Knowledge and Identity Work in the Supervision of Doctoral Student Writing: Shaping Rhetorical Subjects

Abstract

Making Legal Knowledge in Global Digital Environments political issues that arise when one considers why one court might openly attribute another, and why another court might have reservations about doing so (as evidenced, for example, by the debate between Ginsberg and Scalia). These issues in the context of legal writing may inform how we understand remix writing, attribution, and intertextuality in more local settings, such as our writing classrooms.Using comparative techniques to teach differences and similarities between new texts and old texts, to examine the process of remix, to examine intertextuality in new contexts including legal forums, and to raise the issue of power and politics in the strategies of remix writing itself, gives students an awareness of how complicated digital writing might be from a legal standpoint (see also Yancey, 2009). In gaining increased awareness of these issues, it is generative for composition teachers to explore judicial opinions using the tools that they always have-examining rhetorical turns taken by judges. Such explorations provide opportunities to examine the power of writing.Copyright law and fair use/fair dealing are important to writing teachers and their students in the digital age because these legal concepts shape knowledge-making practices (Rife, 2007). Copyright law, law that deals specifically with writing, shapes our classroom practices as well as how (and whether) field knowledge is constructed, whether we acknowledge this or not (Durack, 2006;Westbrook, 2006).Copyright law is important to writing teachers and researchers because such law attempts to control the process and product with which we are most concerned: writing. For educators, fair dealing/use is crucial in order to teach and in order to encourage student learning. It follows then that copyright should be taught in writing classes, and along this trajectory, it will also be productive to examine the law itself as writing, and how the law-as-knowledge is constructed by writing, thus illuminating the power that can be achieved through the remix, creation, and circulation of texts such as judicial opinions, in global contexts.

Paradigm Wars Revisited: A Cartography of Graduate Research in the Field of Education (1980–2010)

“…That is to say, field reproduction rewards being part of the dominant social group and being productive. This result has some intuitive appeal since dissertation writing is a process that reflects the broader social context of the student (Paré et al, 2011). More than any other trait, the field rewards having elite status.…”

“…Among research outlets, dissertations hold particular importance in the reproduction of an academic field (Bourdieu, 1988). This is because, as a genre, the dissertation is meant to “maintain and regularize the production of certain kinds of knowledge outcomes valued in a given research community,” a task that determines “who can participate in a genre and in what role; what is appropriate to be said, what not, in what order” (Paré et al, 2011, p. 220). By writing a thesis, PhD students become new recruits of the field.…”

“…Since the 1980s, graduate students in education have experienced the paradigm wars and its sequel—that is, the education science movement (Barnhouse Walters et al, 2009)—as the established conditions for knowledge production. In this embattled context, they have often made thematic and stylistic decisions about their dissertation projects based on common sense or incomplete information (Gopaul, 2015; Paré, Starke-Meyerring, & McAlpine, 2011). However, these projects are of great personal relevance as well as functional import to field reproduction: As a source of early-career publications, job talks, and communications with senior colleagues, the dissertation earns a student entry into the field’s core struggle for peer recognition and a faculty job (Collins, 2002).…”

Another Voice in the Room: Negotiating Authority in Multidisciplinary Writing Groups

“…In their recent call for more graduate writing groups to be included in writing centers, Kinney et al (2019) contend that meeting outside the purview of faculty advisors "allows for diffuse power relationships between [group] members," which facilitate trust and respect for each other's "academic authority" (Kinney et al, 2019, p. 20). Similarly, Anthony Paré (2014) theorizes writing groups as spaces in which dissertators may practice explaining their scholarly contributions and thus "develop a sense of membership and authority" in their disciplinary communities (p. 26). By providing support for writing in academic genres, writing groups function as spaces connected to, yet located apart from other typical sites of disciplinary practice.…”

“…Drawing on situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), previous research has pointed to the importance of relationships between students and advisors in the writing of the thesis or dissertation (Lovitts, 2001(Lovitts, , 2008Paré et al, 2011). These studies suggest that advising relationships can be challenging both for students and advisors.…”