An Introdution

I guess I'll start by explaining the title of this blog--"Stabilized for Now." This is a favorite term of scholars focusing on rhetorical genre theory, originally coined by Catehrine Schryer in "The Lab vs. the Clinic: Sites of Competing Genres" from Genre and the New Rhetoric (ed. Freedman and Medway). The basic idea is that genres are never completely stable across time--they're always morphing, changing, responding to new exigencies and divesting themselves of others. Howver, at any given moment, the conventions of a genre operate on users of that genre, shaping their writing so that it "fits" within the auspices of that genre--even as it may also push on its boundaries. The title works for me because I'm trying to see myself doing something similar: working within the aupices of the blog genre while pushing at its boundaries, at least in my little own way. Put differently, I see this as more of a place to think about rhetoric and composition, pedagogy, technology, and other points of interest, more than the more "personal" topics of everyday life that usually constitute the genre (although this is not to say that those won't enter into nor inform my writing here).

As you can see, genre, and the larger space of rhetorical study and the processes of writing informa a lot of what I plan to do here. More specifically, I guess I should provide a bit more of a background on what has led me here today. Right now, I'm working on some final projects for two courses on Writing Program Administration and the Rhetoric of Literary Criticism respectively. I'm looking alternatively at blogs as academic tools and at blogs as pedagogical tools, as well as the larger changes in the rhetoric of academic writing as it enters networked environments and breeds with the generic forms there. And all this got me thinking: maybe I need to start writing a blog. After all, can I really talk about blogging, and even teach it, if I don't do it myself? So, here I am. I'm going to try to update this at least once a week. In the meantime, I've provided a blogroll linked to other academic blogs, and I'd appreciate anything you can send my way.