Digital Commons Network^™

Extending An Alternative: Writing Centers And Curricular Change, Joe Essid

English Faculty Publications

When our Writing Center staked its reputation and perhaps its survival on a proposal to change our first-year curriculum, we entered territory that would have been unthinkable to those in our field a few decades ago. Writing center directors and peer tutors may not like it, but the climate now is very different from the salad days of the 1980s, when scholars such as Tilly and John Warnock argued “it is probably a mistake for centers to seek integration into the established institution” (22). In both the United States and EU nations, we face curricular change driven by emerging technologies, …

Working For The Clampdown? Being Crafty At Managed Universities, Joe Essid

English Faculty Publications

Last fall I found myself not only our school’s Writing Center Director but also its Writing Program Administrator. At the same time, a reminder of my wastrel youth appeared: the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Clash’s London Calling.

The two events are connected. On the one hand, it is delightful to hear people again discuss the anthems of the punk-rock era. More than at any time since the 1970s, we need a little more defiance against authority, including the transformation of everything into a saleable commodity. On the other hand, the very way in which London Calling appeared, slickly packaged …

"Cobwebs In The Sky": Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi As Hypertext, Joe Essid

English Faculty Publications

As many participants know, the annual Computers & Writing Conference provides good ideas for our classrooms and research. At the 2000 conference in Florida, a group of us sat in a hallway excited about a film we had just watched, the documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. It seemed to us that consideration of cutting-edge film could become more than a single screening, an after-hours diversion during the conference. We agreed that many recent films incorporated elements of hypermedia in their sensibilities, even composition. An obvious example was the 2000 feature film Time Code, confronting the viewer …