By Sarah Peterson Pittock
Taught by faculty in the departments and programs, Writing in the Major (WIM) is the third-quarter writing requirement at Stanford. Every spring, it’s my privilege as the WIM Coordinator to read nominations for the Hoefer Prize, which recognizes writing achievement in undergraduate fields of study. This year, diplomatic history, philosophical exegesis, literary analysis, research in the social sciences, engineering reports, and news stories of various kinds were nominated. The WIM courses that nurture prize-winning writing successfully link the communication protocols of their disciplines with the knowledge undergraduates are expected to master to earn their bachelors. In workshops, web resources on writing pedagogy, and syllabus and assignment reviews, I work not only to help WIM instructors distinguish the major genres of their fields--for example, a research proposal--and to name the features of the genres--“cogent, mission-oriented explication of methods, clear goals for proposed research, the expected results, and justification for required support” as the nominating letter for the Hoefer Prize from physics described a research proposal--but also to consider how these features of language determine and are determined by the content students will need to persuade their audience they are members of the field.
I hope my work will help the Stanford community think critically about the significant terms in the phrase--Writing and Major--and how they interanimate. Writing is sometimes reduced to an empty container, to something as quiet as a comma, which ignores not only its vital role in discovery and communication but also the complex location and identities of the writer who’s making the marks on the page. Major can also be reduced to a set of classes, a few key concepts, all easily contained within an enduring building on the Quad. But majors are living things, contested and changing, and often made up of more than one discipline or as Stanford puts it, more than one way of knowing. In my role as Coordinator I am called on to help those involved with WIM see the teaching and learning possibilities of the more complex meanings of these terms. Doing so has required that I wrestle with what disciplines mean in theory and in practice.
Even in a WIM course, centering writing is an ongoing challenge. Imagine draft WIM syllabi that are not too dissimilar from an instructor’s cherished content class just with an added paper assignment. In these draft syllabi, readings and/or lab work are robust, discussion and feedback centered on “content,” and writing as process (skills to be scaffolded) or as product of the field of knowledge (as historical artifact) rarely made a feature of the course conversation. But the tension between content coverage and writing instruction is a potential source of creativity and innovation as students write their way into a relationship with a discipline. This year, for example, in her Hoefer-winning analysis of media portrayals of racialized police violence, Atlanta Rydzik makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to Sociology. In the words of Professor Jackelyn Hwang, “[Atlanta’s] paper effectively links research questions, theory, methods, and evidence to tell a compelling story – the crux of writing in the discipline.”
“Disciplines,” as Gwendolynne Reid and Carolyn Miller put it, “can be thought of as the information infrastructure of the academy, the classifications and categories that ‘sort out’ both the domains of knowledge and the people and activities that produce, curate, and disseminate knowledge” (90). For much of the undergraduate curriculum, these categories or domains reflect a closed or “container” approach to classification that is reminiscent of both Plato’s eternal forms and biology’s speciation. Major or discipline classification is based on essential features. Closed categories emerge with specific criteria determining membership and clear boundaries between classifications. The taxonomy becomes static and does not reflect cultural variation and historical change; specialization claims territory. In this version of the discipline, writing is assigned largely to serve the absorption of canonical knowledge. For example, a take-home exam might be assigned to determine how much a student remembers of the quarter. Students in this model are empty vessels who become more full of expertise as they proceed through their majors.
There’s another way to think about disciplines, however, that recognizes their openness and family resemblance. The philosopher who informs this view of disciplines, Ludwig Wittgenstein, noted that language families share multiple traits, with no single feature necessarily shared by all members. Through this lens, we see no predetermined boundaries between disciplines; indeed, intellectual categories of networked interests, goals, and practices continually emerge, though some prototypical thinkers and methods can be identified. When we think of disciplines as a network made up of individuals writing and speaking in ways both conventional and new, we recognize disciplines will change over time. And a fully systematic taxonomy becomes impossible because experiences of taxonomies vary according to peoples’ positions within them. In this view, disciplines are historical, pluralistic, and rhetorical, participation becoming more salient to our understanding of the dynamics of knowledge construction.
What does this mean for teaching writing in the major? It means that we need to support active inquiry, inviting students who can recognize and leverage their positionality to make meaning for themselves with the materials, practices, and vocabularies of their majors. Disciplinarity--an awareness of how disciplines are formed and remade over time--emphasizes student agency and growth. Professor Dafna Zur’s foreword to a Hoefer-winning essay written for an East Asian Studies WIM class suggests how a more open conception of discipline can support student success:
Won Gi Jung’s “‘Chinese-free Keijo’ and Korean Ethnic Nationalism: The Imaginative Geography of the colonial capital in Pang Chŏnghwan’s Searching for My Sister” . . . shows remarkable growth over ten weeks. Won Gi responded to my extensive feedback on his paper with openness and enthusiasm . . . . [H]e was not a passive receptor of my critique but an active participant, following up regularly and diligently during office hours with questions about how to expand his research and develop his ideas. . . . [H]is final paper exhibits sophistication, particularly in his ability to practice interdisciplinary rigor. Won Gi combined his historically-driven interest in the colonial urban space of Seoul (Keijo) with a reading of fiction staged in that space, remaining always cognizant of how fiction “worked” to expand the imaginative geography of its readers. . . . Over many rewrites in KOREA 120, Won Gi became increasingly adept at staking his claims clearly and writing with elegance.
Another example of a class that found creative ways to teach writing in the major is Dr. Kim Beil’s iteration of ARTHIST 294: Writing the Visual. The department of Art and Art History is a particularly obvious example of a disciplinary network. Artists, curators, journalists, museum directors, and academics all contribute to the field, writing in many genres and from many locations, whether university department, gallery, news room, or museum. Beil created a class where students could practice the varied kinds of writing that contribute to the disciplines of art and art history: historical, interpretive, research-based criticism, journalism, the catalog essay, and the artist’s bio, among others, giving students experience writing a number of genres to multiple audiences. In this way, the multivocal network of the disciplines became visible and accessible to students. Of Beil’s class, Dylan Sherman ‘20 says, “The diversity of shorter assignments made me more attentive to the various purposes of art writing in and out of academia.”
But Beil began the quarter with a focus on the writer, reinforcing the idea that all disciplines are made up of situated selves. She asked students to spend thirty minutes on two different occasions in front of the same artwork, observing closely and taking notes the whole time. She then asked students to reflect on the changes between the two sessions. The exercise highlighted how much of their lives scholars bring to their observations and writing. Personal experiences influence what we see and the conclusions we draw. Dylan reflects, “Writing about art does not always have to achieve a certain position or goal; it can be done just for yourself in order to better understand your relationship to a work.”
Disciplines are made through the writing of living, growing human beings in conversation with each other. Dr. Beil brought Bay Area artists to Stanford to discuss art objects of their choice from the Cantor and Anderson collections with students (pictured above: Erica Deeman in conversation with students about Frank Stella's Zeitveg; photo courtesy Kim Beil). Beil observed that artists are not cautious about talking about others’ art; they know what inspires and why, what they would do differently, and how others’ art can inform their own creative processes. Beil required groups of students to interview the individual artists and then transcribe and edit the interviews for a beautiful book. Amir Abou-Jaoude, ‘20, says, “I am not a practicing artist, but I found that the talks immensely enriched my art historical writing. I realized that art historians cannot consider works in a vacuum. Instead, they must be in dialogue with artists.” In conversation with practicing members of the discourse community, asking questions and representing the replies, students experienced the discipline as a living thing to which they might contribute meaningfully.
For Amir, the WIM course launched a longer research project. He relates, “For my final paper in the course, I wrote about a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe entitled Javier [another Hoefer winner]. I later parlayed that paper into an honors thesis about the influence of antiquity on Robert Mapplethorpe’s art. . . . I looked at Mapplethorpe’s photographs over and over again to guarantee that I did justice to the entire work. I saw Mapplethorpe not only as a prolific producer of photographs, but as a person whose art was shaped by his environment. Ultimately, Dr. Beil and Jason Vartikar [the TA] not only left comments on my papers, but also gave me the confidence to pursue this larger endeavor within the art history department.” The successful WIM class will inspire deep inquiry through writing, ultimately cultivating belonging within the discipline.
While designing her class, Dr. Beil met with then-Writing Specialist in Art History, Dr. Gabrielle Moyer. Dr. Moyer reminded her of the importance of audience to writing in art history. That idea became a through-line in Dr. Beil’s syllabus as students considered the varied readerships they were writing to. In my conversations with campus WIM partners, I work to bring similar concepts from rhetoric to bear in the design of writing in the major classes. Often, I draw on the subtle distinction between discipline and disciplinarity. Discipline can imply a static target toward which all students must trend. By contrast, disciplinarity centers process, activity, and change in any conception of an academic discourse community. It invites participation. When I think of disciplinarity as an outcome of my work as WIM Coordinator, then I can help professors and graduate students welcome the perspectives of newcomers, highlight the dialogic and negotiated dimensions of their major, and emphasize writing as meaning making.
Works Cited
Reid, Gwendolynne and Carolyn Miller, “Classification and its Discontents: Making Peace with Blurred Boundaries, Open Categories, and Diffuse Disciplines,” Composition, Rhetoric, & Disciplinarity, Utah State UP, 2018, 87-110.
See also
Gere, Anne Ruggles, et al, "Interrogating Disciplines/Disciplinarity in WAC/WID: An Institutional Study," College Composition and Communication (2015), 243-266.
Prior, Paul. Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Routledge, 2013.
