MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When the social turn of the 80s filtered down into writing classes, critics were quick to point out its drawback: the unnecessary politisation of an academic service course. The revival of classical rhetoric and argument in the 90s served to reign in rampant social and political content. Throughout the first decade of the 21th century the teaching of academic argument became the focus of writing classes, and the social and political realities of the decade seemed to justify this essentially conservative approach. However, the proliferation of the internet as a participatory instrument has produced writing that illustrates the narrow scope of the genre academics privilege. The conventional academic research essay is limited in audience, purpose, and context. At a time when our universities proclaim education toward citizenship, and rhetorics of responsivity challenge us to reconsider what is important in the teaching of writing, we want to offer some thoughts on how internet culture can deepen our understanding of composing processes, expand our perspectives on unconventional genres, and bring about a revival of the social turn. The members of this roundtable—three faculty members and three of their students—will explore how developments in communication technologies such as social media platforms, content management systems, website builders, news aggregation and curation platforms, and productivity apps offer rich possibilities to involve undergraduate writers in research and publication beyond the academic community. Such tools provide students with flexible and accessible ways to engage public audiences and groups who generally do not participate or have not been included in traditional scholarly research and discourse. The interactive communities that form around collections, websites, and magazines produced with these tools not only connect students to the world beyond the classroom but also give them a voice and an ethos in that world.