The Practice of Re-Reading
Teaching always involves re-reading.
Going into the first week of this semester I’ve re-read a book, four articles, and part of another book for two courses, one undergraduate, one graduate.
And?
Yes, and, indeed. I came across a blog this fine about-to-become-football-frenzy Saturday morning and skimmed a brief passage on the teaching of reading (as opposed, I suppose to only writing) in order to make students better readers (i.e. more careful readers). No harm, no foul here. Who doesn’t want students to be better readers (or better everything, for that matter). At the same time, however, that we dish out such encouragements, we also must remind ourselves of our own reading practices. We should also return sometimes to our own re-reading practices.
A few weeks ago, Paul had a nice post about reading, mostly written as advice to students. The ability to internalize and to work with internalized readings is a difficult one, and it is one that comes with time and experience. At some point, you feel the database inside you, you mentally assemble positions, you see connections and patterns without consulting texts, you put together conversations based on your own private database. I am completely dependent on my internal database. But when I go back and re-read, I am always pleased by the forgotten detail, the missed strand, the unexpected or neglected phrasing, the chance juxtaposition as what I re-read (for the X amount of time) meets up with what I have since read. I was re-minded this week, for example, of Joe Harris’ choice of the word “network” to describe the “process” of writerly exchanges that occur in intellectual work. A small moment? Maybe. Or maybe not. But this moment will be introduced into a current project in progress as well as a more recently invited project. And here is the great lesson from Linked regarding the concept of growth (also a key word in Harris’ A Teaching Subject). Our own intellectual networks - which reading is a part of - must grow. That growth includes adding new texts and ideas to the database which shapes the network. But it also involves going back to the database and re-reading its contents.
[…] Charlie Lowe and some members of GVSU’s Writing Department wote a position statement on plagiarism detection software which they posted to Charlie’s blog. This post caught the attention of Turnitin.com, and Charlie asked them to post their response to Kairosnews.org, where an evolving discussion is taking place. Lanette Cadle and Rebecca Moore Howard offer some great commentary. See also Rebecca’s summary of Kathryn Valentine’s “Plagiarism as Literary Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethical Binaries.” Good stuff here and a useful link to the WPA’s best practices statement on Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism, which I’ve either missed for forgotten about. And all of this connects to Jeff Rice’s most recent post on “The Practice of Re-Reading.” Juxtopoase this passage from Rebecca’s summary: Plagiarism is represented as an avoidance of work (95), and that, too, warrants punishment (95-96). Valentine sees this calculus as the cause of instructors’ sense of outrage when they encounter plagiarism, and she interprets patchwriting as a form of labor (96). “Students’ opportunities to practice citation and the performance of honesty are closed down when their improper citation is read as a sign of dishonesty, rather than as a sign of an authentic beginner engaged in the work of acquiring a new discourse” (97). […]
Pingback by Machina Memorialis » Blog Archive » Discussions about Plagiarism — September 16, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
I like this posits a sense of rereadings that might be something of a departure from beginnings. Doesn’t re-reading suggest a sense of middles and re-beginnings?
When I started my diss (-Rereading and Rewriting Bloc/ks-) one of my committee members (aw heck, JB!) commended Doug Brent’s -Reading as Rhetorical Invention-. I don’t know that I’ve really given this work its due now that I’ve gotten some distance into my diss.trance. Just typing this reminds me of this earlier calling.
And so it goes, I suppose, a B.rent in one’s reading that calls for still further rereadings and rewritings …
Comment by gvcarter — September 18, 2006 @ 7:22 am
Thank you for this post. Someone asked me the other day what I had to do before class, and I said I had to read Notes from Underground and Beowulf. “Haven’t you read those before?” he said. I said that I had, of course, but I always re-read the texts along with my students. You articulated the reasons very well. If I didn’t re-read, I would depend solely upon my “database,” which is not so bad, except that I learn nothing new that way. Well done.
Comment by Greg Salyer — September 18, 2006 @ 1:23 pm
[…] A couple of interesting links about reading and re-reading: there’s this one from Rice, which build off of this post and this post, which are both at the blog dissoi logoi. I just skimmed these for now (kind of ironic, I suppose), but what interests me most about this is this is something I’m talking about with the grad students teaching first year composition this term. […]
Pingback by Steven D. Krause’s Official Blog » Blog Archive » Misc. Catch-Up on RSS Feed Reading, part 2 — September 23, 2006 @ 8:49 am