN. However, Beth’s responses reflected Karen’s perception of the DALN as well. Beth noted that the DALN’s openness provided something useful for students (and other users of the DALN): it “…offers students broader [or more open] perspective on what ‘literacy’

27 These concerns and issues are not really any different than the challenges people experience when working with any archives. See Chapter 2 for more information about these challenges. 203

means and how it works in their lives…” which could facilitate students’ critical thinking about literacy (Beth, 2013, questionnaire).

In a similar vein, responses to my questionnaire suggested that the DALN’s openness has meant that instructors and students can use the DALN as they see fit, from (re)imagining literacy and people’s relationship to literacy and archives to developing qualitative and other academic research skills.28 Questionnaire participants indicated that they incorporated the DALN into their

classes because its open structure provided an opportunity for students (and instructors) to take

up different roles in the research process, and the DALN simultaneously provided a range of

literacy experiences from both experts and non-experts, from people similar to and different

from themselves. Brian said that he has tried to “…emulate the DALN ‘life cycle’ on a smaller

scale: going from the submission phase, to the collection phase, and finally to the research

phase seemed tidy…it made sense to have my students play these different roles so that they

could consider literacy from multiple angles” (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). Users and

contributors can use their own self-direction for exploring and understanding the DALN. Though

other archives may provide opportunities to curate or create a collection within individual

research projects, most archives do not allow any individual to contribute to archives without

permission and without following strict guidelines.29

In the same way, Harold contended that the DALN could be used to help students not only “serve their communities and learn about literacy,” but also teach about and practice qualitative research, such as “…conduct[ing] oral history field work [and] writ[ing] about primary

28Comer & Harker argue that the DALN “...offers students a multifaceted perspective on what it means to do research…” such as “…the process of identifying and interviewing subjects, analyzing the results, and presenting findings (sometimes in multiple media)” (Comer & Harker, 2015). 29 As explored in Chapter 2, materials from individuals often do not end up in archives until after the person has died and after an expert has determined that the materials and person in question are important and/or unique enough to deserve preservation. 204

materials in a research/writing class…” (Harold, 2013, questionnaire). Brian, Harold, and other participants argued that using the DALN in their classes provided the opportunity for students to take on the role of researchers, informants, and writers all within a single class, and as a result, students developed both academic and personal skills, such as qualitative research, rhetorical analysis, and interpersonal communication.

However, according to the questionnaire participants, the DALN’s openness seemed to be at odds with students’ general perceptions of what research was supposed to be.

Questionnaire participants claimed that students’ frustration was due (in part) to some students’ expectations for research and composition courses. Karen asserted that her students were sometimes resistant to using the DALN because it does not reflect the “more conventional genres” of writing and research that many students were used to, and some students wanted more traditional research resources rather than “sources that they themselves found or created” (2014, questionnaire). In other words, Karen argued that her students were accustomed to the restriction that generally defines academic research as it happens in classrooms.

The restriction that Karen claimed her students were used to is evident in how university curricula are developed. For example, Lee and Karen commented that the department, university, state, or other funding source mandated their course content and assignments. On the one hand, Lee could not envision how the DALN could fit into the tight and prescribed course content that he was required to teach, so he used the DALN only for extra credit (i.e. a course aspect that was not mandated by the state or department) (2013, questionnaire). Lee, who teaches at a regional state university, would like to incorporate the DALN into his classes, but he said,

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…the current structure of my class is prohibitive in time for including it as part of the

classroom experience….[the courses have a] predetermined structure with due dates for

major assignments that [have] to be unified across all sections (50 or more), which [has]

limited the time I [have] had available to integrate my own assignments and

preparations. (Lee, 2014, personal communication)

For Lee, openness and restriction appeared when he compared the DALN (open) with the requirements of a course that are mandated by university or state regulations (restricted). On the other hand, though Karen’s courses had a relatively narrow, prescribed curriculum, she was able to interpret the guidelines in ways that allow her to use the DALN to meet the state’s requirements. She said, “I’m mandated by the state to teach the ‘modes,’ including narrative. So instead of the descriptive narrative popular in my department, I use literacy narratives” with the

DALN as illustration of what literacy narratives could be (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). Though both Lee and Karen were constrained by curriculum requirements, their differing contexts allowed for differing degrees of openness when incorporating the DALN into their classes.

The questionnaire respondents also identified structures and processes of the DALN that relied upon openness and restriction. For example, the paperwork that must be completed by each contributor was a restriction—a narrative cannot be accepted and posted without completed paperwork—but at the same time, the paperwork put the control into the hands of the contributor who can decide how accessible his/her narrative may or may not be to others.

For instance, Karen mentioned that though students enjoyed collecting narratives from others, some students “thought the paperwork process (informed consent, licensing, etc.) was a bit unwieldy and annoying…they felt like it was burdensome” that contributors have to read and complete paperwork (questionnaire, 2014). Karen’s students liked the openness of identifying

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contributors and collecting their narratives, but the restriction of the paperwork was frustrating.

Based on Karen’s questionnaire responses, I argue that the openness of the DALN that allowed students to become hands-on researchers and experts was at odds with the university-required

(e.g. the IRB) and ethically required paperwork.

The comments from questionnaire participants pointed to a particular issue: because there is little restriction built into the DALN (e.g. there are few requirements for submissions or accessing the DALN, and few narratives have been rejected) using the DALN (like almost all archives30) requires users’ patience and flexibility. Though questionnaire participants positioned the DALN’s openness as potentially problematic for users, questionnaire participants made few explicit calls for increasing restriction. Even then, the participants’ few direct suggestions for restriction could be understood as calls for greater openness. For example, as mentioned earlier, Karen said that she would like to be able to “retroactively tag” narratives with key terms.

Karen’s desire to retroactively tag would be a degree of restriction: contributors would have less control over how their narratives are identified in the archives. Though she wanted to tag using her expertise as an academic—identifying academic concepts such as “literacy sponsorship” and

“literacy myth”—the suggestion that users (rather than contributors) be able to tag narratives after submission would be an example of greater openness. Conventional and (many) queer archives generally do not allow users (regardless of expertise) to tag materials because that task is restricted to the archivists or archives’ gatekeeper (see Ch. 2 for an in-depth discussion of this issue).

30 As Chapter 2 details, searching archives in general can be challenging, but the DALN can be particularly challenging because of its queer structure which allows each contributor to decide the degree of accessibility of their narratives, from key terms to demographic information to copyright. More conventional archives (and even some queer archives such as The Lesbian Herstory Archives) tend to feature a variety of restrictions, from who can access the archives to when the archives can be accessed to what can or cannot be done with the materials in the archives. 207

Although a larger sampling using my questionnaire is needed to confirm and extend my findings, the questionnaire participants’ responses indicate that the DALN’s openness allowed questionnaire participants to use the DALN in ways that met their and their classes needs. The following section provides a brief conclusion for this chapter and provides an overview of the following, concluding chapter.

Concluding

This chapter has examined how a small selection of composition instructors have developed their understandings of the DALN and the ways in which these instructors have incorporated the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives into some college composition classrooms. Participants in my questionnaire suggested that the DALN is an open resource that provides a space for students (and instructors) to inhabit a variety of subject positions within the research process and can be used to meet a variety of personal, academic, and institutional goals. As I have endeavored to demonstrate in this dissertation, the DALN is shaped by binaries, and questionnaire responses provided further evidence for the importance of binary values for understanding the DALN. But the binary value that looms largest is openness, whether the focus is on the DALN’s structure or the ways that the DALN is put to use in classrooms and other contexts: questionnaire responses suggested that openness is the defining factor of the DALN and its use in classrooms, allowing teachers to use the DALN to meet the pedagogical needs of a variety of courses in a range of contexts. Though the other bnary concepts are also important for understanding and using the DALN, the questionnaire responses seemed to confirm that openness undergirds them all.

My questionnaire findings revealed the variety of ways that teachers and their students used and conceptualize the DALN. As Karen claimed, the DALN and “personal stories serve as an

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avenue into and an illustration of academic theories, complicating what we think we know and bringing depth and richness to the conversation,” (2014, questionnaire). Karen and this chapter both suggested that the DALN complicated and provided a richness to broader social

understandings of literacy, in part because the DALN surfs the binaries that dominate social

understandings of archives and academic spaces. Though more research with a larger

population is needed, my questionnaire findings suggested that DALN may provide a way to not only meet the needs of composition classrooms (and their larger institutions) but also challenge simplistic social binaries that shape social understandings of archives and literacy.

The following chapter, “Queerly Forward, a conclusion: The DALN and the future of composition studies” examines pedagogy and praxis of the DALN and the future for the Digital

Archive of Literacy Narratives as a queer resource for classrooms and beyond. In particular, the concluding chapter explores the practical and philosophical challenges and rewards of using the

DALN in classrooms and provides analysis of two DALN-focused courses (a digital media and

English studies course and a second-level composition course). The two courses provide examples of how meta work may provide a way of engaging with the DALN and expose the binaries that are often unspoken in academic research and classrooms. Further, in the concluding chapter I consider how the DALN might be used by instructors to teach composition and academic argument in an increasingly diverse and digital composition classroom, queering expectations for what a composition course should or could look like and how it could function.

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Chapter 5 Queerly forward, a conclusion: The DALN and the future of composition studies

“Queer” seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person’s undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filtration… what it takes—all it takes—to make the description “queer” a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person. Eve Kofosky Sedgwick, 1994

As I have stated throughout this dissertation, the DALN, like queerness in general, exists

as an “open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and

excesses of meaning…” (Sedgwick, 1994, p. 8) that can be deployed for a variety of goals.

Queerness becomes visible when individuals experiment and embrace queer values, as the

epigraph from Sedgwick (1994) suggests. I acknowledge that though I perceive the DALN as a

queer and queering resource and this manifests in ways that I understand and engage with it,

others may and will understand and use the DALN in non-queer or even anti-queer ways.1

Queerness depends (in part) on the willingness to embrace and embody queerness. 2 So this

1 One future project with the DALN will be exploring what it means and looks like for someone or some community to use an archives such as the DALN for anti-queer ways. For example, I can imagine a fundamentalist Christian organization deciding to collect narratives from their members in order to shift the focus or conversation on a topic such as the rights of LGBTQ people. The individual contributors may not consciously be using the DALN in anti-queer ways—they are simply sharing their personal narratives about Biblical literacy as it relates to gender and sexuality roles, for example. But the organizers of the collection event may desire to have a large number of narratives from a fundamentalist Christian perspective in order to skew or shift the focus on particular topics within the archives. 2 On the blog “JDK ponders English” JDK (2011) says “…when a reader comes along primed to read in a queer way, the text suddenly becomes ripe with queer symbolism.” This is true for most analytical and cultural frameworks. 211

conclusion—like this dissertation—embraces queerness in order to imagine how the DALN could be a component of composition studies’ queer future.

Amy Winans (2006) argues “A queer pedagogy draws attention to the parameters of questioning, thus highlighting the process of normalization as it draws attention to the places where thinking stops” (Winans, 2006, p. 113). Throughout this dissertation I have argued— based on responses to my questionnaire and comparative analysis of the DALN and other archives in composition research—that the DALN could be used (in conjunction with other resources) to draw “attention to the places where thinking [about archives, literacy, and research] stops.” This concluding chapter explores the spaces where my research has stopped— the gaps and lapses of my research, such as examinations of other stakeholders—as well as provides the practical and philosophical challenges and rewards of using the DALN in composition classrooms.

Some limitations

There are two major limitations to my project, revolving around the questionnaire: 1) small sample size, which limits the claims I can make about how the DALN is or has been used in classrooms; 2) lack of students’ and other users’ (non-instructor and non-student) perceptions of the DALN. Studies with larger sample sizes and studies that include students and other users of the DALN could provide complexity and depth to the knowledge about the DALN, its uses, and the possibilities for its uses.

To begin, though I purposely kept my sample size small—nine participants—this small

sample size means that I am limited in the claims I can make about the DALN and its use. I was

more concerned with receiving in-depth narrative feedback from a targeted group of instructors who used the DALN rather than feedback from a larger sample with instructors who may not

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have used the DALN in their classes. Further, I was not seeking to generalize about the DALN but instead gain understanding of how some instructors understand and use the DALN in their classrooms. My desire to focus on a small group—on the particular of that group--stems from my use of a queer framework for understanding the DALN and its narratives: as the Sedgwick epigraph asserts, queerness is about “undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filtration.” In this dissertation, this has manifested in examining a small sample of instructors’ personal experiences with the DALN. Future studies with larger pools of instructors/participants may provide a wider range of insights into the DALN and how instructors anticipate using it in classrooms. A larger sample size may allow some generalizations

about the DALN, how it is and how it can be used in classrooms and communities.

Along the same lines, I only collected feedback from instructors. Though instructors are a major stakeholder in the DALN, they are not the only stakeholder. In order to better understand the DALN and how it is perceived, understood, and used, data should be collected from students as well as instructors. As most teachers experience, perceptions of a course and resources can vary widely and teachers and students may have quite different experiences with and thoughts about the DALN. Though some of my questionnaire participants indicated that both they and their students found the DALN to be an interesting and useful a resource for composition, a survey of those participants’ students could reveal conflicting experiences or

perceptions of the DALN. For example, though many participants indicated that the DALN was

useful for teaching qualitative research in their composition classes, some students may feel

that qualitative research has no place in composition courses and as a result may have a

negative perception of the DALN and its usefulness for composition classrooms. Further, some

students may be invested in the power and knowledge hierarchy that places instructors and

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experts at the top, and attempts to challenge or decenter this power using the DALN may be unwelcome. Understanding how students experience the DALN in classrooms is necessary for developing a fuller understanding of the DALN as a classroom resource.

Additionally, there are other DALN stakeholders who exist outside of the classrooms

proper such as communities who have provided narratives (e.g. the Narratives of Black

Columbus community collection; deaf and hard-of-hearing communities; queer communities) and administrators at universities where the DALN has a significant presence (such as OSU, the host institution of the DALN). Communities (mostly) external to institutions of higher education may have different viewpoints and experiences with the DALN; they may view the DALN as an academic and expert resource rather than a resource that exists or moves between community and academic spaces. University administrators, who face different pressure than instructors, students, and non-university populations, may have different expectations and requirements for classroom resources that are based on bureaucratic and capitalistic pressures and needs.

Gathering the experiences and thoughts from more of the DALN’s stakeholders could be important for better understanding the DALN holistically—how it is understood and used by a wider range of users and contributors and its possibilities as a resource for a wider range of populations. Larger studies with different stakeholders could provide the basis to make generalizations about the DALN as a classroom and community resource, and larger studies could also help confirm or challenge my assertion that the DALN can be used to queer the classroom and disrupt power hierarchies that define and privilege experts.

That said, this conclusion returns to the questionnaire responses to discuss the ways in which the DALN may queer composition studies, with a focus on a (queer) pedagogy and praxis of the DALN (how, why, and in what ways the DALN can be and is used in the composition

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classroom) and the potential practical and philosophical challenges of using the DALN in composition studies. I will illustrate my claims with responses and materials from questionnaire participants as well as materials provided by the DALN’s resources section. Then, using course materials from two questionnaire participants, I provide analysis and suggestions for incorporating the DALN into composition classrooms, arguing that meta-work is one way to foster engagement with the DALN and potentially queer the binaries that dominate composition studies research.

Practically and Philosophically Speaking

I contend that instructors could consciously queer (ala Sedgwick) the composition classroom by using the DALN to identify and push against the various hegemonic binaries that shape archives, the fields of composition and literacy, and research and teaching in these fields while still meeting the institutional, departmental, and personal goals of different college courses. As with any resource, there are both practical and philosophical rewards and challenges when teachers incorporate the DALN into classrooms. Practically and philosophically, instructors can use the DALN and its narratives to teach about literacy broadly as well as teach about the social, cultural, and material realities for different populations. Further, as undergraduate research becomes more and more central to the missions of modern U.S. universities (CUR-at-a- glance, 2011), instructors must find ways to meet these academic goals. As I have argued throughout this dissertation, instructors can (and do) use the DALN to meet the research mandate of modern undergraduate education and position the work of composition studies as research-focused. Participants in my small-scale questionnaire, for example, indicated that they used the DALN as a resource, model, and audience for both their own and their students’ research and scholarship, including but not limited to: qualitative research, rhetorical analyses,

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social and cultural critiques, and new media/digital media composition and theories. However, there are practical and philosophical challenges to using the DALN, from technology access and technological literacy to student and administrator expectations for composition courses.

Practical rewards: Meeting personal and institutional goals

This section examines the practical rewards of using the DALN: the ways it can be used to meet the various goals of composition classes, whether these are institutional or personal.

One institutional goal mentioned in the previous chapter is undergraduate research. The DALN can be a resource for composition studies to demonstrate some of the research contributions that the field can contribute to universities. Comer & Harker (2015) contend that the DALN can

be used to combine research with composition and critique. They argue, “As a classroom

resource, the DALN enables both analysis and production [i.e. research and compositions],

offering students and teachers opportunities to play with multimedia rhetoric while studying

multiliteracies, to combine research and criticism with reflection and creation” (Comer &

Harker, 2015). In other words, instructors can use the DALN to meet the expectation that undergraduate education includes or involves research. Comer and Harker’s claims about the

DALN align with responses to my questionnaire. Respondents noted that they used the DALN as a research resource, to develop a common language, and to teach research and related methods such as ethnographic research; interviewing and oral histories; narrative analysis and coding; and participant research. When teaching qualitative research, instructors may use the

DALN as a source for student research and practice. Karen used DALN narratives to teach different types of narrative coding and analyses as well as other qualitative analysis and methods (Karen, 2014, questionnaire), and Harold used the DALN to teach about and practice

“oral history field work, [and] writ[ing] about primary materials in a research/writing class”

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(Harold, 2013, questionnaire). Both Karen and Harold suggested that the DALN functions as a shared and baseline resource for students to understand different research concepts and practices. Other research foci and practices mentioned by questionnaire participants includes rhetorical analysis and rhetorical composing; service learning; and digital media/new media rhetoric, research, and composing.

Practically, then, instructors can use the DALN and its contents to meet a variety of goals

and the structure of the DALN provides opportunities for users to inhabit a range of positions in

the research and composing processes. At a basic level, instructors can use the DALN alongside

more conventional archives such as University Archives (or State or National Archives) to

explore the ways in which archives and archiving are not passive processes, but processes that

are based on implicit values which determine who and what stories end up preserved for future

generations. A discussion on the nature and values of archives can be the basis for better

understanding the affordances of the DALN as a resource. In this process, students and teachers

alike can move between subject positions—researcher, audience, and contributor.

The opportunity to surf between different subject positions is one reason some

questionnaire participants have incorporated the DALN into their classes. For example, Brian

argued that he used the DALN because users and contributors can surf between contributor,

researcher, and audience. As a result, he argued, students “…could consider literacy from

multiple angles” (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). Though Brian referred primarily to students,

teachers and researchers can also use the DALN to embody different positions in the research

process in order to examine literacy experiences and therefore “consider literacy from multiple

angles,” including how students and other non-experts understand, use, and discuss literacy. As

explored in Chapters 3 and 4, considering literacy and knowledges from multiple perspectives

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may disrupt the power binaries, opening up claims to knowledge and expertise to a wider range of experiences and people. Similarly, Christopher argued that he used the DALN in his classes because the “DALN helps develop community in the classroom on levels of identity, practice, and methodology,” providing a common reference for understanding personal and academic practices and methodologies (Christopher, 2013, questionnaire). Though I hesitate to claim that the DALN always develops a “community” when it is used in classrooms, I agree that the DALN can provide a commonality of experiences and knowledge for students and instructors. In general, participant responses suggested that instructors can and have used the DALN to illustrate different roles in the research process as well as to illustrate different research possibilities for composition, rhetoric, and literacy studies.

In other words, questionnaire respondents suggested that the DALN might be used as a practical pedagogical resource for meeting the academic and research goals of college composition (and related) courses. I argue that the DALN’s structure and primary values of openness, self-direction, the personal (and its movement between associated binaries) means that instructors and students can use the DALN as an example of how to surf the binaries and incorporate both sides into their work. For example, a student can use her personal interests and desires to identify a community of individuals from whom to collect narratives for the DALN.

The student could then use these narratives as the basis for an academic project, or could simply collect the narratives as a way to provide a historical record of that particular community.

Regardless, the student would be relying on her own personal interests to collect personal literacy narratives and to think about and frame literacy and its role in people’s lives.

This melding of the personal and academic was a benefit mentioned by respondents in my questionnaire. All questionnaire participants (n=9) indicated that they use the DALN to help

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students understand and think about literacy in different, more personal ways. Brian noted that the DALN is useful for the classroom because “…personal narratives are naturally compelling, engaging, and draw in students who might otherwise be put off by the topic” (Brian, 2013, questionnaire). Christopher said that he uses the DALN to highlight the personal side of theory, to “…bring to life the theories, precepts, and characterizations of literacy that [his] students read about in secondary sources, specifically research from New Literacy Studies” (Christopher, 2013, questionnaire). In a similar way, instructors can use published scholarship that relies upon the

DALN to illustrate the ways in which personal and multimodal resources can be used in academic research. Three questionnaire participants mention using Stories that Speak to Us

(2013), a multimodal edited collection about the DALN, as a resource for demonstrating the academic use and value of DALN narratives. The Stories that Speak to Us (STSTU) exhibits use

DALN narratives as evidence for academic claims and arguments, so using Stories in the

classroom demonstrates the ways in which personal knowledge and experiences can be

academically useful and how students’ experiences can, as Sue noted, “…potentially [become]

part of someone else’s research into this topic” (Sue, 2014, questionnaire). Further, because

some of the exhibits in STSTU originate in the personal experiences of the authors (see Kinloch,

Moss, & Richardson, and to a lesser degree, Frost & Malley; Brueggemann & Voss), STSTU can be used to demonstrate that personal experiences and personal connections can be the basis for interesting and rigorous academic work. Beth argued that scholarship such as STSTU shows students that there is “…an audience and exigency for literacy narrative assignments” beyond their instructors and fellow classmates (Beth, 2013, questionnaire). This move from the classroom to the public (and back again) opens the work and research of composition classrooms to include public and non-academic/non-expert audiences, which can disrupt

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traditional notions and binaries of academic research.

Another practical benefit to using the DALN in classrooms may rest on its position as a multimodal archives and resource. Multimodality is part of communicating in the 21st century,

and a few participants indicated that they use the DALN as a basis for their students’ multimodal

compositions and exhibitions. Instructors can use—and do use, according to questionnaire

respondents—the DALN to highlight the variety of approaches to communication and composition in the digital age broadly and within the disciplines of rhetoric and composition specifically. Christopher said, “DALN emphasizes both analysis and production—the theoretical cornerstones of the field of Rhetoric and Composition…[and the] DALN is digital and relevant to contemporary modes of communication and composition” (2014, questionnaire).3 Brian (digital

media course), Karen (first-year and second-year composition), and Harold (second-year composition) indicated that they incorporated the DALN by having their students curate exhibits and develop other multimodal projects using DALN narratives, and these multimodal projects often have reach beyond the classroom. Karen, for instance, noted that her students’ projects were exhibited and viewed by class members as well as English department faculty and even the president of the university (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). The public nature of the DALN may help instructors and students think more critically about the role of research and the personal in academic work; when the reach of one’s scholarship and personal literacy experiences extends to a public audience that may be both more specialized and generalized, this may result in a greater consideration of power and knowledge hierarchies and gaps and how these manifest in scholarship and personal narratives. The public nature may allow users and contributors to better understand the value of incorporating the personal into the academic and the value of

3 Of course access to technological resources may not be possible at all institutions, and this is one of the drawbacks I address later in this conclusion. 220

non-expert voices in academic spaces.

Although respondents identified many practical benefits to using the DALN in composition classrooms, the DALN also presents some practical challenges. The following section addresses some of these potential challenges, followed by a discussion of the philosophical benefits and challenges to incorporating the DALN into composition classrooms.

Practical challenges: Material realities

Although participants identified benefits to using the DALN, they also identified challenges, most of which rest on material and institutional realities. As respondents to my questionnaire and my personal experiences indicate, the DALN is often incorporated into general education courses such as first- and second-year composition. In some contexts, the curriculum, resources, and lessons are prescribed, even down to due dates, which can leave little flexibility for adding resources, especially continually evolving ones such as the DALN.

Students may also have set ideas about what composition courses and research in these courses might entail, and some of the common uses of the DALN that participants identified may clash with student expectations that a composition course focus on traditional writing and reading of alphabetic texts. Finally, the DALN is a digital resource, so technological access and knowledge are necessary for accessing and using the DALN; some institutions and student populations may not have the access and skills necessary to use the DALN.

Incorporating a dynamic resource such as the DALN can be challenging for required general education courses because, as questionnaire participants Lee and Karen noted, these courses often have set curricula and student and administrator expectations regarding content.

Courses with a prescribed curriculum and assignments can leave little space or time to include something such as the DALN. Further, respondents indicated that students often have relatively

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narrow expectations for general education courses, which corresponds to my own experiences teaching composition: students tend to have specific expectations for what will happen in composition classes—lots of traditional composing with alphabetic texts and use of already established resources rather than creating resources through the collection of literacy narratives

(Karen, 2013, questionnaire; also see DeWitt, 2013). So the range of uses participants identified, including qualitative research, may seem outside the realm of what of what composition is supposed to be. To combat some of students’ resistance, Karen suggested that instructors facilitate conversations about the role of different research methods in composition studies. As I will examine later in this conclusion and as Karen (and other participants) suggested in her response, meta conversations or meta work that steps back to examine the DALN and work with the DALN from a conceptual and theoretical view may help students (and others) to understand or see the value of the DALN and its possibilities for the classroom.

When students are required to collect personal literacy narratives from others, it can be time-consuming and seem disconnected from the expected work of composition (i.e. writing and reading using alphabetic text), as several participants noted. Harold indicated that some students find “the logistics…of the DALN challenging,” primarily because collecting and

processing narratives tend to happen outside of the classroom (Harold, 2013, questionnaire).

Karen echoed Harold’s point: “…some students hated that the assignments sent them outside of

the classroom” (2014, questionnaire). The nontraditional aspects of working with the DALN can

make some students resistant to using the DALN as a classroom and research resource.

Discussions of logistics point to another practical challenge for instructors wishing to incorporate the DALN: technological access. Instructors and students must have access to computers and an internet connection (preferably a high-speed connection—downloading DALN

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files using a slower internet connection is possible, but it would likely take a long time for some of the large files to load). For full time faculty at research-intensive institutions, on-campus access to these types of resources is common, as the questionnaire respondents noted.

However, for adjuncts or contingent labor and for those at smaller schools and two-year institutions, coordinating access to labs or computers for classes can be more difficult.4 Karen, who is an adjunct at a community college, noted that though there is a laptop cart that she can use for class meetings, “as an adjunct, [she] can only use the laptop cart if [her] class is scheduled in that room, while full time faculty can use it in any room in the building…[and] full time instructors and their courses have priority for computer lab and laptop cart time,” (Karen,

2014, questionnaire; 2014, personal communication). Exploring the DALN takes time, and it may not be possible to dedicate enough time to the DALN during class meetings because computer labs (or laptops) might not be available for more than one class meeting or because the other class meetings are dedicated to teaching and completing other externally-mandated class requirements and assignments. Further, computer and internet access during class meetings may not be enough for engagement and research with the DALN, which means students would have to explore the DALN on their own time outside of class. If students do not have their own personal computers and high-speed internet access, then they will have more difficulty browsing the DALN and viewing narratives.

Though I have touched on some of the major practical challenges and rewards related to using the DALN in classrooms, additional surveys of teachers, students, and administrators

4 For example, when I was an adjunct faculty member at a community college, it was often a challenge to reserve one of the computer classrooms for class meetings because they were often already reserved months in advance or my classes met at such late hours (e.g. class meeting from 9pm-10:45pm) that labs were simply unavailable; in some cases, the only computer lab available was the large public lab which was color-coded so that instructors could reserve a corner of the room, and the public and loud nature of such spaces made it difficult to conduct coherent lessons that all students could hear. 223

would help develop a stronger sense of practical challenges and rewards. In the following sections, I explore some of the philosophical rewards and drawbacks to incorporating the DALN into classrooms.

Philosophical rewards: Illuminating difference

Because the DALN features personal stories that often explore (both explicitly and implicitly) the material realities for different groups of individuals, instructors may use the DALN to provide context and complexity for understanding the sociocultural identities of others and oneself. Additionally, because the DALN can be understood as an archives that pushes against

conventional understandings of archives (including those in composition studies), the DALN may

be used to examine the cultural and theoretical frameworks (i.e. powers and values) that shape archives. Based on questionnaire responses and my comparative analysis of the DALN, archives, and personal narratives in composition studies, I argue that teachers, according to their instructional goals, might be able to use the DALN to:

1) bridge between discursive and material understandings of sociocultural identity;

2) explore the structures and expectations of archives and associated research;

3) provide ways of understanding queerness as a worldview and intellectual approach

rather than simply a concept related to sexuality and gender identity; even if

instructors do not name queerness, instructors can use the DALN to challenge

normative hierarchies of value and knowledges about literacy, archives, and the role

of the personal in academic spaces.5

Comer and Harker (2015) suggest the DALN as a subject of study itself may be a useful way of

5 It is important to note that at no point did questionnaire participants use the term queer nor did I use the term queer anywhere in the questionnaire, so my suggestions are based on my interpretation of responses and my particular queer standpoint. 224

engaging with the DALN, and the suggestions I make above position the DALN as the subject of study.

Nearly all questionnaire respondents (7) stated that students enjoy using the DALN to listen to narratives from people with similar and dissimilar identities to themselves. Instructors can seize upon the differences and similarities that appear in narratives as a way to make connections between discursive and material realities of different sociocultural identity positions, including students. Karen, Brian, and Harold have developed courses that place the

DALN at the center of the research and intellectual work of the course, and each indicate that though they might change assignment criteria or requirements or may alter the ways in which they discuss the value of the DALN, they would still keep the DALN as the central focus of some of their courses because of the ways in which it can be used to illuminate different theoretical frameworks, different (sub)disciplines, and difference in general (2013/2014, questionnaire).

When instructors make the DALN the center of a course, I argue, they might be able to

help students understand the DALN in the context of more conventional archives and research

resources, which may make it easier to explicitly frame the DALN as a queer archives and

resource that can provide a different way for understanding and engaging with academic and

non-academic resources. Andrew Parker (1994) says queer is “…a non gender-specific rubric

that defines itself diacritically not against heterosexuality but against the normative” (p. 80), and

Faunce (2013) says, “’Queer’ opens up nontraditional spaces of discourse” (p.32). The DALN

provides teachers and students with opportunities for identifying the normative expectations

for archives and academic spaces as well as reimagining what the archives are and can be, and

the position or role of personal stories in academic spaces. The DALN’s position, my research

suggests, opens space for nontraditional approaches to and views of literacy, composition, and

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research. Though composition and literacy as fields have somewhat embraced the personal (see

Chapter 3), the DALN’s queer position as an open-access academic and non-academic resource positions it uniquely among composition resources. Focusing on queerness and what it means to queer something (such as archives, academic research, or academic resources) may provide other ways for students (and teachers) to challenge the restrictive binary values that can create false hierarchies where students, their knowledge, and the(ir) personal are often at the bottom.

Instructors could use the DALN as one resource to bridge the gaps between academic/personal and experts/selves to effect change in how students understand and value literacy practices and what can be considered valid for academic arguments. As my research suggests, the DALN’s interdisciplinary and cross-generic nature queers notions of disciplinary knowledge and the role of the personal, and what research resources do, look like, and how they exist in the world.

Of course there are challenges to incorporating a slippery, queer resource such as the

DALN into the classroom. The following section explores some of the philosophical challenges that using the DALN might pose.

Philosophical challenges: Resistance

Philosophically, some students (and instructors) may push against using personal narratives in the classroom and in research, and some may resist queerness as a frame for engaging with the DALN, whether it is explicitly named as queer or not. That is, as I have demonstrated throughout this dissertation, the open, personal, self-direction that characterizes the DALN may be seen as suspect and less rigorous than more traditional or conventional approaches to research and academic spaces. Some students (and instructors) may want a more conventional composition course because it is familiar to them. For example, questionnaire participant Karen said that some of her students “wanted a writing class that worked in more

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conventional genres, and research that used existing sources, not sources they themselves found or created” (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). For some of Karen’s students, the DALN and the type of composing and research they were being required to do were too far removed—I would say too queer—from what they assumed a research resource and composition course would or should be. I believe that this is a risk with using the DALN in a required course such as first- or second- year composition: students often have pre-conceived notions about what the purpose of a composition course is and therefore what it should look like and how it should function (see

DeWitt, 2013). The academic as impersonal is a common expectation for composition courses

(see Chapter 3 for a brief discussion of this concern), so asking students to be personal and to use personal narratives in their work may feel like a violation of an unspoken contract.6

One risk with increasing and consistent use of the DALN in classrooms could be the DALN becoming less queer (i.e. dominant and more normative) as it becomes ingrained in an institution or curriculum. However, because the DALN is constantly evolving in unpredictable ways7 and can be used in an untold amount of ways, I believe that the DALN may be somewhat

protected from becoming calcified and normalized within academic spaces. Moreover, I argue

that the DALN may be more likely to maintain its position as a queer classroom resource

because there will likely always be students (and instructors and administrators) who find personal stories suspect as evidence and in the classroom. For example, some students, such as

6 Further, if instructors do not provide the same degree of personal openness, the traditional classroom power balance and hierarchy will remain intact. If instructors ask students to be vulnerable by being personal, then instructors must be willing to be vulnerable as well. 7 As mentioned earlier in this dissertation, Ohio State’s IRB ruled that it should not and will not have jurisdiction over the DALN because it is not a research project in and of itself and because the general public has a good understanding of what it means to submit materials to a publicly accessible online site. I believe that this shift in how the DALN is perceived at its host institution will mean a greater openness and more opportunities for people to contribute as the requirements—such as extensive and sometimes difficult to understand permissions and consent form—will be more streamlined and less intimidating. This may mean more people will be willing to contribute as the process becomes quicker, and with each new submission, the DALN changes and we cannot predict the ways in which it will change. 227

Karen’s, may resist the DALN and personal narratives because of the perceived distance from traditional academic resources. After reading and viewing first-person narratives, Karen’s student said, “why are we reading this? It’s just some guy’s story.” Karen says, “He found narrative suspect as a way to investigate American attitudes toward education; he wanted data and numbers and something that felt solid and universal rather than rhetorical, unstable, and particular” (Karen, 2014, questionnaire). Ultimately, the student’s concern provides an opening to discuss how and why specific standpoints or situated knowledges can be informative and crucial for developing a multifaceted understanding of different phenomena and experiences in context.

Likewise, some of the logistical concerns raised by questionnaire participants—such as

“the need to download often very large files in order to determine whether a narrative might be useful” (Beth, 2013, questionnaire)—could be used as starting points for exploring the philosophical (and practical) usefulness of the DALN, such as how or why particular aspect of the

DALN makes it unusual as an archival resource. These philosophical conversations are examples of meta work: discussions and compositions that approach the DALN, research, and personal literacy narratives from a conceptual and philosophical level. This work focuses on the

challenges and advantages of the DALN as a resource. I argue, based on questionnaire responses

from Brian, Karen, Sue, and Christopher; Comer and Harker’s (2015) findings; and my own

personal experiences using the DALN in the classroom, that meta work should happen early in

and throughout the process of working with the DALN as this can provide a foundation for

students to think about and more actively engage with the DALN as a resource.

My research suggests that the DALN’s interdisciplinary and cross-generic nature queers

notions of disciplinary knowledge and the role of the personal, and what research resources do,

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look like, and how they exist in the world. Meta work that steps back from the DALN to examine it in and of itself and to contextualize it among other resources may serve as a better way

understand the possibilities for the DALN by establishing the DALN’s similarities and differences

to other research resources. For example, Karen’s second-level writing course included some

contextualization of the DALN among research resources; the assignment sequence notes that

students will “learn strategies for searching any online repository of primary materials”

(Appendix D). Of course downloading and watching, listening, or reading large files can be time

consuming and can use up computer memory, but the fact that anyone can download and

essentially own a copy of an archival record that they can edit and insert into their own research

projects8 is unusual among archives. This point could be used to begin a discussion in classrooms about how working with the DALN is similar to and different from working with other academic resources such as archives and the rewards and drawbacks to a research resource like the DALN.

In the following section, I turn to the courses of two questionnaire participants to provide examples of how the DALN might be used productively, with particular attention to the ways in which meta work can facilitate the practical and philosophical possibilities for the DALN.

Meta work: Examining two DALN-centric courses

Making the DALN the center of composition courses is one way to incorporate the

DALN, and this section examines how instructors might use meta work to assist students in understanding the possibilities and limitations of the DALN and personal narratives. Karen’s second-year composition (Appendix D) and Brian’s digital media and English studies course

(Appendix E) provide examples of how the DALN could be used as the center of two different types of composition-focused courses. Each course emphasizes examining the DALN in the

8 Of course, the ability to edit, remix, and use narratives in this way depends on the permissions of each narrative, some of which do not allow for any editing or remixing. 229

context of other resources and requires students to reflect on their processes and experiences of working with the DALN. In both courses, students targeted specific communities or groups from which to collect literacy narratives, and this could mean that some students might develop a greater stake in the DALN and literacy narratives as an academic and personal resource. As each student or group of students identify and collect narratives, they are growing the DALN and contributing to the public knowledge about literacy—as well as public knowledge about an array of communities and groups. Overall, Brian’s and Karen’s courses and assignments reflect what I believe is the most important move for making the DALN the center of a course: meta work and analysis, a stepping back to examine not only the DALN but also archives, academic research, knowledge making, and more.

Though both Karen and Brian make the DALN the center of their courses, with all assignments focused on the DALN, the different course subjects impact how students feel about and respond to the DALN as a resource. For a digital media studies course (such as Brian’s), work with a complex digital resource such as the DALN would not seem out of place because the course is completely focused on digital media objects and composing. In contrast, students may not expect to interact with digital media, including composing multimodally9 and working with resources such as the DALN, in a composition course of any level (such as in Karen’s course).

Karen’s questionnaire responses indicated that “some students thought the research was kind of fun” but “some students hated that the assignments sent them outside the classroom….they wanted a writing class that worked in more conventional genres…” (Karen, 2014, questionnaire).

Meta conversations and meta composing tasks are central to both Karen’s and Brian’s courses.

9 Multimodal composing is when one uses several communicative modes to create meaning, such as alphabetic text, images, video, and audio. Multimodal composing is not always digital; one could use alphabetic text and a drawing or illustration to create a multimodal composition. 230

Karen, for example, discussed the DALN in the context of other research resources. After Karen had a student question the usefulness of personal stories for academic research, she began taking class time to explore and discuss the role of narrative in modern knowledge making and dissemination to help students better understand why performing narrative analysis might be useful beyond a college classroom. She said, “I’ve always tried to talk about what we learn from narratives, or surveys or statistics, journalism, scholarly books/articles, websites, and so on. I talk about ways that narratives tell us things we might not know otherwise, without belaboring the point” (Karen, 2014, personal communication). Karen’s response suggested that meta or conceptual conversations might help students who object to using resources such as personal narratives and the DALN in writing classes understand the ways in which understanding how to read and interpret (personal) narratives have become central to 21st century living. She says,

“When I spoke about the DALN, I tried to emphasize how flexible and fantastic it is as a resource—depending on what a teacher, student, researcher, activist or person needs it for, it can adapt. We talked about different purposes” for contributing to the DALN and using the

DALN’s narratives (Karen, 2014, personal communication). Further, Karen reported, “I shared the visuals and other items [about metadata from Ulman’s STSTU contributions] with students and we discussed how it helps contributors to be able to label their narratives as they want, but also the complications for users/researchers” (Karen, 2014, personal communication). Having an explicit conversation about the DALN’s open and self-directed structure and its dis/advantages for a variety of interested parties provides a context for understanding how the DALN exists in the world. Including Ulman’s STSTU exhibits “A Brief Introduction to the Digital Archive of

Literacy Narratives (DALN)” and “Reading the DALN Database: Narrative, Metadata, and

Interpretation” (with Daniel Carter) when classes use the DALN may also help demonstrate both

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how the DALN is unique among research resources and the ways that metadata can be useful for researchers and for learning about expansive topics such as literacy and how the DALN.

Karen’s course provided ample opportunities for meta conversations about the DALN and research resources as well as numerous opportunities to develop reflective compositions and arguments about their research process using the DALN. For example, the first assignment in Karen’s course asks students to browse the DALN and identify four narratives “…related by characteristics that interest” the student, and students are required to “…keep records of [their] work: browse links, search terms and results, descriptions of narratives reviewed” (“Analyzing

Literacy Narratives,” Appendix D). Then, the written analysis requires students to: “describe the rationale” for their choice of narratives; “describe the themes” students discovered through coding; and finally “pose questions for further research” (“Analyzing Literacy Narratives,”

Appendix D). The second assignment in the sequence, “Composing Your Literacy Narrative,” includes not only a personal literacy narrative composed with the DALN in mind, but also “…a reflective essay…explaining [the student’s] choices relating to medium, content, audience, and the process of composing a literacy narrative” (“Composing Your Literacy Narrative,” Appendix

D). Explicitly requiring students to communicate their processes of researching with (and possibly contributing to) the DALN allows them to step back from their processes to think about not just what they did, but how and why they did what they did, which can help students better understand not only their own work but the DALN in general.

In a similar way, Brian’s digital media and English studies course, “Building the DALN,” also made the DALN the main focus of the course and provided numerous opportunities for meta conversations and reflections on the DALN and the research process. These include conversations about the challenges and rewards of helping build archives, using the DALN for

232

research, and the DALN among other research resources. He said,

…early in the course, but after they had a good general sense of what the DALN was all

about, I had students look at a handful of similar narrative archival sites (StoryCorps,

[Library of Congress’] memory project, etc.). We used these as fodder for a conversation

where we conducted an informal comparative analysis, talking about the differences in

scale, scope, purpose, audience, and potential for research…I purposefully framed

discussion of the DALN's mission within the context of its importance to the field of

literacy studies... but more than that, we talked about the importance of ethnography,

narrative collection, general archival practices, and the use of digital technologies as

important methods/methodologies within the discipline of English–I felt this was an

important component of the course, as it helped expand for students (many of them

literature-focused) their concept of what "counts" as legitimate tools of research and

scholarship in English… (Brian, 2014, personal communication)

Brian’s class discussions and comparative analysis of the DALN and other narrative-focused

resources provide some room to consider the DALN within the context, content, and (potential)

use of similar research resources and academic research in English studies.

Overall, each phase of Brian’s assignment sequence included individual and group

reflection. For example, during “Phase Two: Field Collection Extravaganza,” students were

required to compose “’dispatches from the field’: short, reflective bits of media content…that

helps document the field collection process…These dispatches can take various forms, such as a

few still pictures with a short paragraph of text, a 30-second video clip, a short audio recording”

(Appendix E). These assignments not only require reflection and a degree of meta awareness,

but also engage students in low-stakes digital media composing. Brian says these short,

233

reflective compositions “…were meant to be accountability moments first and foremost—a way of making [students’] labor present and public. But beyond that, I thought it would be a fun way to engage the students in the middle of their field collections” (Brian, 2014, personal communication). Meta assignments that ask students to reflect not only on their processes but also reflect on the DALN as a resource as Brian and Karen required, can help both students and teachers gain a clearer sense of students’ research processes in general and with the DALN in particular. Brian, however, noted that the results of his “dispatches” assignment were a bit

“scattered,” in terms of quality and meeting deadlines, which Brian suspects stems from not placing enough emphasis on the role the more informal dispatches played in relation to the more formal research projects (Brian, 2014, personal communication). Brian’s experience suggested that meta assignments are useful for understanding the labor that goes into research projects and working with the DALN, but instructors first need to initiate conversations about how less formal work with the DALN can inform the development of more formal DALN-focused academic projects.

Of course, the methods and examples I use in this conclusion are not the only methods that instructors can use to successfully incorporate the DALN into college classrooms. More, larger studies with instructors, students, and other stakeholders must be done to better understand the DALN and how instructors can and do use and incorporate the DALN into classrooms. However, I contend that the queer position and possibilities of the DALN will be more evident when the DALN is made the center of a course and when students are given ample time to explore and contextualize the DALN within conventional binaries and expectations of archives, composition classrooms, and academic research.

234

Concluding, but just beginning

This dissertation has been a “queer studying” of the DALN and literacy (Boellstorff,

2010), and like queer theory, the DALN, its narratives, and its narrators “borro[w] refashion[n], and retell[l]” (Plummer, 2005, p. 369) dominant and minority narratives about archives, literacy, composition, and identities. The possibilities for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives are limited (primarily) by the imaginations and desires of those who contribute to and use the

DALN. Though it is a digital archives of personal literacy narratives, the small stories shared during a literacy narrative can cover almost any topic or issue, both related and unrelated to literacy. DALN narratives have the potential to disrupt dominant narratives about literacy, identity, and who has the right (and privilege) to contribute to the public record about literacy because many DALN narratives examine “…personal issues of being, becoming, and belonging in contextual and relational analyses of their situated experiences” with literacy (Grace & Benson,

1999, p. 93). Personal contextualization can result in an open interpretation of what literacy is, can, and does for people as well as what is appropriate for archives. This openness is a sign of the DALN’s queerness as an archives and resource for academic spaces and disciplines such as composition and literacy studies, composition classrooms, and research related to these fields and spaces.

The DALN’s decentralized, open, and digital nature could allow it to become an invaluable resource for teaching composition and literacy (and related research) as 21st century education becomes more digitally-based and moves more and more to online spaces, with miles

(and even countries) separating instructors and students from one another. The rise of both

235

online education and Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) requires resources and projects

that are accessible to all students, regardless of how far flung they may be, and the DALN could be one of the resources that composition instructors turn to for their online courses, including

MOOCs. The DALN is well positioned for online courses not only due to its open and accessible nature but also due to the range of resources the DALN website provides.

Several questionnaire participants (n=5) pointed to the DALN website’s resource section, which provides a variety of links and suggestions for instructors, students, and anyone else who desires ways to engage with the DALN and its narratives. There is a teacher-specific link, which includes assignments and activities for students from elementary school to college.

The college-level assignments and activities illustrate the ways in which instructors may use the

DALN to navigate between the dominant binaries that have been discussed throughout this dissertation such as academic/personal, expert(direction)/self(direction), and restriction/openness. The DALN’s resources also demonstrate some potential uses of the DALN mentioned by questionnaire participants including qualitative research, multimedia composing, rhetorical analyses, and personal and critical reflection, all of which could be used to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous learning.

The activity below, featured under college resources, asks students to engage in narrative coding—which could be used for qualitative research, discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis—and work collaboratively with other students. Though the prompt seems to be geared toward in-person classrooms, it could easily be adopted for online use, with students sharing findings through discussion boards and emails:

• Have multiple students independently code the same literacy narrative from

the DALN for key themes. Next, have students join forces in 2-3 person teams

236

(each member of whom has independently analyzed the same video). Ask

students to compare their findings and note which themes were identified by

every member of the team and which themes were identified by only one or

two of the students. Have students refine their codes and the themes they see

as a collaborative team. Finally, have the whole team code a new narrative

with the collaboratively refined coding schema they have produced as a team

and talk about what they see/hear/read. In class discussion, point out that all

narratives will be read/viewed/heard differently by different people/audiences.

This activity should also help students see that literacy narratives texts are not

self-explanatory; rather, they are complex data sets that require thoughtful

analysis. As such, these video texts may benefit from both individual and

collaborative readings. (“Table of Contents,” n.d.)

The process of narrative coding, both individually and collaboratively, is an example of research methods in action, whether used for qualitative, rhetorical, or discourse analysis. However, coding is also personal process; the codes develop from the particular patterns and themes each individual notices and which are based on each individual’s experiences and situated knowledges. The assignment, in other words, moves students between the academic

(qualitative research) and the personal (personal interpretation and collaboration).

Other activities, such as the one below, incorporate digital media composing and might serve to encourage students to bridge between their personal literacy experiences and the personal literacy experiences of others while placing both into socio-historical contexts and practicing qualitative research methods:

237

• Have students tell their own literacy narrative, focusing on how and when and

why they learned to use computers and other digital communication

tools/environments to read and compose. Then have them interview a person

at least two generations older than themselves about that person’s digital

literacy practices (or lack thereof). In a class discussion, have students share

their findings and describe how literacy values and practices have and have not

changed. Identify, across the class, common similarities and changes in literacy

values and practices. Have students create a movie that illustrates the changes

and similarities in literacy practices between themselves and the people they

interviewed. Encourage students to upload their videos to the DALN. (“Table of

Contents,” n.d.)

This activity asks students to bridge between personal and sociocultural experiences, identities,

and knowledges and the experiences, identities, and knowledges of others using a common

qualitative research method, interviewing.

The activities mentioned here place student knowledge and experience at the center of

the intellectual work, regardless of whether these prompts are used for online or face-to-face

courses, and truly, that is what I contend is a major contribution of the DALN: a disruption of the

hierarchies that place students and their knowledges below instructors or experts and their

knowledges.10 Just as online education challenges traditional notions of education and composition, so too does the DALN. The queerness of the DALN and the ways in which the DALN

10 I must mention assessment here: in most classrooms, assessment happens unidirectionally, from instructor to student, with instructors evaluating and grading students and their work. There are ways to disrupt this process as well, such as students and instructors collaboratively developing rubrics and grading schema so that the assessment guidelines reflect the needs and ideas of both students and instructors; and basing grades on an average of instructors’ assessments and students’ self-assessment or peers’ assessments. These methods could be used with or without using the DALN. 238

is used to provide queering instruction may provide the metaphorical and literal space to re- imagine the relationships between literacy, identity, power, and the dominant binaries that

shape archives, literacy, and associated values. I contend that DALN’s position provides an

opportunity for instructors and others to focus “…not [on] the correctness or prevalence of one

or the other side but, rather, the persistence of the deadlock itself” (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 91). As this dissertation has endeavored to demonstrate, drawing attention to the “deadlock itself” of dominant binaries can become the basis for choosing both/and rather than either/or and opening up the possibilities for archives, personal narratives, and composition.

I began this dissertation with two epigraphs, one from compositionist Lisa Ede and the other from (queer) poet Walt Whitman:

My research, like my life, constitutes an enactment of my current commitments and beliefs…In the future, rereading this chapter, rereading my life, I will inevitably see things differently. ~Lisa Ede (1992)

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes). ~Walt Whitman (1855)

Engaging with the DALN is about an openness, a willingness to “see things differently” over time as our own and our culture’s commitments and beliefs about literacy, about composition, about archives change and evolve, as impulsions change with each new experience and each return to the archives, and all of this may result in contradictions that cannot be reconciled into agreement—and that is okay. We—instructors, students, communities, and the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives—are large and contain multitudes. With this dissertation, I encourage people to seize upon the contradictions, these gaps, lapses, and excesses of literacy’s meaning to find their own places within and outside of the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives and sing a song of themselves. 239

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Appendix A Demographic and Keyword forms for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

With the signature below, I (or my Legal Guardian) affirm reading the attached documents, understanding Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives project, and agreeing to participate in this project as specified within the attached documents. I (or my Legal Guardian) also affirm giving my literacy story to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives to post on its public web site under either a Deed of Gift or a Creative Commons License. I am 18 years old or older. Name (print) Signature Date

I am younger than 18 years old. Legal Guardian’s Name (print) Legal Guardian’s Signature Date:

About Your Literacy Story… If we upload your literacy narrative to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) for you, we will include some descriptive information to it so that users can search the archive and find stories that interest them. Please complete the questions below for your story so that other users can find it easily. You can skip any question except the first question if there is a reason you do not want to answer. 1. What is your email address? (Required. We need your name and e-mail address in order to contact you if we have technical difficulties.)

2. What name do you want attached to your story? (You can use your own name or you can use “Anonymous” if you don’t want your own name used.)

3. What is your birth year? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by people of a particular age group.)

4. Do you want to self identify with regard to gender (ex. female, male, transgendered)? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by people of a particular gender.) 5. What is the title of your story? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by title.) 6. What is the date on which you recorded or wrote your story?

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7. What are the decades on which your story focuses? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by the decade on which they focus. Circle one or more of the choices below.) 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s, 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

8. Does your story mention or take place in a certain state/region/country that you’d like to identify?

9. What is a one-sentence summary of your story? (“This story is about…”)

10. Do you want to self-identify with regard to nationality? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by the nationality of their authors.)

11. Do you want to self-identify with regard to race or ethnicity? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by the race/ethnicity of their authors.)

12. Do you want to self-identify with regard to your class background (ex.: working class, middle class, wealthy)? (This information will help other DALN users find stories by the race/ethnicity of their authors.)

13. List at least 5 key words/phrases that describe the topics on which your story touches. (ex: computer games, books, church, writing, computers, comic books, teaching, learning, libraries, school, reading).

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Appendix B The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, Personal Narratives, and Teaching Survey questions

Thank you for agreeing to complete the following survey. On the following page you will find additional information about the project, including a consent form.

Q1 This is a consent form for participating in the dissertation research project, “Queering Composition, Queering Literacy: Personal Stories and The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.” The completion of the survey provides your consent. You have been chosen to participate in this study because you have used the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives in your classroom. You must be at least 18 years of age in order to participate in this study. Your participation in this research project is completely voluntary, and requires the completion of the following survey, with up to two follow- up communications. At the end of the survey, you will be directed to upload examples of your course materials. Any clarifying follow-up questions will be provided through email or telephone. Follow-up should take no more than 30 minutes total to respond to, although it is likely it will take no more than 10-15 minutes. You should expect to spend no less than 30 minutes and no more than 2 hours for all components of this process, including follow-up. You will be expected to provide course materials such as syllabi, assignment prompts, activities, homework assignments, and other relevant materials. Your information and materials will be anonymized upon request. If requested, pseudonyms will be assigned to all of the materials provided, including survey answers and institutional affiliation. All survey responses and course materials will be stored on a password-protected computer and password-protected hard drive. You may choose not to answer any question. You should not include information in your responses that will put you or others at risk when it is made public. Please consider the information below carefully. Feel free to ask questions before making your decision whether or not to participate. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to agree to the terms of this consent form. The purpose of the project is to investigate the DALN as a data resource about literacy as a way to better understand the possibilities for its use. The project will explore the academic value of personal stories and explore if personal stories impact our understandings of literacy; DALN in the context of archives and other traditional collections; data resources about literacy such as historical studies, observational studies, and formal interview-based studies; and finally, the project will analyze the ways in which the DALN is incorporated into college classrooms, whether physical or virtual. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your future relations with The Ohio State University, the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, or any of the research involved in any way. If you

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decide to participate, you are free to discontinue participation at any time without affecting such relationships.Feel free to ask the researcher questions. You may contact the co-investigators Deborah Kuzawa ([email protected]) or Dr. Cynthia Selfe ([email protected]) if you have any questions or concerns about the project, or if you feel you may have been harmed by participation. For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact Sandra Meadows in the Office of Responsible Research Practices at 1-800-678-6251.  I want my information to be anonymized through the use of pseudonyms. (1)

Q2 Please provide the following information. If you requested, your answers will be anonymized Name (1) Title (2) Department (3) University/College (4) Email address (5) City (6) State (7) Postal code (8) Phone number (9)

Q3 How did you first hear about the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives?

Q4 How do you or have you developed your understanding or conception of literacy? Please provide at least 3 examples. For example: studies in journals/books pedagogy or teacher development workshops national statistics resources (such as those from the National Center for Education Statistics) your teaching/classroom experiences The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives other archives or databases (please include the name of the archive or database, if possible) other sources (please include the name of the resource)

Q5 Referring to your response for previous question, how would you rank the sources on a 1-5 Likert scale (1-least helpful to 5-most helpful) in terms of helpfulness or usefulness for your teaching or research? NB: you may only rank those things identified in the previous question. Journals/books (1) statistics and similar institutional resources (2) teaching and classroom experiences (3) The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (4) Other archives or databases (please specify) (5) other sources mentioned in previous question (please specify) (6) other sources mentioned in previous question (please specify) (7) other sources mentioned in previous question (please specify) (8)

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Q6 What role, if any, do personal stories play in your understanding of the following? Please explain: literacy your classes/classrooms in terms of course content (readings, lesson plans, informal and formal activities, examples/models, research projects, assignments) research

Q7 The questions below focus on the courses in which you have used the DALN. If you have taught more than 4 courses using the DALN, please limit your focus to the most recent courses. In what courses have you used the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (first-year composition; digital composing; rhetorical argument; graduate seminars, etc.)? (1) Academic department of the class(es)? (2) Would you consider the DALN the focus of the course or simply one aspect of the course? (3) The delivery method (face-to-face; online; hybrid)? (4) Approximate class size? (5) Composition of the class (undergrads; graduate students; for credit; non-credit, etc.) (6) Things you would (or did) change or keep the same from course to course (if applicable)? (7)

Q8 The following are institutional demographic questions focused on where you have taught classes using the DALN. Please answer all questions. What type of technology access do you have for your courses (computer classroom, public computer labs, other hardware and software access)? (1) How often are you able to utilize this technology (once per week/month, every class meeting)? (2) How many students are enrolled at your institution? Please differentiate between undergraduates and graduate students, if applicable. (3) Where is the institution located (rural, large city, small city, suburban)? (4) Is the institution primarily residential or commuter? (5) Additional information you'd like to share? (6)

Q9 Please provide selected course materials from DALN-centric courses in PDF or Word formats. It is recommended that you create a single zip file of the materials to upload. 16 MB maximum.OR If you prefer, you may email files (or links) to [email protected] Materials may include, but not limited to: Syllabi and daily schedules Assignment prompts (for example: papers/essays, homework, activities) Lesson plans Course readings Handouts and other supplemental material

Q10 What has been your reason or motivation for using the DALN in the classroom?

Q11 Does the scale and/or structure of the DALN impact how you think about it or how you use it in the classroom or in research projects? Please explain.

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Q12 From your perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages to using the DALN in the classroom?

Q13 Reflecting on student feedback (both formal and informal) about the DALN, what are the advantages and disadvantages identified by students?

Q14 How do you introduce and describe the DALN and literacy narratives to your students? Also, how do you introduce and describe the DALN and literacy narratives to any of the following (if applicable): other teachers administrators family and friends not associated with school

Thank you for your participation in this project. Please contact [email protected] or [email protected] with any questions or concerns.

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Appendix C

Sample Coding: Code explanations and annotated response to question 12.

4) Personal: Personal was defined as understandings of literacy and the DALN that focused on individual users and their particularized understandings of literacy and the value of these understandings as data for literacy researchers. Personal delineated experiences and understandings of literacy and the processes of interacting with and teaching about the DALN.

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5) Expert(direction): Expert(direction) was defined as professional or scholarly approaches to understanding literacy and archives, including expectations for literacy- and archives-based research. Expert(direction) delineated structural expectations, limitations, and parameters for topics, metadata, and methods of study.

6) Self(direction): The code self(direction) was defined as the ways and reasons that individuals interacted with and navigated the DALN as an archives according to their own desires and agendas, such as their particularized explorations and understandings of the DALN as a resource and archives, including personal preferences for interacting with the archives; individual’s reasons for contributing a story and for choosing which details to include or exclude; and personal preferences for and control over how others interacted with their contributions to the DALN. Self(direction) delineated the processes of interacting with and contributing to the DALN as well as the particularized and individualized processes of developing and sharing literacy knowledge and experiences through resources such as the DALN.

12. From your perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages to using the DALN in the classroom?

The advantages include the nature of the contents: personal narratives are naturally compelling, engaging, and draw in students who might otherwise be put off by the topic. Disadvantages largely center on the interface/navigation/search capabilities; additionally, at this early stage, some topics might not have grown to a useful size (for example, a student using the DALN to research a farming/literacy connection worried that only two narratives he found really provided useful information) ______The availability of diverse experiences is amazing, as are the sample narratives that inspire students' own compositions. The difficulty of finding appropriate narratives -- and the need to download often very large files in order to determine whether a narrative might be useful -- can be a significant challenge. ______Advantag es - It is an opportunity to involve students in learning interview skills and participating in research. Disadvantages - Offering extra credit sometimes feels like coercion to get student participation."

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______

I listed the advantages in the previous question. I can't think of any "disadvantages," though of course the DALN presents challenges, especially if you engage students in helping contributors record and archive narratives. Most of those challenges are logistical (e.g., connecting students with contributors). ______The DALN can offer an interesting perspective for students to reflect on the class or assignments, however, the current structure of my class is prohibitive in time for including it as part of the classroom experience. ______

"Advantages: DALN ""brings to life"" abstract theoretical concepts. For example, my students not only gain a familiarity with the notion of Brandt's literacy sponsorship, they can also identify this concept when it appears in narratives. DALN emphasizes both analysis and production -- the theoretical cornerstones of the field of Rhetoric and Composition. DALN functions as an archive, giving students a chance to engage in class as archivists/researchers/activist-archivists. DALN is digital and relevant to contemporary modes of communication and composition. DALN functions as a public record/pubic space. DALN helps build community in the classroom on levels of identity, practice, and methodology.

Disadvantages:

"Advantages to using the DALN in the classroom: I think in Louie’s 367 (and mine) there was a sense of curiosity and that we could create knowledge together, that we could talk to people and learn about literacy based on what some groups had in common. First, I asked students to code literacy narratives, to develop themes or connections between them. Then they wrote their own literacy narratives. Then they collected literacy narratives in teams. They had to reflect on the process throughout. Then they developed a persuasive piece to ask a group to share

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literacy narratives. In the end, they had to curate their literacy narratives, drawing together research about the narratives and themes.

Two students focused on music literacy, on writing down sounds other than spoken language—they became fascinated by the idea. Another pair focused on the literacy practices of international students—Japanese, Chinese, and Americans who had been abroad. They were international students themselves, so it allowed them to connect their own narratives to our class concepts.

In my expository writing class (111) in North Carolina, it lets students publish their narratives for wider readership, if desired, and gives examples of literacy narratives.

Disadvantages to the DALN in the classroom: Well, to be painfully honest, Louie did a much better job with his 367 than I did with mine. Making them do open and axial coding of narratives frustrated them immensely—they saw patterns intuitively and didn’t particularly enjoy having to do that part of the analysis, and considering it was a writing class, not a research methods class, I see their point. It was a little too much for a 10 week quarter and I could’ve articulated more clearly how doing that kind of process writing served their goals. Also, it was truly difficult to evaluate codes—some chose longer narratives and did more work, but I can’t say whether their work was “better.”

In 111 in North Carolina, there weren’t that many significant disadvantages, unless it’s something like it can be hard to identify narratives people love or narratives that are frequently read or hard to get feedback—everything all sort of looks the same. I certainly don’t want to introduce a like button to the DALN, but more curation would be useful.

Also, since users assign their own tags, they’re unevenly applied, and it can be hard to gather narratives. It can be overwhelming to go through narratives based on title and watch lots of videos without transcripts, on the off chance that one will be related.

As a scholar, I might tag something as an instance of the literacy myth or of literacy sponsorship, but I can’t retroactively tag something. I think this is the issue that viewers/readers sometimes analyze or evaluate literacy narratives differently than the creators. We have different goals for the literacy narrative. ______

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Advantages are giving students additional examples of student narratives, as well as perspectives from adults and educators. As I mentioned, I also think the opportunity to be a part of the DALN is a huge advantage. Disadvantages are the sometimes discouraging searches that may or may not yield results, and students can get frustrated and/or quit without finding what they need.

Code Chart (question 12)

Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness It is an personal interview student Disadvant The opportuni narratives skills and using the ages advantag ty to are naturally participatin DALN to largely es involve compelling, g in research a center on include students engaging, research farming/lit the the in and draw in eracy interface/ nature of learning students connection navigation the interview who might worried /search contents skills and otherwise be that only capabilitie participat put off by two s ing in the topic narratives research he found really provided useful informatio n)

DALN additionally, For The DALN The additiona ""brings at this early example, my can offer difficulty lly, at this to life"" stage, some students not an of finding early abstract topics might only gain a interesting appropriat stage, theoretic not have familiarity perspectiv e some al grown to a with the e for narratives topics concepts useful size notion of students to -- and the might not (for Brandt's reflect on need to have example, a literacy the class download grown to student sponsorship or often very a useful using the , they can assignmen large files size (for DALN to also identify ts in order to example, research a this concept determine a student farming/lite when it whether a using the racy appears in narrative DALN to

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connection narratives. might be research worried that useful -- a only two can be a farming/l narratives significant iteracy he found challenge connectio really n worried provided that only useful two information) narrative s he found really provided useful informati on)

Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness DALN The DALN Making DALN Most of The emphasiz can offer an them do functions those availabilit es both interesting open and as an challenges y of analysis perspective axial coding archive, are diverse and for students of giving logistical experienc productio to reflect on narratives students a (e.g., es is n -- the the class or frustrated chance to connecting amazing, theoretic assignments them engage in students as are the al immensely class as with sample cornersto archivists/ contributo narrative nes of the researcher rs). s that field of s/activist- inspire Rhetoric archivists. students' and own Composit compositi ion. ons develope DALN was a There's a DALN d a functions as sense of learning functions persuasiv an archive, curiosity curve (as as a e piece to giving and that with all public ask a students a we could pedagogic record/p group to chance to create al ubic share engage in knowledge approache space. literacy class as together, s) with DALN

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narrative archivists/re that we using the helps s. In the searchers/ac could talk DALN in build end, they tivist- to people the communi had to archivists. and learn classroom. ty in the curate about It takes classroo their literacy time to m on literacy based on appreciate levels of narrative what some the many identity, s, groups had ways in practice, drawing in common which this and together resource is methodol research invaluable ogy. about the to narrative classroom s and practices themes. Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness they saw I asked I asked it can be was a patterns students to students to hard to sense of intuitivel code literacy code identify curiosity y and narratives, literacy narratives and that didn’t to develop narratives, people we could particular themes or to develop love or create ly enjoy connections themes or narratives knowledg having to between connection that are e do that them s between frequently together, part of them read or that we the hard to get could talk analysis, feedback to people and learn about literacy based on what some groups had in common Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness As a developed a developed more As a scholar, I persuasive a curation scholar, I might tag piece to ask persuasive would be might tag somethin a group to piece to useful somethin

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g as an share ask a g as an instance literacy group to instance of the narratives. share of the literacy In the end, literacy literacy myth or they had to narratives. myth or of literacy curate their In the end, of sponsors literacy they had to literacy hip, but I narratives, curate sponsors can’t drawing their hip, but I retroactiv together literacy can’t ely tag research narratives, retroactiv somethin about the drawing ely tag g. narratives together somethin and themes. research g. about the narratives and themes. Another pair Another think this focused on pair is the the literacy focused on issue that practices of the literacy viewers/ internationa practices readers l students— of sometime Japanese, internatio s analyze Chinese, and nal or Americans students— evaluate who had Japanese, literacy been abroad. Chinese, narrative They were and s internationa Americans differentl l students who had y than themselves, been the so it allowed abroad. creators. them to They were We have connect internatio different their own nal goals for narratives to students the our class themselves literacy concepts. , so it narrative. allowed them to connect

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their own narratives to our class concepts.

Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness they saw , it was Disadvan patterns truly tages are intuitively difficult to the and didn’t evaluate sometime particularly codes— s enjoy having some discourag to do that chose ing part of the longer searches analysis, narratives that may and did or may more not yield work, but I results can’t say whether their work was “better , it was truly certainly difficult to don’t want evaluate to codes— introduce some chose a like longer button to narratives the DALN and did more work, but I can’t say whether their work was “better Academic Personal Expert Self Restriction Openness certainly since users don’t want assign to introduce their own a like button tags to the DALN

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As a scholar, think this I might tag is the issue something that as an viewers/re instance of aders the literacy sometimes myth or of analyze or literacy evaluate sponsorship, literacy but I can’t narratives retroactively differently tag than the something. creators. We have different goals for the literacy narrative.

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Appendix D Karen’s assignments for second-year writing

Assignments

In keeping with its role as a second-level writing course in the GEC, this section of English 367 introduces you to types of research data—and ways of analyzing that data and presenting your analyses—that you probably did not encounter (or work with extensively) in your first-year writing course. In general, the course engages you with primary sources, which "provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation"; they are characterized by the relationship of their content to the question at hand, not by any particular format or medium (Primary Sources at Yale). For more on primary sources from the perspective of historical research, see Using Primary Sources on the Web, by the American Library Association.

In this section of English 367, you will collect and analyze one kind of primary source for the study of literacy, personal literacy narratives—firsthand recollections about learning to read and write (or communicate in other media); enabling others to read, write, and communicate; and engaging in everyday practices that reveal values associated with literacy. Literacy narratives and other forms of oral history require somewhat different reading and analytical skills than poems, textbooks, novels, movies, or news stories, and learning those skills constitutes a big part of the course.

The sequence of assignments described below moves recursively through analyzing, composing, collecting, persuading, and presenting literacy narratives (i.e., you will continue to use the skills learned in earlier assignments as the course progresses), and extends from your personal experience to collecting literacy narratives from residents of the University District.

Note: These assignments may look elaborate—even complicated—but they constitute the focus of the course, both in and out of class. Supplemental reading assignments are relatively light and weighted toward the beginning of the course, and all of them relate directly to the major assignments. Also, a significant portion of the work on the assignments will be done in class—with the notable exception of the collection of literacy narratives in the community during weeks 7, 8 and 9.

1. Analyzing Literacy Narratives

2. Composing Your Literacy Narrative

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3. Collecting Community Literacy Narratives

4. Persuading Potential Contributors

5. Creating and Presenting a Digital Exhibit

Analyzing Literacy Narratives

This first assignment asks you to assemble and analyze a small sample of four literacy narratives from the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN). After browsing and searching the DALN, you will choose a set of related narratives that interest you, analyze them using a qualitative data analysis (QDA) program called HyperRESEARCH, then write up your analysis and share it with the class.

Goals. You will learn how to browse and search for narratives collected in the DALN, one of the primary resources for the class, and learn strategies for searching any online repository of primary materials. In addition, you will explore one way that qualitative researchers construct theories or hypotheses about primary sources in multiple media using QDA software.

Finding Narratives. You will begin your work on this assignment by browsing and searching the DALN, looking for narratives related by characteristics that interests you— the literacy practices or values involved, the circumstances of the story or storyteller, and so on. We will go over the DALN's browsing and searching tools in class. Your collection of four narratives should include at least two audio and/or video narratives. As you browse and search the DALN, you will need to keep records of your work: browse links, search terms and results, descriptions of narratives reviewed. You will use those records to contextualize the small collection of narratives that you analyze and characterize the "sample" with which you work. Again, we will review in class how to collect those records.

Conducting Your Analysis. Your analysis will describe commonalities and differences among the narratives and raise questions for further research. To help with your analysis, we will use a free version of HyperRESEARCH to examine the narratives and share the process and results of our examinations. We will learn how to use HyperRESEARCH in class. You will turn in your HyperRESEARCH files with your final analysis, and they will be evaluated as part of your project.

Writing Up Your Analysis. Your written analysis will

1. describe the rationale for your choice of narratives (How did you locate them? Were there others like them in the DALN? Why did you choose to focus on these four?);

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2. describe the themes you discovered as you coded the narratives with HyperRESEARCH (In class, we will talk more about how to do this step); 3. pose questions for further research using a larger sample of literacy narratives.

Evaluative Criteria.

Format. In addition to a 500- to 750-word analysis, you should submit an electronic folder containing the narratives you analyzed and your HyperRESEARCH study file (we will say more about that in class). Your analysis should be in Microsoft Word format and should be submitted via Carmen. The HyperRESEARCH study file will be submitted via our classroom network.

Resources. What will you need to complete this assignment?

• Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (http://daln.osu.edu) • HyperRESEARCH Quick Tour • HyperRESEARCH Tutorials

Due Dates: 10/7 Rough Draft. 10/14 Polished Product.

Composing Your Literacy Narrative

The second stage in our exploration of personal literacy narratives engages you in composing these primary sources. In the medium of your choice (audio, video, print, visual, etc), you will tell a story about your literacy history and practices. You are NOT required to submit this to the DALN, though you are certainly welcome to do so. Include a reflective essay with your submission explaining your choices relating to medium, content, audience, and the process of composing a literacy narrative.

Goals. You will gain experience with both telling and recording literacy narratives, and you will reflect on those processes. In class and in your written reflections, we will review some of the practical and ethical issues involved in oral history (e.g., using field recording equipment, gaining informed consent from participants). In addition, this assignment will prepare you for collecting literacy narratives from members of the public.

Reflection on telling your literacy narrative.

• Memory. How did the story surface in your memory? What initial thought or image fixed your attention on this particular story? What about the prompt or the setting brought it to the fore? • Composing past events. Have you told this story before? If so, do you think you told it differently this time? How? — If not, how did you decide where to begin,

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what to include, and where to end? Are there details you recall that you are aware of leaving out of this telling? What informed that act of filtering/composing? How did your sense of the time available for telling your story affect your telling of the story?

Format. You should submit your 500-word reflection in Microsoft Word format via Carmen. In addition to your reflection, you should submit your narrative and associated paperwork. [You do not have to submit your narrative to the DALN, though you are welcome to do so after the course.]

Resources. I will supply your with the prompts, scripts, and forms that we use with the DALN.

Evaluative Criteria. This assignment is intended to prepare you for the next assignment, so its criteria are similar:

• The narrative you submit should be accessible. It should have acceptable sound and—in the case of video—image quality (we aren't creating fine art, but voices need to be clearly discernible above any background noises; and facial expressions, gestures, props, and significant features of the setting must be clearly visible). • All forms must be filled out completely and correctly.

Due Dates. 10/21 Rough Draft

10/28 Polished Product

Collecting Community Literacy Narratives

Collecting literacy narratives in a particular community lies at the heart of this course— and this assignment. We are not conducting this oral history project to test any preexisting theory about the connections between literacy and community, but rather to gather primary sources that will help you and members of the University District neighborhoods explore and reflect upon whatever connections the narratives themselves reveal. A number of such efforts are already reflected in the DALN—or are currently underway: the University of Arkansas at Little Rock collected about 75 literacy narratives from faculty, students, and staff on its campus; two local General Education Degree (GED) program collected literacy narratives for graduates of their programs—on graduation day—in order to celebrate and document students' achievements; the First Year Writing Program FYWP at Ohio State collected literacy narratives from incoming first-year students to help train new teachers of English 110; and another professor is

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working with the African and African-American Studies Department's Community Extension Center to collect the literacy narratives of Black Columbus.

Goals. The University District Literacy Narratives project lies at the heart of the course. This project will employ all of the skills you develop in the previous assignments in the service of a community-based oral history project. Our goals will be to learn more about literacy practices and values and to explore why community organizations and their members might want to collect and preserve literacy narratives. What value might such a collection have for the community and its members?

Teams. Working with one other student from the class, you will collect at least three (3) literacy narratives from residents of the University District (which includes the OSU campus and the neighborhood immediately north, south and east of the campus). Each of you should take turns focusing on the technical set-up (managing the camera/recorder, checking sound and light conditions) and the interview (including introductions, forms, interview), though you both can and should be responsible for all aspects of the recording session. Note: Your team will normally receive a single grade for your work on this assignment, but I reserve the right to grade team members separately if one team member does not pull his or her weight (e.g., missing interview appointments, not submitting field notes, etc.)

Finding Interviewees, Scheduling Collections. I am working with several community organizations (e.g., the Godman Guild and the Weinland Park Civic Association) to help you find interviewees and schedule interviews with members of University District neighborhoods. All such interviews will take place in a public setting (e.g., library, coffee shop, school, church, community organizations' facilities) at a time convenient for your team and the interviewees. Those interviews will be our first priority, but if the organizations don't identify enough community members, you will be free to interview anyone you know who lives, works, worships, or recreates in the University district (e.g., co-workers, friends, roommates, congregation members, and so on)—though I ask that you establish some connection among your participants (co-workers; members of a fraternity, sorority, or congregation, and so on). You may not interview your classmates from this section of English 367.

Conducting Interviews, Uploading Narratives to the DALN. I will provide you with all of the equipment your will need to conduct your interviews (we are using very simple video camcorders and digital cameras), and I will provide you with detailed instructions and checklists for collecting literacy narratives, including questions to ask and forms you will need to ask contributors to fill out. We will upload the first set of narratives to the DALN together in class, after which you will do so on your own.

Documents, Reflections, and Analysis. The literacy narratives you collect constitute the main "product" by which your work on this assignment will be evaluated. In addition, because these narratives will become the primary source for your final assignment, I will also ask you to turn in field notes (e.g., notes about the place in which you conducted

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your interview, the circumstances of the interview, contextual information provided by your interviewee—more about this later) and, if available, contextual documents (text or images) provided by your interviewees or the organizations we visit (e.g., if we work with the Godman Guild, you should visit their Web Site and collect any brochures they might have available on site). I will provide you with digital cameras that you can use to photograph places and reproduce texts. Finally, you will add your narrative to your HyperRESEARCH folder and code it, extending your code list as necessary.

Format. Once each week for three weeks, you will submit 1) one literacy narrative to the DALN, complete with all necessary forms; 2) field notes describing the site and occasion of the interview, as well as any contextual information provided by the interviewee (I'll say more about the field notes in class, but these will be one or two page, informal documents); 3) an updated HyperRESEARCH folder; 4) and photos/images related to the topic of the narrative (in class, I will provide more information about how to collect this information).

Evaluative Criteria.

• The narratives you collect should have acceptable sound and—in the case of video—image quality (voices need to be clearly discernible above any background noises; and facial expressions, gestures, props, and significant features of the setting must be clearly visible). • All forms must be filled out correctly. • Narratives and metadata must be successfully uploaded to the DALN. • Field notes should record specific, telling details about the setting, the occasion, and the content of the narrative. • Your HyperRESEARCH folder should be updated with the latest narrative you have collected, and that narrative should be encoded. • At least one contextual document (e.g., a photo, a text, a Web site) related to the content of the narrative should accompany your field notes.

Due Dates.

1) 11/2

2) 11/9

3) 11/16

Persuading Potential Contributors

After interacting with members of the community for several weeks, you will have gained a better sense for why members of the community choose to share and preserve

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their literacy narratives. You will also have complied with (and explained) informed consent to each contributor. Your goal in this assignment is to create a piece that encourages potential contributors to share their literacy narratives. You will need to explain what the DALN is, why contributing is a good thing to do, and how to do so. You will want to choose a very specific audience (perhaps a particular organization in the University District) and fit your choices of medium and content to that audience. Include a reflective essay explaining your decisions.

Goals. Apply your experience with communicating with contributors to a print or electronic persuasive medium. You will need to analyze your audience and make appropriate choices to define the DALN and literacy narratives, follow ethical practices regarding informed consent, and interest your audience to want to learn more. Your goals should be clear—do you want the potential contributor to record his or her narrative independently and submit it using the forms? To contact someone affiliated with the DALN about preserving a collection? You’ll need to balance the reasons to contribute, the call to action, and appropriate expository background information. Use your fieldnotes from collecting narratives to think of reasons people do contribute, and consider in class discussions to generate persuasive content

In the ~500 word reflective essay, you will explain your goals for the persuasive piece (audience, call to action), the choices you made to achieve those goals, and you will evaluate how successful you were in meeting your goals.

Evaluative Criteria. • The brochure/flyer/radio/TV commercial/Public Service Announcement/facebook ad/etc should address potential contributors to the DALN and provide them with reasons to collect and preserve their literacy narratives • Name the DALN explicitly, explain the site, define a literacy narrative, follow ethical guidelines regarding informed consent, and call your audience to a specific action. • Reflect on your choices and evaluate them.

Due Dates. 11/18 Rough Draft 11/23 Polished Draft

Creating and Presenting a Digital Exhibit

At a public viewing of selected literacy narratives collected during the term, I plan to share our work with the community organizations whose members contributed literacy narratives to the DALN. Whether or not we are able to schedule a public showing, we

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will hold a showing for the class at which each team of two students will present a "digital exhibit" of the narratives they collected.

Goals. Your digital exhibit should present the narratives you collected during the term in context. Specifically, you should provide some further information about the settings of your interviews, the occasions on which they were collected, the interviewees' motivations for telling their stories, and the content of the narratives (e.g., regarding content, if people mention the role of literacy skills in the process of finding work in the current economic recession, you might cite a news story about the recession; if they mention a branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML), you might find or take a photo of that branch and see what you can learn about it from the CML Web site or the staff at that branch).

Collecting Materials. As the examples cited above suggest, most of the content of your digital exhibits will come from the field notes, materials, and photographs that you collect during the process of our work with community organizations in the University District. However, you may need to supplement those materials with additional materials that you find on the Web, at the library, or from community members.

Preparing and Presenting Your Exhibit. Think of your exhibit as a display in a gallery rather than a Web site (we won't have time to spend on constructing elaborate Web delivery of your exhibits).

First, you should prepare a 500-word Introduction to your exhibit of the sort you might see posted at the entrance to an exhibit hall at an art museum. Explain the setting and occasion at which the narratives were collected and provide some of the contextual information that you have gathered—particularly about how the narratives might be used or valued by the community or the contributors.

Second, you should prepare brief catalog descriptions for each of the narratives and contextual documents (texts or images) your team collected, noting the filename and briefly introducing the narrator and the specific contents of each narrative and explaining the relevance of each contextual document.

We will probably use Microsoft Word for the introductions and catalog descriptions, placing those documents in a folder with the narratives. Visitors and classmates will circulate around computer workstations to view the exhibits.

Evaluative Criteria. Because the other materials included in this assignment (e.g., the narratives themselves) will be evaluated as part of other assignments, evaluation of your digital exhibits will focus on your team's Introduction and catalog descriptions, which will be judged by how clearly they are written and how well they address the goals outlined above under "Preparing and Presenting Your Exhibit."

Due Dates.

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11/30 Rough Draft

12/7 Final Presentation

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Appendix E Brian’s Assignments for Digital Media and English Studies [ASSIGNMENT PROMPTS]

DIGITAL MEDIA AND ENGLISH STUDIES phase one

ROLL YOUR OWN LITERACY NARRATIVE

For this assignment, you will craft your own literacy narratives for inclusion in the DALN. These can take a variety of forms. As the DALN itself explains, the literacy narrative genre encompasses a lot of territory:

A literacy narrative is simply a collection of items that describe how you learned to read, write, and compose. This collection might include a story about learning to read cereal boxes and a story about learning to write plays. Some people will want to record their memories about the bedtime stories their parents read to them, the comics they looked at in the newspaper, or their first library card. Others will want to tell a story about writing a memorable letter, leaning how to write on a computer or taking a photograph; reading the Bible, publishing a 'zine, or sending an e-mail message.

Your literacy narrative can have many smaller parts—but they will all be identified with your name. For instance, you might want to provide a story about learning to read as a child, a digitized image of one of your old report cards, a story about writing a letter as a teenager, a photograph of you as a young child; a song you learned when you were in school).

Ideally, your narrative should be compelling, interesting, and non-rambling; additionally, it should include at least one artifact such as those mentioned above (report card, a story you wrote and illustrated as a child, etc.).

FORMAT: In keeping with the spirit of the DALN, you can compose your narrative in whatever format you choose (text, audio, video). One stipulation: if you decide to submit a text-based narrative, I'd like you to incorporate some multimodal elements into it (for instance, inlude some images in the text).

LENGTH: For text-based narratives, you should plan for 5-7 pages, double spaced. For audio or video narratives, aim for the 10-minute mark. These targets are designed to result in narratives that are sufficiently detailed, but not overly so.

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DUE DATE: Your literacy narrative should be composed, edited, and submitted (both to the DALN and to the corresponding folder in the Carmen Dropbox) on Wednesday, April 11.

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| DIGITAL MEDIA AND ENGLISH STUDIES phase two

FIELD COLLECTION EXTRAVAGANZA

For this assignment, you will be working in three teams of 4-5, collecting literacy narratives from specific, targeted demographics on campus. This will involve identifying a particular target group, and then conducting tabling events, scheduling recording sessions with individuals, and otherwise working to achieve your team quota. In class, we'll strategize over the various logistical, technical, and other challenges you're likely to face, plus discuss techniques for effective interviewing.

Your team's quota is TWELVE INTERVIEWS. I would like to challenge you to exceed that quota (in fact, there may be something in it for the team who has amassed the most interviews).

In addition to gathering interviews, I'm also asking each team to compose what I'm calling "dispatches from the field": short, reflective bits of media content suitable that helps document the field collection process. These dispatches will likely be disseminated through the DALN backchannel (i.e., blog, facebook group, twitter stream), maintained by the DALN social media coordinator Jen Michaels. These dispatches can take various forms, such as a few still pictures with a short paragraph of text, a 30-second video clip, a short audio recording. Your team should shoot for at least THREE dispatches. ______

DIGITAL MEDIA AND ENGLISH STUDIES phase three

CURATE YOUR OWN DALN EXHIBIT

For this assignment, you will create and present a curated digital exhibit based upon contents in the DALN (and yes, these can include narratives that you collected earlier in the quarter). This project will ask you not only to collect and showcase a small grouping of narratives (based on a particular theme), but also to analyze and explain how that theme surfaces across the collection.

Goals. Your digital exhibit should present a cohesive, thematically linked collection of

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approximately FIVE TO SEVEN literacy narratives, explaining their shared relevance. Your exhibit should provide information about the settings of the interviews, the occasions on which they were collected, the interviewees' motivations for telling their stories, and the content of the narratives, building on the kinds of analysis that we have been discussing this term.

Collecting Materials. The content of your digital exhibits will come from narratives in the DALN (along with the entries' metadata and any supplemental materials uploaded with the narratives), the readings we have done during the quarter, and any contextual research that you have done to help you understand themes or contexts related to the narratives with which you are working.

Preparing and Presenting Your Exhibit. Think of your exhibit as the catalog accompanying an exhibit in a museum gallery.

You should prepare a 750- to 1000-word Introduction to your exhibit of the sort you might find accompanying an exhibit at an art museum or library. Explain the settings and occasions associated with the narratives; provide some contextual information about the narratives, if available; and introduce the themes that emerge in your analyses of the individual narratives. Then, for each of the narratives in your exhibit, provide a detailed analysis (500–750 words) that references your secondary scholarship, linking each narrative to the themes you introduced in your Introduction.

Evaluative Criteria. Evaluation of your digital exhibits will focus on your Introduction and individual analyses, which will be judged by how clearly they are written and how well they address the goals of this assignment: clear explanation of the rationale for analyzing the five narratives together as a "cohort," including evidence from the narratives and their associated metadata; detailed discussion of any contextual information about the recording of the interviews that might help readers understand the narratives and the themes you discuss; detailed discussion of the themes you discovered and the evidence supporting your identification of those themes; supporting references to the background reading assigned in class; appropriate and clearly revealed organization of your analyses around the themes you discovered in the narratives; carefully composed and edited prose that reflects the stylistic "moves" for reporting qualitative research that we will discuss in class and that is free of misspellings, typos, and grammatical blunders; a list of works cited (MLA format), including the narratives from the DALN; links to the original entries in the DALN for all of the narratives.

FORMAT: For this project, I would like you to follow one of two pathways: either build your curated exhibit as a short webtext, or compose it in the online presentation tool Prezi. As the next few weeks unfold, I will give you more information on format (HTML

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templates, Prezi tutorial). DUE DATE: Final projects are due in Carmen by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 6.

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