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Russ Hunt wrote in response to Sandra Dueck: I have a theory about that. I >think _we're_ people who came to those lit crit essays with an >already pretty fully developed sense of what it's like for a piece of >writing to have an engaged reader. But most of my students aren't >like that. Writing is, for them, a test, not an opportunity to >connect. They don't acquire many skills from writing those lit crit >essays, and they mostly learn to detest doing that kind of thing, and >doing it to literature. Yes, I know there are exceptions; the >exceptions, in my view, are people who don't much need English >classes. > >So while I certainly agree that the things Sandra says she learned >from writing those essays are good things to learn, I'm still >convinced that there's only a small subset of my students who are >going to learn them that way -- and they're precisely the people that >I need to worry about least. I guess i have to jump in here - as a kind of novice to the forum and the range of discussions here I agree with Russ that Sandra makes some important points, but my experience is quite a different story - i feel many of us arrived at the University as story tellers, poets, working writers - and still get hamstrung by the lit-crit genre - because there is more occuring there in terms of power and knowledge structures than the 'techne' of 'good writing" - I do believe there are "textual identities " made and un-made in the daily practices of lit classes - despite a student's love of literature - or their best intentions to become teachers of English and pass on that love of literature -- S point I find quite ironic is that "reading" is so undervalued -- in lit classes so much of the discipline is disguised as love of reading - but we place all the emphasis on verbal performance in seminars ( genre specific utterances could be taken up in another discussion altogether) and individually writing in the tacit privileged genres of the discipline. i arrived at the university - as an adult "mature" student with a creative writing diploma under my belt, a fairly successful semester at a wise and challenging community college program, and upon my arrival at SFU got slapped in the chops by some fairly heavy gatekeeping - one memorable statement by an esteemed prof who told me "that I would never be a writer and I would never be a graduate student"because I couldn't instinctively punctuate succeded in crippling me for years. A lifelong love of writing shriveled into fear and shame, and I managed to finish my english BA - and enjoyed some wonderful lit courses along the way, but the voice rang true - i didn't know how to instively punctuate -I did not know how to instinctively write lit crit essays either - and never learned the meta -textual forms that Sandra speaks of -- so my grades careened from the spectacular to the borderline often in the same semester. I exited the program with the belief that I could never do graduate work in English and sought out Social Sciences/Education - convincing myself that I really wanted to look at the social lives attached to texts - or that and I wanted to understand my own educational experience as an adult female learner -- but truly - English grad studies scared me to death -and I thought - I would never survive the writing demands - because of my obvious genetic grammatical disability. i still don't punctuate instinctively - and never will -- I am near completion of my dissertation -I still struggle with the meta-textual techniques of argument/ compare contrast, etc. i am a new comer to the genre theory discourse - but apparntly have been writing alongside it for years (I love to explore the link between bodies, institutions and texts - so I value the contribution of Foucault, technologies of power / Dorothy Smith textually mediation of identity / Ricouer texts as human action / Atkinson - ethnography and writing stuff) And I am un-learning some myths about writing (real writing) creative writing , research and academic genres etc. this year I had the pleasure of working in Janet Giltrow's Writing Centre - and I recognised in many of the students, the fear, the bewilderment, the seemingly arbitrary evaluation of it all -- I admit that while I did have some wonderful instructors in my undergrad years -I am afraid that their positive voices seemed very faint and therapeutic compared to the "truth" and rigor of the gate-keeper voices -- the power of the technologies of text/ the regimes of truth of the English lit-crit genre are deep, historically valid and supported by the very sinews of the general university instituional practices -- very few of us believe we can write, are meant to be here legitimately, can buck the imposter syndrome of valuing of our writing practices -- I disguised asI taught compostion and writing coures to teachers that even teachers are terrified to "write real writing" - even as they develop curriculum to teach students composition and creative writing - Writing is, for them, a test, not an opportunity to >connect. They don't acquire many skills from writing those lit crit >essays, and they mostly learn to detest doing that kind of thing, and >doing it to literature. Yes, I know there are exceptions; the >exceptions, in my view, are people who don't much need English >classes. > >And I would buy that absolutely, and argue further that trial and >error and wanting to know is the best -- even, perhaps, the only -- >way to learn this kind of thing, and our job as teachers is to >create situations in which it's possible for students to come to >want to know this kind of thing. I don't think we do it by having >them write lit crit, and I don't think we do it by telling them >about it, either. > I think talking about the power structures around post-secondary literacy and writing practice regimes are important in every discipline and I think making some of these methodologies/technologies/ genres more explicit is important - i recall taking many lit and poetry classes - rarely being exposed to "theory" or secondary sources and still having to replicate the 'sounds" of the research genre -- i used to thank my "good ears" for the success I did have - Kathryn Alexander FAculty of Education, Simon Fraser University