This paper argues that journals do more than simply record individual observations. Using a vital... more This paper argues that journals do more than simply record individual observations. Using a vitalist conception of writing – one that explicitly acknowledges writing as an ecological act – journals are formed from what literacy theorists call the “scene” of writing. This paper forwards an expanded conception of journal writing, the pedagogical uses of journals, and ways we see all writing, not just journals, as participations with the natural world. Introduction: Writing and the Problem of Representation Journal writing has been a staple of nature-ÂÂbased curricula for some time. It appears to go almost without saying that since journals constitute several of our most treasured texts on nature and ecological science and often constitute the very tool used to formulate scientific knowledge about the ecology, students can learn a great deal about nature by keeping a journal of their first-ÂÂhand observations. As educators Clare Walker Leslie and Charles Edmund Roth put it, “Nature jou...
Effective Teaching of Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Application, 2021
This chapter describes how one institution revised its professional and technical communication p... more This chapter describes how one institution revised its professional and technical communication program to include more technology and community engagement experiences. The program originally was highly instrumental, focusing on document design skill sets (e.g., use of Adobe InDesign). Before they could evolve the curricula, program faculty needed to ready themselves to invoke technical communication scholarship's historically key talking points regarding theory, because one significant trait of the program's institutional context was a perceived irreconcilable split between theory and practice. Demonstrating to institutional stakeholders a more nuanced relationship between theory and practice justified the teachers' changes to their pedagogical practice. In addition, strengthening their fluency in scholarship's discussions about theory assisted the program faculty in settling upon the specific theoretical frameworks that the revised curriculum embodies: ecologies of practice and civility. Furthermore, increasing community engagement opportunities in the classroom revealed the benefits of incorporating into the curriculum theoretical content knowledge-but without connecting theory exclusively to one particular assignment or project.
Examining the chanupa, or ceremonial pipe, from a Lakota perspective reveals it as responding to ... more Examining the chanupa, or ceremonial pipe, from a Lakota perspective reveals it as responding to a particular ontology and extends indigenous rhetorics to consider the ontological dimensions of communication. Distinctions between indigenous rhetorics and new materialist rhetorics brings greater attention to how groups and individuals constellate themselves as beings.
This paper argues that journals do more than simply record individual observations. Using a vital... more This paper argues that journals do more than simply record individual observations. Using a vitalist conception of writing – one that explicitly acknowledges writing as an ecological act – journals are formed from what literacy theorists call the “scene” of writing. This paper forwards an expanded conception of journal writing, the pedagogical uses of journals, and ways we see all writing, not just journals, as participations with the natural world. Introduction: Writing and the Problem of Representation Journal writing has been a staple of nature-ÂÂbased curricula for some time. It appears to go almost without saying that since journals constitute several of our most treasured texts on nature and ecological science and often constitute the very tool used to formulate scientific knowledge about the ecology, students can learn a great deal about nature by keeping a journal of their first-ÂÂhand observations. As educators Clare Walker Leslie and Charles Edmund Roth put it, “Nature jou...
Effective Teaching of Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Application, 2021
This chapter describes how one institution revised its professional and technical communication p... more This chapter describes how one institution revised its professional and technical communication program to include more technology and community engagement experiences. The program originally was highly instrumental, focusing on document design skill sets (e.g., use of Adobe InDesign). Before they could evolve the curricula, program faculty needed to ready themselves to invoke technical communication scholarship's historically key talking points regarding theory, because one significant trait of the program's institutional context was a perceived irreconcilable split between theory and practice. Demonstrating to institutional stakeholders a more nuanced relationship between theory and practice justified the teachers' changes to their pedagogical practice. In addition, strengthening their fluency in scholarship's discussions about theory assisted the program faculty in settling upon the specific theoretical frameworks that the revised curriculum embodies: ecologies of practice and civility. Furthermore, increasing community engagement opportunities in the classroom revealed the benefits of incorporating into the curriculum theoretical content knowledge-but without connecting theory exclusively to one particular assignment or project.
Examining the chanupa, or ceremonial pipe, from a Lakota perspective reveals it as responding to ... more Examining the chanupa, or ceremonial pipe, from a Lakota perspective reveals it as responding to a particular ontology and extends indigenous rhetorics to consider the ontological dimensions of communication. Distinctions between indigenous rhetorics and new materialist rhetorics brings greater attention to how groups and individuals constellate themselves as beings.
Connecting Brandt's (1998) notion of sponsorship with speculative philosophy, I argue that litera... more Connecting Brandt's (1998) notion of sponsorship with speculative philosophy, I argue that literacy and literacies can be thought of as grammatically irreal -- that which is both real and virtual -- obfuscating its social constructedness and hacking yet shaping futures along ever-branching lines. Presented at CCCC 2015.
Creative and Professional Writing are often in tension culturally and academically. This paper of... more Creative and Professional Writing are often in tension culturally and academically. This paper offers a framework for curricula that marries the two approaches in order to change students' relationship with writing.
Iowa's colleges and universities helped shape instruction in both writing and speech during the t... more Iowa's colleges and universities helped shape instruction in both writing and speech during the twentieth century. Crowley (1998) dedicates a chapter of her history to Norman Foerster's resistance at Iowa. Sue McCleod credits Central College in Pella, Iowa with founding the first program in Writing Across the Curriculum. Luther College in Decorah has their Paidea program, combining writing, history, and literature. Currently, all three state supported universities offer some form of integrated communication: Iowa's Rhetoric program, Iowa State's ISUComm and WOVE curriculum, and Northern Iowa's Cornerstone course. This project looks to record this history in context of other histories of the Midwest as a potent site for the development of rhetorical education (Fleming 2011, Mastrangelo 2005, etc.) as well as developments integrating speech and composition (Keith and Mountford 2014) and to theorize why Iowa has been a locus for much of that activity.
Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics, 2022
Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics brings together emerging and est... more Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics brings together emerging and established voices at the nexus of new materialist and decolonial rhetorics to advance a new direction for rhetorical scholarship on materiality. In part a response to those seeking answers about the relevance of new material and posthuman thought to cultural rhetorics, this collection initiates bold conversations at the pressure points between nature and culture, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, knowing and being, and across culturally different ontologies. It thus relies on a tapestry of both accepted and marginalized discourses in order to respond to frustrations of erasure and otherness prevalent in the fields of rhetoric, writing, and communication—and offers solutions to move these fields forward. With diverse contributions, including compelling pieces from leading Indigenous scholars, these essays draw from political, cultural, and natural life to present innovative projects that consider material rhetorics, our planet, and human beings as necessarily interwoven and multiple.
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Papers by David Grant