I don't know about you, but tonight I’m just going to be handing out candy to trick-or-treaters and sitting around the house watching scary movies. I thought, then, that it might be fun to talk about what movies are the best, worst, etc.

Best (in no particular order):
1. Ju-On (this is the original Japanese version of “The Grudge”)
2. Nightmare on Elm St. parts 1 and 3
3. The Ring
4. Halloween part IV
5. Friday the 13th

Completely Unimpressed By:
1. The Blair Witch Project
2. the Scream trilogy
3. Fear Dot Com

So Bad They’re GREAT:
1. Child’s Play (all of them)
2. Children of the Corn
3. Ice Cream Man
4. Hollow Man

What do you think?

This is the first time I've done one of these, but here's hoping it has the desired effect:

I think I'll revise it as I finalize the texts for the class, and I'm going to try to put the days and time the class is meeting on there too.

In the spring, I'm teaching a new course; that is to say, not only is it new to me, but to the university as well. It was proposed a couple of years ago, but I'll be the first one ever to teach it, thereby setting a precedent and possibly affecting enrollment patterns in the course for years to come (pressure!). It's an elective, and I'm trying to make it work with my teaching philosophy, which I'm coming to realize more and more is a Lazerian civic literacy with some Roberts-Miller thrown in, and make it appeal to students in a variety of majors. I think it would be most interesting to English, Journalism/Communication Studies, Political Science, and History majors, but hopefully anyone can get something out of it.

As always, I would love to hear suggestions!

English 3030: Introduction to Rhetorical Studies

This course will bring classical and modern rhetorical concepts to
bear on recent U.S. civic discourse, particularly great orations of
the recent past, such as those found in americanrhetoric.com's online
speech bank, and present-day television political commentary. Opinion
writing in newspapers will also be used.

In the first half of this course, students will learn foundational
concepts of rhetorical studies, including:

• The canons (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery)
• The species (deliberative, judicial, epideictic)
• The appeals (ethos, pathos, logos)
• Stylistic devices
• Informal fallacies (bandwagon; red herring; post hoc, ergo propter hoc; etc.)

The second half of the course will be devoted to exploring the variety
of texts rhetoric scholars study and the approaches they take to those
texts. We will cover visual rhetoric; feminist and critical race
rhetorics; authorship/intellectual property; and rhetorical studies of
communication technologies including weblogs, wikis, and social
networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook.

The course is designed to provide students with foundational knowledge
of the art of rhetoric. A transferential approach to the material will
be encouraged; in other words, students will be urged to apply the
critical thinking skills afforded by rhetorical studies to their own
areas of interest.

Readings (Partial and Tentative):

Booth, Wayne, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric

Aristotle, On Rhetoric

American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

Bulworth. Dir. Warren Beatty. Perfs. Warren Beatty, Halle Berry. Film.
20th Century Fox, 1999.

Next semester I'm teaching a graduate course on research ethics, and I'm in the process of designing the course and choosing a bibliography. A draft of the bibliography follows, and I'd like feedback on it and the design of the course into units, but I'm also working on a flyer for the course. I figured it would be provocative to put a list of questions on it that we'd be discussing throughout the semester. Here's what I've come up with, and I hope you'll suggest others:

1. What is "informed consent"? How much do participants need to know about your study?
2. Should participants also be co-researchers? Should they help design the study and formulate the research questions that are most important to them?
3. What constitutes a "vulnerable population"?
4. What particular ethical issues do researchers of online environments face?
5. How do feminist researchers approach research ethics?
6. What special ethical issues do composition and technical communication researchers face?
7. What are the best ways to design ethics into your analytical procedure?
8. How can conflicts of interest be managed appropriately?
9. What are researchers' ethical responsibilities with regard to allowing participants to review the results of the research? Should researchers alter the write-up of their research at the request of participants (removing quotations from interviews that make the participants feel uncomfortable, etc.)?

English 7765: Research Ethics

Units

1. History of IRBs (case studies)

[here I'm thinking the Nuremberg Code, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, among others]

2. Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research (Multidisciplinary Focus)

• Agre, Patricia, and Bruce Rapkin. “Improving Informed Consent: A Comparison of Four Consent Tools.” IRB: Ethics and Human Research 25.6 (2003): 1-7.
• Barnes, Mark, and Katherine E. Gallin. “’Exempt’ Research after the Privacy Rule.” IRB: Ethics and Human Research 25.4 (2003): 5-6.
• Brody, Baruch A., et al. “Expanding Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: The Views of Stakeholders.” IRB: Ethics and Human Research 25.1 (2003): 1-8.
• Fernandez, Conrad V., Eric Kodish, and Charles Weijer. “Informing Study Participants of Research Results: An Ethical Imperative.” IRB: Ethics and Human Research 25.3 (2003): 12-19.
• Weinberg, Janice M., and Ken P. Kleinman. “Good Study Design and Analysis Plans as Features of Ethical Research with Humans.” IRB: Ethics and Human Research 25.5 (2003): 11-14.

3. Ethics in Technical Communication Research

• ATTW Code of Ethics. Technical Communication Quarterly 10.3 (2001): 356.
• Breuch, Lee-Ann Kastman, Andrea M. Olson, and Andrea Breemer Frantz. “Considering Ethical Issues in Technical Communication Research.” In Research in Technical Communication. Ed. Laura J. Gurak and Mary M. Lay. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
• Hawthorne, Mark D. “Learning by Doing: Teaching Decision Making through Building a Code of Ethics.” Technical Communication Quarterly 10.3 (2001): 341-355.
• Kastman, Lee-Ann, and Laura J. Gurak. Conducting Technical Communication Research Via the Internet: Guidelines for Privacy, Permissions, and Ownership in Educational Research.” Technical Communication 46.4 (1999): 460-69.
• Salvo, Michael J. “Ethics of Engagement: User-Centered Design and Rhetorical Methodology.” Technical Communication Quarterly 10.3 (2001): 273-90.
• Winsor, Dorothy. Writing Like an Engineer.

4. Feminist Approaches to Ethics

• Kirsch, Gesa, and Joy Ritchie. “Beyond the Personal: Theorizing a Politics of Location in
Composition Research.” College Composition and Communication, 46.1 (1995): 7-29.
• Lay, Mary M. The Rhetoric of Midwifery: Gender, Knowledge, and Power. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1999.
• Naples, Nancy A. Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse, and Activist Research.
• Pierce, Jennifer L. Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms. Berkeley, CA: U of California P.

5. Ethics in Online Research

• AoIR Code of Ethics.
• Ratliff, Clancy. Methodology chapter of dissertation.

6. Ethics in Research without Human Participants

• NEH Research Misconduct Policy. http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/researchmisconduct.html
• Sharer, Wendy. "Disintegrating Bodies of Knowledge: Historical Material and Revisionary Histories of Rhetoric." In Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, eds. Rhetorical Bodies.

7. Ethics in Students' Own Research

In this unit, students will do presentations based on their final papers. I intend for these to be dissertation- and master’s-thesis-directed; that is to say, students will write reflective seminar papers designed to complement their research.

1. When I was visiting my parents for fall break, I was rummaging through some old papers and ran across an annotated bibliography I had written for a literature course on the theme of courtly love in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. The paper had no comments but the following:

A- (90) See CS. Good content and bibl form

The comma splice, which was utterly a careless error on my part as I knew the mechanical rule in that case, was marked on one of the pages.

The thing is, that's about representative of the comments I got on all the papers I ever wrote in college (undergrad), even in composition classes. I never got comments anywhere near as substantive as the ones I give my students. I'm wondering if it's maybe just because my papers were good, and because of that the professors didn't see much need to make that many comments (and students with weaker writing skills got more comments), or what. In my classes this semester, I've asked students what kinds of comments they've gotten on their writing in the past, what kinds of comments are helpful, etc. I think I'll share this story with them. Actually, at the time I didn't think anything of it or expect more comments than that. It is said that some students don't read the comments anyway, so maybe some professors don't see much point in making them. Do comments really help? Do they only help if the paper gets a bad grade? Jonathan and I discussed this briefly, and he had a different experience in college -- more of a range, with some professors making very lengthy and detailed comments and others making minimal comments. He always appreciated them (and I assume he got As on most of his papers). What do the rest of you think? What kinds of comments did you get on your writing when you were in college? (Or high school.) How do they compare with the comments you make on your students' writing?

[Edited to add: Lest you think otherwise, I know there's a copious body of literature on responding to student writing. I've read a good bit of it. The articles I've read, though, have tended to compare ways that teachers respond to student writing and argue that facilitative comments are better than directive comments. I'm more interested in what students have to say about the comments and what student expectations are regarding comments. I know that comments can influence students' motivation and confidence levels, but I guess I need to read more Nancy Sommers to get specifics.]

[Okay, I keep thinking of more to add. Where I went to college, the professors have high caps and heavy teaching loads. The assumption may well have been "I'll put a grade on this paper, and the student can always come to my office if he/she wants some clarification about the grade." Reading some of the comments at Dean Dad's (linked below) made me think that, especially with all the time spent on email with students, how much commentary can professors realistically provide on any one paper in anything resembling a timely fashion if they have 100+ of them to grade?--and possibly have any energy left? I guess the point is, I really don't blame my professors; I know they were worked hard and probably just trying to balance work and life. The professor who graded my annotated bibliography (now retired), for example, was the single mother of a teenager at the time.]

2. I wonder if there are any studies that examine the influence of email communication between students and professors on retention and attrition rates. In recent years, for example, professors have become obligated to email students who have missed two or three class periods in a row to inquire about their absence and do more to help them get caught up (I realize this must be different in large lecture courses). There are many factors that affect retention and attrition, I understand, including adjunct labor, but I'm still curious. It may not even be possible to design a study that isolates email communication as a factor.

What I did over fall break:

• Attended a tailgate party for UNA's homecoming game and saw people I hadn't seen in about ten years
• Graded a set of papers
• Submitted a proposal for an edited collection
• Read Naked by David Sedaris (finally!)
• ...and more work to do before tomorrow, when my "break" is officially over
• ...and I still feel behind on just about everything.

I went to two three-hour-long grant writing workshops last Thursday (really!), and in the course of those, the speaker was talking about how some reviewers are well qualified to evaluate research in your particular field, but others, while very intelligent, well-read, educated people, are not experts in your specific area and can't look at your CV and know whether or not to be impressed; they don't know whether the journals you've published in are the best or not.

That got me to thinking -- I do know what the best journals are in my field (one would hope!), but I don't, in fact, have as firm a grasp as I would like on what the top-tier journals are in other subfields in English studies or in related fields. Yes, I know I could just look at the MLA index of periodicals and review all the acceptance rates, but I want to hear from people in these fields; I want to know which journals have the most cachet, and this may not necessarily line up with acceptance rates.

Here's what I do know, and I'd like you to help me fill in the blanks. Please suggest journals in the comments, or if you don't want to register, you can use my contact form. [I'm adding to this list as I get suggestions. I still have more to add, but this list has been updated on 15 October.]

Rhetoric and Composition: Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, College English. Those seem to be considered the best. Also very good are Journal of Basic Writing, Pedagogy, Rhetoric Review, Rhetorica, Computers and Composition, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

Literature

general: PMLA, obviously; ELH...what else?

medieval: Speculum, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Exemplaria, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, The Chaucer Review, Saga-Book, Scandinavian Studies, Studies in Medievalism

manuscript studies: Manuscripta

Anglo-Saxon studies: Anglo-Saxon England

Renaissance/early modern: Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth-Century Journal, The Shakespeare Quarterly

17th century:

Restoration/18th century: Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Eighteenth-Century Life, Eighteenth-Century Fiction.

19th century British:

American (general): American Literature, American Literary History.

British (general): Journal of British Studies

18th/19th century American: Early American Literature

20th century British: I know Modernism/Modernity and Modern Fiction Studies are both good, but what else?

20th century American:

African American:

postcolonial:

literary criticism/theory: Critical Inquiry

children's literature: The Lion and the Unicorn, Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Also good: Canadian's Children's Literature/Litterature Canadienne pour la Jeunesse

performance studies: Text and Performance Quarterly (is performance studies the same thing as studying drama?)

science fiction: Science Fiction Studies

film studies:

multicultural literature/ethnic studies: SAIL (Studies in American Indian Literatures)

gender studies: I know some good ones include Signs, Feminist Studies, Hypatia, Feminist Teacher, Legacy

philosophy:

history: American Historical Review

classics:

...and any other fields you'd like to add.

Anyone going to SAMLA in November? It's in Charlotte, NC this year. If so, come on to my panel:

50. Sexuality and Visual Rhetorics in the Advanced Writing Curriculum
Advanced Writing Session
Regular Session
Saturday – 9:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.
Morehead
Chair: William P. Banks, East Carolina University
Secretary: Michele Eble, East Carolina University
1. Attracting Readers: Sex and Audience in the Blogosphere – Clancy Ratliff, East Carolina University
2. Sexuality and Visual Rhetorics in the Advanced Writing Curriculum – Misty Carmichael, Georgia State University
3. Does Sex Have a History? Toward a Sexual Literacy in a Writing-Intensive Course – Robin Martin, East Carolina University

And/or, we could have a SAMLA/Charlotte area blogger meetup. Let me know.

Also, read this article about a guy who decided to take an "energy diet," in which he and his family consumed less carbon dioxide and energy. I LOVE IT. I wish similar articles were printed in newspapers once a week or so.