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Teaching Bartleby to Write: Passive Resistance and Technology's Place in the Composition

Classroom
Author(s): Gregory Palmerino
Source: College English, Vol. 73, No. 3 (January 2011), pp. 283-302
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790476
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283

Opinion: Teaching Bartleby toWrite:


Passive Resistance and Technology's
Place in the Composition Classroom

Gregory

"Nothing

so

aggravates

Palmerino

an earnest
person as a passive

?Herman

resistance."

Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener" (par. 3)

since he was first introduced tome during my undergraduate years as a


bumbling English major, the specter of one of literature's most enigmatic
and forlorn characters?in whom Herman Melville brilliandy depicts the idea
that the line between doing and not doing, succeeding and failing, sanity and
madness is entirely precarious and utterly razor-thin?has haunted my fragile, yet
imaginative, psyche. Nowadays, as a bumbling but earnest English teacher, I ammore
concerned with Melville's unnamed narrator than I am with his tide character. The
reason? I have come to recognize an unnerving trend inmy composition classroom:
the explicit refusal on the part of a growing number of students to do any
writing.
I am well aware that thismay not be news formany composition teachers, past

Ever

or present. I imagine
as old as education itself.As Tom March puts it,
apathy is
"Who hasn't heard thatwrenching response so common among young people, the
verbal shrug of complete apathy: 'Whatever'" (16). Even as Iwrite these words, I get
the feeling that I am saying nothing and everything all at once. But a recent experi
ence with one particular student has awakened a realization that I had previously
overlooked or refused for some reason to fully acknowledge, in the same way that

Melville's

unnamed narrator is eventually awakened to his humanity by Bartleby.

Gregory

Palmerino

London,

Connecticut.

College,

where

he met

He

inNew
is awriting specialist and first-yearwriting instructor atMitchell College
also teaches composition as a part-time instructor atManchester
Community

the student described

in this essay.

College English, Volume

73, Number

3, January 2011

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284

College English

First

Texts

Donald Murray wrote that allwriting is autobiography, "and that our autobiography
grows from a few deep taproots that are set down into our past in childhood" (67).

like to extendMurray's idea and suggest that all teaching, too, is autobiog
surrogate author, "Ere
raphy. Therefore, in the spirit ofMurray and ofMelville's
I would

some mention ofmyself (par.


introducing the [student] in question, it is fitImake
am
one
too myopically sometimes,
I
of
teachers
who
albeit
those
focus,
2).
writing
on students who are engaged, who are enthused, who are learners. This is not to
say that I do not struggle with, and often suffer for, those students who themselves

a former teacher of journalism as well as com


struggle and sufferwith writing. As
I
the
old
position, often apply
journalistic ethic firstuttered by Finley Peter Dunne,
"Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable." In other words, I do nurture needy
students when necessary and challenge

strong students when

appropriate. That

is

just good teaching.


But my classroom

also reflects my upbringing. I am the son of Italian and


the product of a mill-town mentality and a blue-collar mode.

Polish descendants,
Everything about that upbringing informsmy teaching: theway my hands gesticu
late lively during discussions; the heightened volume and often sarcastic tone ofmy

voice when I ammaking awry comment; the contorted facial expressions when I am
uncomfortable, challenged, or confused; the crude language and abrasive analogies
that sometimes accompany my outrage and my humor. I bring to the classroom my

early life as a gym rat and my Cold War service in theUnited States military, along
with a personal and professional attitude that at least hopes to loathe pretension
and celebrate authenticity, whatever those evolving concepts inme may be.My love

for literature and my work as a poet inform and strengthen my simple belief that
most of what we need to know can be found in the nature of things. As a result, I
am continually
attempting to stripmyself bare formy students so that Imay better
connect with them and teach them.This approach, of course, can often be awkward
and sometimes embarrassing. But it ismy way ofmodeling formy students what I
vulnerable.
continually asking them to do in theirwriting?be
The student I am about to consider here, however, somehow fell outside that
influencewith a dramatic display of indifference. I suppose that iswhat I have realized
thinking about him: there is an alternative reality inmy classroom that is unaffected
bymy presence, and this one student has made me realize how many more students
seem to be
slipping into it than ever before.
am

student in question is a bright, articulate eighteen-year-old, who for all


intents and purposes presented as an average, middle-class, white male. He was
comfortable in the classroom, offering his opinions and dissents
thoughtfully and
was
nor
He
neither
to
either
his
fellow classmates
courteously.
disruptive
disrespectful
The

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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

or me. He

conducted himself in away that suggested he was shaped by good schools


an
and
equally good family.The first-year composition course he was enrolled in at
the large community college where we met has a rigorous vetting process: placement
tests, faculty evaluations, SAT requirements, and developmental courses. So I was
confident thathis writing skillswere adequate, ifnot solid, for theComp 101 course I
teach on Saturday mornings. In short, therewas nothing alarming about his presence.
Except he didn't do anywriting.

first-year composition course where we met gathers once a week for


three hours in a twenty-first-centurywriting lab with state-of-the-art technology
for instruction, including ample room for traditional class interfacing, and separate
The

computers for each of the twenty-four registered students. Each class period is
divided evenly for themost part into theory and praxis. In the firsthalf, I present a
range of rhetorical reading and writing skills and strategies, from active reading to

classical appeals to audience, including a class on visual rhetoric; the second half is
directed writing, inwhich the students exercise the concepts with my guidance and
peer support. Over the course of a fifteen-week semester, students are required, by
English department fiat, to write fifteen pages of revised and edited text, through
three separate thesis-based writing assignments. Essays are centered on readings from
an anthology chosen byme that offers diverse renderings of American "myths" (for
example, success, education, freedom) by authors from as early as the nineteenth
century to the present. Students are asked to choose their own readings on which to
base their essays and class discussions. As studentsmove through each writing assign

ment, they collect theirwork in a portfolio for their own ongoing self-assessment and
instructor feedback. Grades are not assigned to individual essays but to the portfolio
as a whole, using a three-pronged assessment approach: revision, progression, and
self-reflection.However, a detailed grading rubric is included in the syllabus based
on Council

ofWriting Program Administrators' guidelines.


I confronted my Bardeby after class one morning with what I feltwas
his blatant lack of productivity, he nodded, made a feeble attempt at a sincere smile,
and walked away without a word. I remember gazing at the back of his head dumb
When

did not actually say thewords, but they seemed to emanate from his
would prefer not to."

founded. He

wake?"I

For the next two weeks he was not to be seen.With

my prior astonishment
the
course, figuring he was just another
subsiding, I surmised he had withdrawn from
student who had dropped one ofmy classes for any number of personal or academic
reasons. To my surprise, he returned.Maybe he has resolved to start anew, I thought.
On the contrary, he continued to operate in the same old frame ofmind, preferring
not towrite. Aftermidterm grading, his attendance remained piebald, and he usually
exited the classroom early after the discussion/lecture portion of class. On the last

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285

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College English

as ifnothing was amiss. Subsequendy, his


day of the semester there he was, sitting
was one of themost disconcerting Fs I have ever entered inmy grade book.
to shake him from my consciousness for about a year after, I slowly
Unable

as Iwas goaded to see all ofmy


began to understand what had transpired between us,
students and myself in a new light.As a result, I believe I have discovered something
meaningful about both of us and, in turn, discovered something insightful about

story that seems equally edifying.


I hesitate to call the type of student I am describing an "at-risk" one. Not un
likemost first-yearcollege students, he is certainly lacking in some basic study skills

Melville's

and time-management strategies that prevent him from succeeding in the college
classroom. But there is something more disquieting going on here. It isnot only that
he and those like him struggle with being college students; most first-year students
I encounter in the classroom do struggle. But he manifested this characteristic in a

way that deviated radically from the norms I have experienced and come to expect
frommy students over the dozen years I have been teaching first-yearcomposition.
As Mariolina
Salvatori and Patricia Donahue
claim, "When the student disappears,
so does the possibility ofmonitoring theoretical self-absorption" (32). Our students'
lives are the first texts thatwe must read as closely as the compositions theywrite.

Otherwise, we will be left reading disembodied words, rather than human com
munication.

Most ofmy composition students increasingly operate with the same dramatic
indifference toward writing as my Bardeby. There are students who would prefer
not to hand inwriting because they are put off by poor
grades, challenging com
or
more
ments,
writing; students who would prefer not to remember to hand in

writing because of their complex and distractable lives; students who would prefer
not towrite multiple drafts because they
disregard time-management strategies or
the honing of an academic work ethic; students who would prefer not tomanually
edit and proofread their essays, relying solely instead on computers for spelling and
grammar checks because they are convinced that writing is simply a mechanical
activity rendered automatic; and finally, students who would prefer not to write
because they have been so tainted, so scared by writing "dead letters" for the first
twelve years of their academic

life that theywithdraw from the idea of partaking in


the composition process, seeing me or the entire enterprise as
dehumanizing and
abstract. This last type of student iswhere Imay have found my
me.
Bardeby?and
This loose kind of teacherly taxonomy likely reveals more about my
autobiog
raphy and my idiosyncrasies as an educator than itdoes about the true nature of the
students I have openly set out to "read." AsWilliam Blake wrote, "To generalize is
to be an idiot"?a condition I find
myself constantly fighting to avoid. I fullybelieve
that students must be embraced as individuals, and I try to
practice this belief con
are
To
these
students
the
the
me,
sistendy.
Turkeys,
Nippers and theGinger Nuts
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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

of the composition classroom. They provide diversity, range, challenge, and, oddly
enough, balance: "Their fitsrelieve each other, like guards," saysMelville's
lawyer
(par. 13).And theymake for a familiar and predictable experience in the composition
classroom. Also, I am quite certain?having
spentmany years as a student myself?
are
me
aswell; it isone of the unavoidable and
they
"reading"
exhilarating challenges

I recognize and accept each time I encounter a classroom fullof dubious faces. In fact,
much of this essay is possible because an individual has emerged who intensely and
completely resisted my preconceptions and expectations in the same way, I believe,
unnamed narrator is challenged by Bardeby. Ironically, my Bardeby has
made me cognizant ofmy comfort, and in turn he has made me uncomfortable.
Recognizing him, thinking about him, and writing about him affordme the

Melville's

opportunity to reexamine, refocus, and sharemy concerns in the process of teaching


writing. In so doing, I hope to retune myself to the ideal thatwe as writing teach
ers should aspire to, that is, inspire our students tomake better choices. InMarch's
words, "[EJngage them in the joys of learning, of making meaning, of being part

of something larger than themselves, of testing themselves against authentic chal


lenges.We can shift them from passivity and consumption to action and creativity"
(17). One ofmy greatest concerns in this pursuit is that technology has hijacked the

it so completely that itmay be too late to combat


composition classroom?hijacked
the effects.And the student(s) I describe in this essay is as much a representative of
our contemporary world's technological revolution asMelville's Bardeby represents
the raging Industrial Revolution of themid-nineteenth
"dead letters" and dehumanizing automation.
Disembodied

Selves

versus

Knowledge

century, with its attendant

of a Person

has been written and said, for good or ill, on either side of the issue about
our current fascination with technology. As Albert Borgmann cautions, "The very
identity of the human person and the very substance of reality are presumably called

Much

into question by developments in artificial intelligence, in genetics, and in virtual


reality. Reactions to these prospects are as divided as they are to carnival rides?they
produce exhilaration in some people and vertigo in others" (9). Although itwill

become obvious that I am more a critic of technology than a proponent, it isnot my


final intention to evaluate themerits or disadvantages of this pervasive and inexorable
movement. Those arguments are already being thrashed out by an impressive array of
thinkers, scholars, and social critics.My goal is toanalyze the behavior ofa studentwho

seems torepresent theperfectprofile ofafascinating individual: thepassive-resistant student.


some meaning from Melville's
doomed character,
Consequendy,
by determining
who I now see is as relevant today as he was over 150 years ago, I can emphasize
the place technology must inhabit between composition teachers and students of

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we must comprehend ifwe are


composition. But it is thisworld of technology that
to understand the growing number of Bardebys in our midst. With an emphasis on
the wisdom of literature and the power of language, I will attempt to convey my
understanding of the sweeping and unpredictable
which we find ourselves adrift.

technological

phenomenon

in

First, the strange reality of involvement/noninvolvement. Some years ago I


heard the disturbing story of two teenagers who vandalized a house while the home
owners were away. Not unusual in itself, but the teens filmed their activities with
eventu
a hand-held video recorder and exhibited the crime to their friends.Word
a
were
teens
I
to
remember
the
and
the
round
authorities,
apprehended.
ally got
a
to
to
at
the time trying
explain
journalist why these juveniles would
psychologist
record their crime and then exhibit the incriminating evidence voluntarily. His ex
me like an
planation hit
iceberg: "If it is not recorded, it did not happen." In other

words, we live in an increasingly ahistorical world, one that requires, ifnot demands,
that events be electronically filmed, documented, and catalogued, lest they become
non-experiences or,worse, disavowed. The only way the teens could give meaning to
theirmeaningless actwas to videotape it, thereby providing proof to themselves and
others that they had acted. Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer, in Imagination and
Play in theElectronic Age, suggest that exposure to an increasingly audiovisual world

may be the contributing factor in our children's "development of an autonomous


ongoing consciousness but with particular constraints. Looking and listening alone
without other sensory inducements can be misleading guides to action" (113). Such
sensory deprivation leads to desensitization and thus a greater chance for the type
of unconscionable

behavior described earlier.


in
My point
retelling this story is not to suggest thatwe have documented our
world accurately only inwords, or thatwords should trump, or are more important
than, technology. This isnot an argument about the value of the Bayeux Tapestry or
On the contrary, it is an attitude toward technology that I am interested
in here: the relative ease, accessibility, and disembodying traits thatmay be foster
ing amindlessness manifested in the composition classroom as passive resistance. As

YouTube.

Kristie Fleckenstein observes in her apdy tided book, Embodied Literacies: Imageword
and a Poetics ofTeaching, this
habit

of

spectacle?restricting

us to a decontextualized

and

ahistorical

immediacy?

offersus important insights intowriter's block and identityblock. [. . .] [S]tudent


writer-readers can easily grow into the belief that, in addition to having nothing to
say, theyhave no reason towrite, no authoritytowrite. In effect,citizens of a society
of spectacle are acclimated in theirown passivity,theirown conviction in the impos
sibilityof an alternativereality. (55)
For those juveniles to have boasted of their storywith words and not a recorded image
would have been ineffective and untrustworthy. In our postmodern, technological
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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

world, words have lost their function in conveying an individual's lived experience and
therefore itsplace in thoughtful action. In the final analysis, technology allows many
people to act (or not act) with impunity because their (in)actions are not ingrained
through animate language but inanimate technology. "But, with language," Fleck

enstein insists, "we can be the observer of our own participation, dipping into that
stream of experience atwill and
on that stream. [...] Furthermore,
reflecting
language
offers us the possibility of reality testing" (28, 29). The anecdote I recounted, then,
is indicative ofmy Bardeby's behavior and amajor indication of the shiftingtide of
our students'
angle of vision toward reality: the technological experience is a more
state
of reality because it is less discriminating, that is, less judgmental.
acceptable

can turn it offwhen we


is certain, exact. In a word, it is safe.We
Technology
can turn down the
get tired.We can replay itwhen we get confused or forget.We
volume when someone is too loud.We can avoid the distractions of classmates and
we are in control of the on/
environment?odors,
lighting, temperature?because
on
off switch. During embodied interactions,
the other hand, our senses are put on
are affected by the size of people, their smell, the sound and volume of
alert.We

living, breathing, speaking human beings. Human interaction forces us to confront


the same
uncertainty and discomfort and, yes, anxiety?our own and others'?in
way the individual at the center of this essay has disturbed me. Is it any surprise that
our students find comfort and trust in such non-human

experiences? They appear


stable than the increasingly unstable world of reality.Maybe Jean-Paul
Sartre was right.Hell is other people.
to be more

calculus here is the difference between the technology-centered acquisition


and the human quality of imagination: the former centers learning on
the technology itself, that is, its spectacle or, more accurately, its capabilities; the
latter centers learning on intrapersonal and interpersonal growth through embodied
The

of material

language.

Regrettably, the lifeline that is required to pull students up into the conscious
world ofmeaning has been yanked away by the ease and comfort of technology, which
is
is not only the opposite of the learning process, but opposed to it.Technology
unquestioning and indifferent. It is antisocial. Arguments that claim all non-human,
that is,nonverbal, forms of communication as technology miss the point. There are
must be accounted for.The act of learn
degrees of separation and complexity that
a
act. It forces us to
ing and of learning how towrite, specifically, is uniquely human
an "other." That other can be either the individual self or the larger social
recognize
audience. In either case, the human being is (and must remain) the hinge. Writing
is such an intimate affair, and by extension so is the teaching of writing. Without

the body's corporeal presence, what kind of ends can be achieved? According to
Fleckenstein, "[W]e need to position ourselves within the fusion of image and word,
within

imageword

so thatwe write-read

[and teach] from the center of a poetics"

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289

College English

(6). It is this "center" about which I am most concerned in this essay.Misplacing


or theoretical intention?threatens
the
by mindless accident
technology?either

mean
body's presence. As such, it threatens effective teaching, active students, and

ingful compositions.
Ifwe are so intent on removing themessy process of presence from learning in
general, how then can we expect our students in the composition classroom to take
us
we extol the virtues of writing as a process, which is ostensibly
seriously when
filledwith fitsand starts,uncertainty, dead ends, new beginnings?life? Such a notion
reminds me of another nineteenth-century writer who made a similar observation
about surgical operations:
Surgeonsmust be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath theirfine incisions
Stirs theCulprit?Life!
are conditions
Emily Dickinson was well aware of the fact that disease and sickness
of a living, breathing human being, and thatwhen one seeks to rid the body of its
ailments, one is cutting out what is a component of one's embodied experience. In
many ways, composition teachers are like surgeons, and they need to perform their
functionwith the same kind of care and awareness. Writing isfraught with error. It
ismessy and scary.As such, writing is one of themost purely human acts. Its teaching
and formulation, therefore,must remain as closely connected to the human condition
as possible. Richard Smith describes amore authentic form of philosophical inquiry

one I would use as a definition for authentic


learning through
"the
composition?as
lively process by which embodied, realistic and perhaps real
people are challenged to examine their ideas and prejudices and to thinkmore care
for education?and

[which] insists on the live contact between individuals that


a
knowledge of person" (29; emphasis added).
Anjanette Darrington's
analysis of her experience teaching an online course
at Arizona State University hints at one of the
major disadvantages of teaching
fully and richly [,...]
implies some minimal

ratherthanwithit:"Vividthough
writingthrough
my personalityinthe
technology
classroom may be, students in an e-classroom are unlikely towitness it; likewise, my
interpersonal communication skills are extremely inhibited by the absence of the
nonverbal cues of communication" (418). Although the teacher's personal
expression
is one I relish and one I believe is invaluable, what about the students? One of the
great joys of teaching in today's composition classroom is the opportunity to partake
in itsmultiple displays of diversity: the
sight of different-colored faces; the various
sounds ofmelodious

and exotic dialects; the pungent smells of home and work life;
idiosyncrasies that emerge through attitudes, dress, and mannerisms.
all get washed away with the anonymity and
sterility offered by technology.

the numerous
They

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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

Of course, there are those who will say,yes, they all get washed away, but so do bias,
prejudice, discrimination, racism, and sexism.My response? I would much rather
be part of a situation that allows me to personally witness and, I hope, foster an oc
casion when those barriers are smashed?and

takemy chances with failure?rather


than be amere participant when they are simply circumvented or, worse, neglected.
If there is any sense of "vertigo" expressed in this essay, it is the realization
one
that
of the few places where I findmyself acting courageously and with a sense

of purpose on a daily basis?other


than raising a family?is being threatened with
extinction by the technological exigency invading the composition classroom.
How would my Bardeby and I have interacted and learned from each other had

I been teaching a composition course online? Without


the benefit of each other's
not
I
it
do
been
believe
would
have
possible for us to experience
physical presence,
what Richard Rorty calls "the sparks that leap back and forth between teacher and

student" (qtd. in Smith 30). I certainly would have been deprived of a profound and
transforming learning experience had I not been given the opportunity to feel in
person those sparks (or pangs) frommy Bardeby. I like to think that he also walked
away from the experience with some effect.
There may be an additional explanation here as to why something as obvious
as absenteeism is an ongoing issue in the college classroom and office-hour visits:

there is a serious lack of embodied consciousness (minimal knowledge of a person) in


our students. For example, a class thatmeets onMonday and Thursday isnot "hap
Friday, and Saturday, when a student's
pening" on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
individual consciousness isnot in class. All is suspended because the possibility of an

unknowable

or unimaginable

physical reality fraught with anxiety and contingency


the presence of the student's consciousness, the class

has been suspended. Without


itself ceases to occur. Cut class, then, and the student has easily and conveniendy
students who arrive
eliminated its attendant requirements and demands. Moreover,

late to class do so in the belief that they have not "missed" anything because class
does not start until their self-affirming consciousness arrives. (See AJ Daulerio's
more humorous email exchanges on this topic, between
blog post for one of the
New York University professor Scott Galloway and a not-so-conscious
student.)
That there possibly could be continuity to instruction/discussion of other persons

adheres to this kind of hyper-subjective


has "out of sight, out of mind" been so true.The concept of
on a consciousness that desires only to experience its
beginnings and endings is lost
own self-affirming existence, an existence that has been seriously limited by what I
would call the tyrannyofsubtraction: the individual goal to eliminate discomfort rather
is incomprehensible
individualism. Never

to the student who

it.For example, who among us has never sent an email message they
In a composition course where
probably would not have presented face-to-face?
than overcome

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College English

time on task is paramount in terms of quality and quantity, this lack of embodied
consciousness is not only self-defeating?it is annihilating.

In his essay "The Human Touch," Lowell Monke explains the disconnect: "What
'Information Age' values tempt us to forget is that all of the information gushing
our electronic networks is abstract; that is, it is all representations, one or
through
more symbolic steps removed from any concrete object or personal experience.

Abstract information must somehow connect to a [student's] concrete experiences


if it is to be meaningful" (11). The composition classroom can and must play an

important role inmaking this connection between the abstract and the concrete. In
Buder Yeats expresses the vital role the
four unflappable lines of poetry,William
act
at the same time making an interesting
in
the
of
while
composing,
body plays
comment about the precarious movement

of the postmodern

individual away from

physical reality:
Hands, do what you're bid;
Bring the balloon of themind
That bellies and drags in thewind
Into

its narrow

shed.

Anyone familiar with Yeats's poetry will understand why he would have been so
concerned with keeping his thoughts grounded in his cranium. There also may be
the seeds here for an interesting argument about keeping the handiwork ofwriting

intimately connected to the process. I am not of course advocating for a return to


quill and parchment. What I am suggesting is that distance matters, and the farther
away from the physical process of writing we get, the less relevant language and

corporeal presence become. This is an argument about the difference between the
I am con
needleworkers of the Bayeux Tapestry and the performers of YouTube.
vinced that the teaching ofwriting will work best only when we startby subduing the
abstracting qualities of technology rather than uplifting them,mistakenly thinking
that technology is amagical means forfreedom of expression or freedom of any sort.
Individualism
Hyper-Subjective
versus
Democratized
Selves

(Content)
(Context)

The movement

toward the hyper-subjective selfhas been well documented by numer


ous authors and
quantified in lighthearted surveys like theNarcissistic Personality
Inventory (NPI), which shows a 30 percent rise in the self-centered attitudes of col
lege students since 1982 when the testwas first introduced ("College Students"). But
the issue ismore serious thanmere egocentrism, which often can be explained away
as arrested
development or more recendy as "the commodification of self (Davis).
What we are dealing with now is an entrenched solipsism: the physical world has
increasingly ceased to exist for our students.
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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

Carlyle, again in the nineteenth century, famously equated writing with


Invent
democracy.
writing, he wrote, and you invent democracy. I would go one
step further:write and you democratize the self.The kind of "self' I am describing,
however, is not a person's "real" self,which often concerns itselfwith existential
Thomas

concepts of identity, or "free" self,which often concerns itselfwith the denial of


social or individual boundaries. Instead, Imean a democratized understanding of self;

the etymological ordering of theword democracy?demos: people; cracy: rule?is the


self I am describing, a self that recognizes human predominance in relationships and
affairs.
Writing and writing instruction that recognize this order are two of themost

effectivemeans for achieving the kind of personal and social freedom I do eventually
want formy students and myself.

Recchio, in "A Dialogic Approach to the Essay," articulates elegantly


much of what I have been describing and the important role composition plays in
combating this undeniably established technological reality or, more accurately,
Thomas

non-reality:
The act ofwriting fills the gap between selfand other through language.Writing is,
within thisparadigm, essentiallyaffirmative;it implies thepossibilityof transcending
one's own subjectivity,of escaping solipsism through language. Such an enterprise
must be filledwith doubt, and that iswhere the essay finds its strongestappeal. For
the essay exploits the uncertaintyof thewriter's situation, transforminguncertainty
into a fundamentalquality of the essay form. (100-01)
that places the technological act ahead of thewriter will most often fail to
Writing
"fill the gap" because themedium will remain the message rather than act as the
messenger ofmeaning. In other words, technology accelerates the shift away from
"knowledge of a person" to hyper-subjective individualism by furtherdisembodying
experience from language and inculcating one into the strange reality of involve
ment/noninvolvement, thus dangerously distancing oneself further from democracy.
So much of our daily life is spent surrounded by technological precision thatwe

We have reached a point


have lost touch with the democratizing spirit that creates it.
in his
where technology ismost dangerous. I am describing what Landgon Winner,
as
Forms
somnambulism":
of
has
termed
Life,"
essay "Technologies
"technological

the idea thatwe are sleepwalking our way through a technological world that is not
of our own making or of our own understanding (57). Technology has become so

invasive and pervasive in our lives thatwe no longer recognize the power ithas over
our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Consider the British Petroleum (BP)
oil disaster or the almost 40,000 motor vehicle deaths each year in theUnited States
because a driver has been rendered unconscious to the fact that he or she is hurtling

once unimaginable speeds. Likewise, if technology is driving the


through space at
are we speeding toward?
teaching of writing (and education in general), what ends

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College English

"Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem theworld is gay; but misery hides aloof,
so we deem thatmisery there is none," opines Melville's narrator (par. 89).
Kathleen Blake Yancey describes a telling example of the intersection of technol

ogy, students, and writing. In the spring of 2008, thousands ofAdvanced Placement
(AP) students networking on Facebook conspired to play a joke on readers of AP
exams by writing the phrases "This is Sparta" and "This isMadness"?two
phrases
answers.
One
substitute
of
could
actual
that cry out for explication?in
easily
place

the phrase "I would prefer not to" with the ones the students used, because they
were responding correcdy to a system, the education system no less, that is supposed
to be embracing them as future thinkers, citizens, leaders, and potentially better and
freer human beings. However, the students involved never really "jeopardized" their
performance on, or their relationship to, the test (Jacobs par. 10). Felicia Wu Song,
in her article "Social Networking Sites," describes the disembodying effects caused
by the ubiquitous phenomena of discourse communities likeFacebook
(and more recendy Twitter):

andMySpace

While we are clearlyembodied beings, the salience ofphysical locationhas diminished


inhow contemporaryAmericans thinkabout and function in their social lives.The
bestway to describe contemporarysociabilityis in termsof "networked individualism,"
overlapping networks of social ties thathave individuals at the core of each. People
understand

"community"

in terms ofmultiple

tances that span time and place?but

systems of friends, contacts,

and acquain

are oriented around each independent self. (4)

As I hope tomake clear later, those Facebook students are wannabe Bartlebys. To
have trulyperformed a courageous and significant act of composing, theywould have
insisted on refusing to take the test altogether. In that case, theywould have forced
a true human response from their readers rather than the
meaningless
toothless annoyances they ultimately produced.

chuckles and

is it thatwe are so utterly bamboozled every day by this kind of techno


act of composing? The sheer volume of participants (30,000) and
driven
logically
the ubiquitous and far-reachingmedia exposure (Wikipedia, examiner.com, Yancey's
How

report) leave the best and brightest to believe that something actually important has
taken place, that people have joined together and accomplished something meaning
is the difference between
ful,when in fact it is simply a prank to get noticed. What
these Facebook students who defaced a test and those two teens I described earlier
who vandalized a home and filmed their delinquent act? Both acts were recorded,
validated by some smart people, and received a lot of attention. Is thatwhat quali
fies as a democratic act of composing? I am heartened, however,
by one ofYancey's
more conclusive explanations as to
AP
act
the
students
in thismanner:
would
why
"they wanted not a testing reader, but a human one" (6).
Kenneth Goldsmith ismuch more direct in his
sundering of the individual and

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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

his or her relationship to language through twenty-first-century technology when


describing contemporary movements in poetic creativity:
Our

immersive

digital

environment

demands

new

responses

from writers.

[...]

Identity,

forone, isup forgrabs.Why use your own words when you can expressyourself just
aswell by using someone else's? And ifyour identityisnot your own, then
sincerity
must be tossed out aswell. Materiality, too, comes to the fore: the quantity ofwords
seems to have more bearing on a poem thanwhat theymean. Disposability, fluidity,
and recycling:
aren't meant
there's a sense that these words
for forever. Today
to a page but tomorrow
as a Facebook
meme.
they could re-emerge

glued

a poetics of flux,celebrating instabilityand uncertainty, (par. 2)

they're
It is

[...]

Unfortunately, the kind of instability and uncertainty Goldsmith is celebrating is


not human, it is technological: digital environments "demand" and we must follow.
connection between the formulation ofwords and human experience has been
undoubtedly and irrevocably severed. Sincerity is no longer part of the equation.
Indifference is king. Goldsmith seems to suggest that this is a good thing.His words

The

are the ultimate expression of technology's final usurpation of human primacy in


language-based communication. It is an attitude, amazingly enough, that embraces
freedom as a form of capitulation.
Poetry aside, the idea of voluntary servitude also can be detected in the rhetorical
an increase in
stylings of composition theorists advocating for
digital and multimodal
the
demands
of
commercial
and public enterprises
"Informed
composing.
largely by

that exist in a rapidly changing and increasingly technologically dependent global and
local environments," students need tomaster certain skill sets as "the next generation
of potential employees" so that they can "assume their role as literate, global citizens

in the 21st century" (Selfe and Selfe 85, 86; emphasis added). Are we interested
in assimilating technology into the composition classroom because it satisfies the
or because it fulfills the de
emerging intelligence of the human being, qua human,
sires of technology/industry, fitting students like cogs into an increasingly obviously
on multinational corporations and international financial
dysfunctional world built
institutions? In "The Database

and theEssay," Johndan Johnson-Eilola conjures up


interesting literary comparison when he paraphrases Robert Reich's descrip
tion of thewants of emerging market economies:

amore

As intellectualwork begins to replace industrialwork inour economy, labor theorist


Reich identifiesa new job classification,one inwhich people manipulate information,
to
sorting,filtering,synthesizing,and rearrangingchunksof data in response particular
or
assignments problems. (201)
Ifwe extend this idea further,we might find
[t]hisprocess of continuous alterationwas applied not only to newspapers, but to
books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets,films, sound-tracks,cartoons, photo

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295

296

College English

graphs?to everykind of literatureor documentationwhich might conceivably hold


any political or ideological significance. (41)
that readers will recognize the latter as an excerpt from George OrwelPs
Smith's job at theMinistry of
prophetic work 1984 inwhich he describes Winston
I hope

In pointing out the comparison, I want tomake clear what is at stake: as we


rethink the composing process, are we focusing the discussion on anything other
than the human subject? To couch our arguments in anything else?job
training,

Truth.

employment, industry, technical skills?not only misses themark, inmy opinion,


but direcdy undermines composition's highest aspirations: "to produce independent
minds, which in self-awareness and self-criticism think and judge on their own"

(Engell 174).

Students like the ones Yancey cites are righdy grasping at a lifeline of authen
tic, concrete human communication, one that reinforces human values rather than
undermines it.Unfortunately, they are not conscious of this desire because technol

at once their
ogy?their all-encompassing and ubiquitous means of expression?is
to
lifeline and their anchor. It is the job of the composition teacher
make them
conscious of the fact that their heads may actually be under water. What isneeded in
the composition classroom is not a search formore ways to incorporate technology.
is needed ismore human relevance.

What

It seems like an obvious point, but the desire for relevant human experience
through language has to consciously and vigorously contain technology. Otherwise,
our composition classrooms will come to look more and more likewhat Mark Ed

to theNew Humanities
has satirically described in his essay, "AWord
Professor." I quote the entire passage to allow the author's sardonic wit and prescient
comment to shine through.

mundson

As everyonenow realizes, the computer is themost significantinventionin thehistory


of humankind. Students who do not master its intricacies are destined for a lifeof
shame,

poverty,

and neglect.

Every

course

you

teach

should

thus be computer-oriented.

Computers are excellent research tools, accordinglyyour students should do a lotof


research. Ifyou are studyinga poem by Blake like "The Chimney Sweeper," which
depicts the debasement and exploitationofyoung boyswhose lot, it'sbeen said, isnot
altogether unlike the lot ofmany children now living inAmerican inner cities,you
should charge your studentswith using the computer to compile asmuch interesting
informationabout thepoem as theycan.They can find articles about chimney sweep
ers from 1790s newspapers; contemporarypictures and
engravings that depict these
unfortunate little creatures; critical articles that interpretthe poem in a seemingly
endless varietyof different,equally valid and interesting
ways; biographical informa
tion about Blake, with hints about events inhis own boyhood thatwould have made
chimney sweepers a special interest;portraitsof the author at various stages ofhis life;
maps of Blake's London. Together the class can create a Blake-Chimney Sweeper
website:

www.blakesweeper.edu.

(31)

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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

themultimodal uses of technology find themselves in the driver's seat, such


activitieswill become commonplace in the composition classroom. And the illusion of
creating original texts, for original audiences, will become just another futile exercise
similar to what contemporary media is now peddling as info-snacking: information

When

that satisfies individual schedules and appetites ("NewsWar"). The term itself should
reveal justhow much sustenance can be obtained from ingesting information?even
profound information?in thishyper-subjective and disembodied way. Nicholas Carr,

for instance, makes an interesting case in his book The Shallows: What the Internet
Is Doing toOur Brains for the dramatic and sustained ebb the human mind may be
experiencing.Writing for theWall StreetJournal online, he states, "[A] growing body
of scientific evidence suggests that theNet, with its constant distractions and inter
ruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers" (par. 1).Much of

the general public, however, interprets technological "advances" as democratizing


without understanding the power of presence.
Is there any difference between Edmundson's fictional account and thework of

a nineteenth-century scrivener? Some readers may argue that the budding Blakeans
have built important and indispensable skills in teamwork, in research, in organiza
tion, and, of course, in technical know-how?skills
highly valued in the jobmarket,
which iswhat industry, including academia, says we are supposed to be preparing

students for as educators. As Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe explain, "In an
not
increasingly technological world, students need to be experienced and skilled
com
only in reading (consuming) texts employing multiple modalities, but also in

posing inmultiple modalities, if they hope to communicate successfully within the


digital communication networks that characterize workplaces, schools, civic life,and
span traditional cultural, national, and geopolitical borders" (3; emphasis added). A

scrivener, on the other hand, merely copies what someone else wrote. True enough.
But what employer in our corporation-saturated world craves employees who are
capable of and encouraged to scrutinize and challenge information from "within"?

If the current corporate ethos says, "Workers of theworld, give us what we want!"
thenwhere will students learn how to challenge when they are taught only how to
communicate within?
Peter Coy, economics editor atBusinessWeek magazine, commented on journal
ism's role in the global financial meltdown in an interview on the PBS News Hour:
.
"[T]he one thing I would plead guilty to is [. .] a failure of imagination. If you
went back and read [BusinessWeek's] stories, the stories we wrote, ifwe had drawn
the logical implications of what we ourselves had written, we probably would have
been more bearish" ("Debate" par. 51). First, Iwould be remiss ifI did not mention
thatMelville's
Street," but I leave it to others to take
story is also "A Story ofWall
is
always ready to go, as ismost great
Bardeby into themyriad directions his tale
literature (see Carol Jago's report, Crash! The Currency Crisis inAmerican Culture).

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College English

More

important, though, and frightening, is the complete lack of human significance


for the rest of us,
professional writers themselves see in their own writing?and,

the equally frightening results. The corporatized writers at BusinessWeek magazine


were writing within with as much conscious desire to challenge the inane financial
practices of the banking and investment industries as those Facebook students were

writing within to consciously challenge the standardizing characteristics associated


with high-stakes testing. All sound and fury, signifying nothing. As James Engell
points out in his important book The CommittedWord, "Every rhetorical act is social
and political, [. . .] for it requires nothing less than an informed, scrupulous use of
imaginative vision of human experience, com
language?an
language and?through
and institutions,, (173-74). Composition
instruction that does not place
a
as
even
not
its
is
primary goal
knowledgeof person
scratching the surface of significance
for our students and our society.Thus we must startwith why we choose to compose

munication,

(context/place) rather than how many ways there are to compose (content/mode).
I have attempted to show how the lack of presence in our society and our

is a direct result of technology's preeminence in human affairs, specifi


cally writing instruction, where composition teachers play an essential role. Yet, I
classrooms

thatmost writing teachers know the stakes. In a recent National Council


of English Teachers
(NCTE)
poll, "respondents tended to look beyond technol
see
success
and
that
is found in better connecting classroom work
ogy applications

believe

to real-world situations that students will encounter across a lifetime"


("Writing"
1).Most composition teachers, I believe, understand those real-world situations as
the ones that involve our fellow citizens, our coworkers, our friends, our families,

and our lovers. Thus writing and writing instruction are acts thatmust embrace
the human realities of contingency and fallibility rather than try to pass them off as
realities characteristic of technology, which often negates them or, worse, attempts
to expunge them. Otherwise, the texts that composition students will learn to create

will be essentially "dead letters" in the same way a copied legal document is dead
to a
nineteenth-century scrivener. "Dead letters! does itnot sound like dead men?"
decries Melville's narrator (par. 250). In short, technology must remain a
subject of
to
even
as
we
be
scrutinized
and
to
continue
composition
constandy
interrogated
use

technology in the act of composing. It is about place, notfunction.


Conclusion

But what about Melville's

is the
Bartleby and my passive-resistant student?Where
connection? Is themeaningless work of a
an
scrivener
nineteenth-century
example
ofmodern-day composing? Are industrial age office conditions the same as techno
logical age classroom circumstances? Is Bardeby's end my student's end? First, the
obvious point that great authors do not refrain from killing theirmain characters so

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Opinion:

Teaching

Bartleby

toWrite

that their readers will retain some sense of hope; on the contrary, they kill off their
creations because they are trying to teach us something about life.For years I thought
thatMelville's
storywas a character study inmental illness. Bardeby's retreat is a
descent intomadness, a metamorphosis not unlike the one Franz Kafka's Gregor

Samsa experiences. Consequendy, Melville's


design forwriting his novella was to
on
a
so
window
that
that
his
readers might better learn to sympa
open
experience
us.
In other words, itwas a lesson in human compas
thize with the afflicted among

I now see that Bardeby is the only mind full character in the story.
is
end
the result of an automated and dehumanizing workload, workspace,
Bardeby's
and world. He realizes this condition and refuses to continue to participate in its
sion. However,

design. His is an act of clarity and defiance. Slavoj Zizek suggests that Bardeby's "I
would prefer not to" is "the gesture of subtraction at its purest, the reduction of all

qualitative differences to a purely formalminimal difference" (382). Unfortunately,


Bardeby's "minimal difference" is the only minimal knowledge of a person left to
him that he feels he can understand or control?his death. Neil Postman reminds us
that Freud, in Civilization and itsDiscontents, warned of this last grasp at deliverance
(6). Ironically, dying to Bardeby has become the only human expression leftof living.
I suspect, therefore, thatmy Bardeby prefers not towrite because it ishis way of

as themeaningless, that is,humanless, ends produced inmy


controlling what he sees
He
isnot acting from a place of narcissism or selfishness or
classroom.
composition

a
hyper-subjective individualism. He is acting from desire for human relevance. My
not experience freedom. Hence, his passive resistance
Bardeby feelsfree, but he does
as the "human stasis" of postmodern life,what
more
described
be
may
accurately

calls "polar inertia," or "the discrepancy between tech


nologically generated inertia and biologically induced human movement" (Armitage
par. 12). By preferring an academic death, my Bardeby believes that he remains in
cultural theorist Paul Virilio

control of his individuality, his voice, his freedom?his


the opposite is probably true.

humanness?when,

in reality,

self-described "eminendy safe" lawyer and my role


And what about Melville's
as awriting teacher? Am I to blame formy Bardeby's condition? Is there something
I should have done to prevent his failing grade? Have I become too comfortable (or
inured) as a composition teacher? Admittedly, I do have many faults and much to
learn about teaching and writing, but I now seeMelville's
story is ultimately a story
about the characters left living. Bardeby may be condemned by his "minimal knowl
a
is redeemed by
edge of person," butMelville's unnamed narrator, the storyteller,
it. In telling the story, the lawyer is communicating the lesson Bardeby has taught

him: the "cool tranquility of a snug retreat" (par. 3) he has worked so diligendy to
achieve over the course of his law career is not one of fulfillment, as he originally
overtures of accommodation and
thought, but of confinement. Bardeby refuses all
remediation from his employer because he no longer sees him as anything other

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299

300

College English

than another example for his fatal choice: his employer is doing unconsciously what
to death. Once Bartleby decides to cease to
Bartleby is doing consciously?speeding
ceases
to exist; in other words, the dead cannot
exist, everything and everyone else
offer, nor can they accept, help from the dead. The letters invoked at the conclu
sion of the story symbolize the fine line between life in death and death in life: "On
errands of life, these letters speed to death" (par. 250). The letters themselves?at

once a representation and product of


indifferentto either condition.
technology?are
human beings qualifying their existence, the letters are meaningless and

Without

useless. Disembodied
Melville's
is a metaphor

words equal disembodied readers (and writers).


work of fiction is ametaphor for life just asmy analysis ofmy Bardeby
for a living, breathing human being; it is limited and speculative. As

such, I am under no illusion that I have accurately captured themind or life of the
individual about whom I have written. However, we have reached the point ofmy
true discovery: / have been subtracted.My

approach of openness, sincerity, and vul


I
nerability?my
thought was impervious to indifference and
mute.
has
been
rendered
automation,
My Bardeby has forced me to recognize that
Imay be just another meaningless, faceless abstraction because he may see himself as
humanness?which

just another meaningless, faceless abstraction: two postmodern texts drifting in and
out ofmeaningless contexts. In other words, the cart has been put firmly before the

horses, and I was not conscious of this possibility until I encountered my Bardeby.
All thewhile, it seems, my freedom has been the one jeopardized. That is a conclu

sion I can more confidendy say is not fiction.


Finally, I would reiterate my initial statement that this essay is not about the
advantages or disadvantages of technology; it is about the composition classroom
and what place technology should assume in the act of teaching and composing. I am

completely mindful of the fact that theworld continues to turn and that technology
is not going away. This essay ismade possible because of technology, not in spite of
it, and I recognize and welcome its benefits wholeheartedly for teachers of writing

and for students of writing. Undoubtedly,


technology is the number one issue for
and
for
the
of
From
what place will we proceed? I prefer
writing
teaching
writing.
Baudrillard's
"As
for
Jean
response:
ideas, everyone has them [_] What counts is
the poetic singularity of the analysis. That alone can justifywriting, not thewretched
critical objectivity of ideas. There will never be any
resolving the contradictoriness
of ideas, except in the energy and felicity of
language" (103).
As someone who is old enough and scarce
enough not to have been raised by the
current
of
and
supply
technological gadgets
cyberspace communication, I believe I
am somewhat conscious of the convenience and
efficacy that technology offersme as
ameans for
without
its
for
obvious spectacle. My concern is that
composing
falling
our students do not have this bilateral awareness, and thatwe are not
addressing their
we
our
because
have
been
mesmerized
(or
predicament
institutions)
by technology's
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Opinion:

Teaching

toWrite

Bartleby

301

ease and comfort as well as its promise. If this all sounds too
curmudgeonly or too
deterministic for some, Iwill end with a reminder from Jacques Ellul, author of The
now know is as important for composition teachers as
Technological Society,which I

it is for students of composition: "Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested
interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns him
self, he becomes subject to determinism. He ismost enslaved when he thinks he is
comfortably settled infreedom. [...] It isnot a question of getting rid of [technology],

but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it" (xxxiii). Let us, now, prefer towrite.
*****

Author's note: Iwould

like to thank John Schilb and the reviewer for their guidance

throughout the revision process. Thanks also toChristopher


for his suggestion regarding Slavoj Zizek's interpretation ofMelville's
Bardeby, and to Patrick Rowley for six years of themost meaningful and enjoyable
conversations two colleagues could ever share.
and recommendations

Colbath

Works

Cited
Paul Virilio's
John. "Beyond Postmodernism?:
1
15
Nov.
2000.
Web.
Apr. 2010.
ctheory.net,

Armitage,

Baudrillard,

Jean. The Perfect Crime. Trans.

Chris Turner.

Hypermodern
New

Cultural

York: Verso,

Theory."

ctheory.net.

1996. Print.
Review

"On the Blessings of Calamity and the Burdens of Good Fortune." Hedgehog
10 Oct. 2008.
Studies inCulture. Web.
7-24. Institute forAdvanced

Albert.

Borgmann,
4.3 (2002):
Carr, Nicholas.

"Does

Company,

the Internet Make

"College Students Think They're


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You Dumber?"

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5 June 2010. Web.

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wsj.com. Wall

Street Journal, Dow


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MSNBC.com,

Jones &

2007. Web.

26 Jan.

in e-Learning: Strategies and Support forTeachers New to Online


Darrington, Anjanette. "Six Lessons
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Davis, Joseph E. "The Commodification

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Daulerio,
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Feb. 2010. Web.
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Online NewsHour.
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Service, MacNeil/Lehrer
Dickinson,
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Emily.
2010.

Productions,

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2009. Web.

14 Apr.

"Surgeons must be very careful." Poetry Foundation.org.

to theNew Humanities
"AWord
Edmundson, Mark.
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Engell, James. The Committed Word:
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Literature

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Poetry Foundation.

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JohnWilkinson.

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24-35.

1967. Print.

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Fleckenstein, Kristie S. Embodied Literacies: Imageword and a Poetics ofTeaching. Carbondale:


Illinois UP, 2003. Print.

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302

College English

Goldsmith,

to the 21st
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