Week 9 Blogs

In her text, Feminisms, Genders, Sexualities, Anne Donadey offers what she calls, “a still photograph of objects in motion, some of which may be outside the frame entirely” (226). She outlines the present phase of the ongoing evolution in feminism and sexuality studies without claiming to cover the gamut. She acknowledges her situational location and focuses on, “the self-representation of marginalized groups.” Donadey walks the reader through a variety of approaches to feminism in order to uncover their shared goals which include theorizing the experiences of women, LGBTQ people, people of color, postcolonial people, and women with disabilities, and seeking to shatter the binaries my redefining masculinity, heterosexuality, whiteness, the West, and ability. Donaday is seeking a scholarly audience with likely hopes of sparking new interest and, as a result, new definitions and binaries meant to be shattered.

In his article, David Setiz argues that, “while composition studies often claim to privilege practice, our programs rarely allow these theories to be informed by practice” (66). Seitz uses 3 of his students as examples and parallels conversations that he had outside of class with their in-class responses and writing in order to show that when “students are from working-class backgrounds or are recent immigrants, we can miss out on views from outside middle-class institutions that imply valuable critiques to these theories and their application to the writing process” (65). Seitz is trying to prove that as “critical teachers,” we might better understand our ability or inability to elicit desirable responses both in the classroom and in practice in the every day lives of students. Seitz speaks to his reader almost as a comrade, like we have a common purpose and brotherhood with its foundation in composition theory, practice, and instruction.

Topic of Invention: Similarity/Difference

The most important similarity that I found in the Seitz and Donadey texts is that, in a sense, they both focus on the situatedness of the reader/creator. Both articles seek new definitions and new perspectives in order to get a more true-to-reality view of research and student writing. I really liked Donadey’s section on the duality of memory and history. On one hand, the past will repeat itself if not remembered, but on the other hand, the danger seems to be that the past will repeat itself if remembered too much. It is in this grey area that Seitz’s students appear to be floating. They are stuck in the middle ground between working-class values and out-of-the-box thinking. It is easy to assume that college students are all part of this new movement toward individuality, when in reality, some cling to the traditional binaries outlined by their dominant cultures. This can be seen vividly in the LGBTQ population. While it is easy to lump us all together as deviants, or progressive, or sexually free thinkers, there is an abundance of gays and lesbians who would really prefer to stick to the binary- hetero OR homo. No bi’s. No trans. No grey area. Similar to everything else that we have read, these pieces show how loosely interpreted everything that we read truly needs to be.