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Geoffrey Sirc Annotated Bibliography

Austen gives a balanced and fair critique of each essay in the collection. She appreciates the classroom exercises, teacher’s notes, task descriptions, and specificity of assignments each author includes. She dislikes the opening essay by Wysocki, “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications” due to content but finds Wysocki’s second essay, “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty: On Some Formal Relations in Teaching about the visual Aspects of Texts” as exhilarating as the first is boring. Austen agrees with Selfe’s reasoning and Johnson-Eilola’s ability to “successfully revive the usable parts of Sirc’s ‘box-logic’ argument” (34). Austen’s response to Sirc’s essay includes exasperation and a critique of his looseness, lack of evaluation, and neglect of acknowledging in detail the system within which Composition teachers must work.

If one uses a computer as a pedagogical tool, it must be used as a medium for response and should not limit the pedagogy of useful writing instruction. Sirc expands on Patrick J. Finn’s ideas, and the emphasis is on the computer as a tool for response and not evaluation. One criticism of Sirc is his methods of technological interaction, in essence, redesign a teacher-centered “classroom” due to the inevitable evaluation of student essays. Sirc later amends this through exchanges with David Bartholomae.

This brief nod contrasts technology (local chat programs and the “docuverse”) and Composition’s initial, now missing, home-made expressivism. Inman concludes that since “technologized” Composition “guarantees that raw, nutty certitude that is the hallmark of C & W scholoarship,” the merging with technology is “the best thing that never happened in composition studies” (233). In essence, complication is inherent in Composition.

Though Mazurek dislikes the overall tone of Sirc’s book, he believes the ideas within the text are simply too interesting to ignore. The text is difficult for readers not much interested in debates about eccentric compositional theories and the aesthetics of the visual arts. In essence, Sirc overemphasizes obscure artistic processes while giving less time to the important concern for student writing. Mazurek criticizes Sircs technique: “In his fashioning of a persona as an outsider, Sirc is too sure of himself, too dismissive of his opponents, and too narrow in his frame of reference” (185). Sirc’s ideas intrigue Mazurek, but he finds Sirc’s voice, technique, and focus, quite frankly, annoying.

What better place to obtain responses about a professor who theorizes about compositional pedagogies than from the students who experience/endure the theories put into practice? Out of seven responses, Sirc sweeps the ratings with most feedback about his Composition course and musical focus being positive.

This song exemplifies many of Sirc’s ideals with media: the song challenges cultural norms and illustrates change. Though Sirc reaches forward to his students by using more contemporary “gangsta” rap, the song as an essay title represents the early history of Composition in the 1960s and Sirc’s innovative practice of using texts other than those in the traditional literary canon.

Reiss’ response highlights the ideas Sirc presents in English Composition as a Happening. She summarizes Sirc’s process of reexamining Composition’s past in the 1960s, transition to the present, and possibilities in the future through electronic media enhancing electronic discourse. Reiss comments on the advantages of utilizing energetic e-mails and instant messages. Her sketch of Sirc introduces the abstract.

Four authors present six essays exploring the composition class and classroom in conjunction with the computer and other “new” media. Sirc’s essay presents the artistic creative process, such as that of Marcel Duchamp, and applies it to the manner in which students engage with composition. By using media to collect various forms of representation on an issue (multimedia sources like music, images, and poetry), students find and create their own texts for supporting and presenting ideas. Compiling presentations creates individual identification and interests for students in Composition. The text offers varying perspectives on using and incorporating technology along with assignments for the classroom by using diverse theories and practices. Box logic basically entails creating an archive from compositional media to achieve a product containing imagery and text important to contemporary culture.

Sirc points to Kurt Cobain’s Journals as providing an excellent composition textbook because it reminds instructors what to seek in student writing while giving students material to help develop voice and content in their writing. Sirc reveals the disinterest and dissatisfaction professors and students experience regarding first year Composition. Sirce uses the allegory of Orpheus’ gaze to parallel the ability to show desire in hell with creating interest in Composition. As Orpheus eventually defies the law which forbids him to look around, shifting the gaze of students and instructors of Composition reveals “its underground, the place where the inessential is so tellingly exposed” (14). Using different texts allows students and professors to explore the literary and real spaces writers inhabit. Composition must change concepts about which texts and forms of writing are acceptable.

English Composition’s roots differ greatly from the present focus of the Composition classroom. Initially, English Composition is more liberal in texts and contexts, but a movement to validate it as a discipline in the late 1960s results in a formal, restrictive environment. Sirc’s text seeks to revive some of the earlier liberal setting since English Composition now qualifies as valid discipline. Composition should no longer be chained to the formal context and traditional literary canon as text to teach writing to students. Placing Composition as a happening means redefining the spaces in which students interact and the criteria of what types and forms of writing are “good” or acceptable, re-exploring earlier modes of teaching Composition and reapplying them in revised theory and practice, and using multiple contemporary sources to engage students in the learning and producing process. The extensive presentation of changing theories and their applications over time shows the numerous and various possibilities for teaching Composition as well as a gallery of images and artwork to accompany and emphasize Sirc’s dedication to the interconnection between artistic and composition processes. “Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where’s the Sex Pistols?” begins and summarizes Sirc’s movement of giving students contemporary texts from multimedia resources. In essence, this book reflects Sirc’s interest in “work that can be used to think about pedagogy, texts, materials, issues of production and reception, and particularly issues of form and content (what’s used in “Composition what’s not, and what other fields wit the idea of composition at the center are using)” (263). Sirc demands a revolution, reevaluation, and evolution in teaching English Composition.

As trends change, Sirc seeks a more contemporary medium to engage students than his initial predilection for punk music. More specifically, because “gangsta” rap has race and class as central issues, uses “plainspeak” grammar, and style makes a difference regarding character and attitude, it provides a good platform for the first year Composition course: “Gangsta works in the writing class as it does I the broader culture, to organize an inherent cultural dissatisfaction” (104). As opposed to punk which advocates too much nihilism and hatred, artists such as NWA, Too $hort, and 2Pac (Tupac) look for places their audiences don’t have common ground while detailing a sense of community.

In a quest to help students connect with their world, Sirc uses hip-hop as an expressive medium to inspire artistry in students’ writing. Hip-hop’s ground rules characterize American identity. He parallels lyrics from Slug, half of the hip-hop duo Atmosphere with the writings of Marcel Proust to illustrate how both provide and represent expression at its finest. Using art and music as stimuli causes students to produce more interesting and engaging writing.

Sirc criticizes the blandness of academic writing and seeks alternatives to the revising and evaluative process via electronic interaction and response. He explores the possibilities and pitfalls of using the computer as a tool in the Composition course. Computer tools and programs should not serve as substitute for genuine interaction from a respondent.

Sirc turns to contemporary models for students to identify with, translate, and produce reflection on different values in society. He parallels avant-garde artist Chris Burden’s performance piece Shoot with the movie Fight Club on the basis both works address “the seemingly incomprehensible cultural insistence on violence and its representation and try to understand it, not intellectually or theoretically, but actually, bodily, physically” (423). Eminem is another artist who deals with and portrays violence in his music in attempts to discover the truth behind the anger. Sirc seeks to engage students to reflect more on “texts” by utilizing works and media outside the literary canon.

The computer creates new issues as well as possibilities in Composition. Utilizing chat rooms and e-mail enhances the Composition experience because discussions become more expansive and interesting. The computer has the potential to enrich the materials with which students interact while positively transforming student writing.

Sirc advocates the proper use of technology to enhance academic form. Here, students create and utilize more contemporary sources to explore Composition’s themes. He contrasts the virtual academic, “stilted academic prose as the ideal medium to represent this image of university pomposity,” with what Sirc calls virtual urbanism, “a different textuality, in which humans […]drift through important spaces of their lives, encountering other humans similarly engaged in the ongoing mystery of existence” (12). He uses lyrics by Ghostface Killah to stimulate students to engage with the composition process. In essence, virtual urbanity entails a belief in people’s natural language patterns as opposed to regularized language system functionalist Diana Hacker advocates in the Bedford Handbook. Sirc believes, “students have more interesting things to talk about than the papers they wish they didn’t even have to write in the first place” (17). Here, Sirc focuses on the use of language as one obstacle in Composition studies.

Andy Warhol’s studio in New York, The Factory, illustrates an environment of artistic creativity and stimulation Sirc wishes to apply to the structure of the Composition classroom. Through different experiences and stimuli, Sirc believes students become scholars of media. Another issue Sirc addresses concerns what is used as text and context in ENG 101. He explores different media options via movies, audio recordings, and creating catalogues and collages using technology. Changing the environment of English Composition takes away the desire to plagiarize because students are more familiar and comfortable with the material. In essence, Andy Warhol’s Factory becomes a prototype for Sirc’s Composition classroom and creates new assignment formats.

Wyatt doesn’t exactly agree with much of what Sirc presents in “Box Logic.” Rhetorical thought and thinking strategically are more appropriate uses of time than investing efforts in web design because they are portable skills “for both analysis of existing material or synthesis of new” (1). Their distinct difference in theory qualifies Wyatt’s contempt for Sirc’s notions of creativity. In essence, Wyatt gains little to no insight from Sirc’s article and asserts, “I prefer Peter Paul Reubens to Andy Warhol any day” (2).