Patricia Bizzell

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Patricia Bizzell is a professor of English, emerita, and former Chairperson of the English Department at the College of the Holy Cross, United States, where she taught from 1978 to 2019. [1] She founded and directed the Writer's Workshop, a peer tutoring facility, and a writing-across-the-curriculum program. She directed the College Honors and English Honors programs and taught first-year composition, rhetoric and public speaking, nineteenth-century American literature, and women's literature. [2] A scholar and writer, Bizzell has authored or co-authored half a dozen books, written dozens of articles and book chapters, composed more than a dozen book reviews and review essays, and presented a large number of papers at academic conferences. [2] Bizzell is the 2008 winner of the CCCC Exemplar Award, and former president of Rhetoric Society of America. [1]

Contents

Areas of Scholarly Focus

Bizzell's research interests include the question of how the increasing diversification of academic discourses affects the teaching of writing to college students, with a special focus on students that she terms "basic writers." [3] Bizzell, throughout her career, has focused on students coming from traditionally disadvantaged economic and social backgrounds in order to study how rhetoric and composition can be effectively taught to students coming from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Bizzell is also the subject of a profile chapter in Women's Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition, edited by Michelle Balliff, Diane Davis, and Roxanne Mountford. [4] The book aims to share both the successes and failures of women in the field of rhetoric and composition, with the aim of inspiring other women to enter the field. The book covers a range of topics from encountering sexism in the workplace and balancing a career and family life, issues that are further addressed in the chapter on Bizzell. [4] This chapter offers further insight into Bizzell's scholarly interests and areas of research.

Influential Works

Bizzell has written numerous books, book chapters, and articles throughout her career. Some of her most influential works are outlined below.

In Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness, Bizzell traces her experiences as of teaching first-year college composition courses. The essays, written over a number of years, come together to provide insights into how her teaching and thinking about pedagogy have changed over the years. Compiling the essays in this way traces a trajectory of how thinking about and implementing teaching practices have evolved for Bizzell over her number of years of experience. The essay collection has an extensive focus on what happens when students from diverse backgrounds are asked to use language in specific ways in college classrooms, tracing practices and pedagogies that have been successful in her own classrooms over the years. [5]

Bizzell's article "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know About Writing" explores the relationship between students' ability to engage in thoughtful contemplation and their writing abilities. The relationship between thought and language, according to Bizzell, needs to be given more careful consideration in the composition classroom. It is only by helping students learn to frame their thinking that teachers can help them to be productive and successful writers. [6]

"What Happens When Basic Writers Come to College?" tries to answer one of the research questions that seems to be most central to Bizzell's research. This article examines what happens when students with diverse backgrounds, dialects, and class standings come together in a college composition classroom. Bizzell, using her own teaching experience as part of her research, delves into how these students can find success in college classrooms and settings. [7]

Professional experience

Teaching positions

Professional affiliations and activities

Academic background

Prizes and external grants received

Books published

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric</span> Art of persuasion

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic, is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers use to inform, persuade, or motivate their audiences.

Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience.

An enthymeme is a form of rational appeal, or deductive argument. It is also known as a rhetorical syllogism and is used in oratorical practice. While the syllogism is used in dialectic, or the art of logical discussion, the enthymeme is used in rhetoric, or the art of public speaking. Enthymemes are usually developed from premises that accord with the audience's view of the world and what is taken to be common sense. However, where the general premise of a syllogism is supposed to be true, making the subsequent deduction necessary, the general premise of an enthymeme is merely probable, which leads only to a tentative conclusion. Originally theorized by Aristotle, there are four types of enthymeme, at least two of which are described in Aristotle's work.

Pathos appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. Pathos is a term used most often in rhetoric, as well as in literature, film and other narrative art.

A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Composition (language)</span> Assembling words and sentences into a work

The term composition as it refers to writing, can describe authors' decisions about, processes for designing, and sometimes the final product of, a composed linguistic work. In original use, it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances, and eventually essays, narratives, or genres of imaginative literature, but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies, its use has broadened to apply to any composed work: print or digital, alphanumeric or multimodal. As such, the composition of linguistic works goes beyond the exclusivity of written and oral documents to visual and digital arenas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Writing process</span> Process in which words and phrases are formed to produce a text

A writing process describes a sequence of physical and mental actions that people take as they produce any kind of text. These actions nearly universally involve tools for physical or digital inscription: e.g., chisels, pencils, brushes, chalk, dies, keyboards, touchscreens, etc.; these tools all have particular affordances that shape writers' processes. Writing processes are highly individuated and task-specific; they often involve other kinds of activities that are not usually thought of as writing per se.

Cognitive rhetoric refers to an approach to rhetoric, composition, and pedagogy as well as a method for language and literary studies drawing from, or contributing to, cognitive science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Composition studies</span>

Composition studies is the professional field of writing, research, and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States.

Linda Flower is a composition theorist. She is best known for her emphasis on cognitive rhetoric, but has more recently published in the field of service learning. Flower currently serves Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of rhetoric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First-year composition</span> Introductory core curriculum writing course in US colleges and universities

First-year composition is an introductory core curriculum writing course in US colleges and universities. This course focuses on improving students' abilities to write in a university setting and introduces students to writing practices in the disciplines and professions. These courses are traditionally required of incoming students, thus the previous name, "Freshman Composition." Scholars working within the field of composition studies often have teaching first-year composition (FYC) courses as the practical focus of their scholarly work.

Commonly called new media theory or media-centered theory of composition, stems from the rise of computers as word processing tools. Media theorists now also examine the rhetorical strengths and weakness of different media, and the implications these have for literacy, author, and reader.

Feminist theory in composition studies examines how gender, language, and cultural studies affect the teaching and practice of writing. It challenges the traditional assumptions and methods of composition studies and proposes alternative approaches that are informed by feminist perspectives. Feminist theory in composition studies covers a range of topics, such as the history and development of women’s writing, the role of gender in rhetorical situations, the representation and identity of writers, and the pedagogical implications of feminist theory for writing instruction. Feminist theory in composition studies also explores how writing can be used as a tool for empowerment, resistance, and social change. Feminist theory in composition studies emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a response to the male-dominated field of composition and rhetoric. It has been influenced by various feminist movements and disciplines, such as second-wave feminism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, and queer theory. Feminist theory in composition studies has contributed to the revision of traditional rhetorical concepts, the recognition of diverse voices and genres, the promotion of collaborative and ethical communication, and the integration of personal and political issues in writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adams Sherman Hill</span>

Adams Sherman Hill was an American newspaper journalist and rhetorician. As Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard University from 1876 to 1904, Hill oversaw and implemented curriculum that came to effect first-year composition in classrooms across the United States. His most widely known works include The Principles of Rhetoric, Foundations of Rhetoric, and Our English.

The Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) is an academic organization for the study of rhetoric.

"Against the Sophists" is among the few Isocratic speeches that have survived from Ancient Greece. This polemical text was Isocrates' attempt to define his educational doctrine and to separate himself from the multitudes of other teachers of rhetoric. Isocrates was a sophist, an identity which carried the same level of negative connotation as it does now. Many of the sophistic educators were characterized as deceitful because they were more concerned with making a profit from teaching persuasive trickery than of producing quality orators that would promote Athenian democracy. Isocrates was more concerned with the latter of these objectives and sought to separate himself from these less reputable sophistic teachers. After opening his school around 393 or 392 BC, Isocrates wrote "Against the Sophists" to clearly distinguish his teaching methods from the commonly held view of sophistic education.

Theories of rhetoric and composition pedagogy encompass a wide range of interdisciplinary fields centered on the instruction of writing. Noteworthy to the discipline is the influence of classical Ancient Greece and its treatment of rhetoric as a persuasive tool. Derived from the Greek work for public speaking, rhetoric's original concern dealt primarily with the spoken word. In the treatise Rhetoric, Aristotle identifies five Canons of the field of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Since its inception in the spoken word, theories of rhetoric and composition have focused primarily on writing

Martin Nystrand is an American composition and education theorist. He is Louise Durham Mead Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Professor Emeritus of Education at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist rhetoric</span> Practice of rhetoric

Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. According to author and rhetorical feminist Cheryl Glenn in her book Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), "rhetorical feminism is a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.

Janice M. Lauer Rice was an American scholar of composition, rhetoric, and linguistics. She was a founding member of the Rhetoric Society of America. She founded one of the first doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University in 1980. The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition from Parlor Press is named in her honor, as well as the Rhetoric Society of America's Janice Lauer Fund for Graduate Student Support and the Purdue Foundation Janice M. Lauer Dissertation Award.

References

  1. 1 2 "Patricia Bizzell Archives". MLA Style Center. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  2. 1 2 "College of the Holy Cross - Archives & Special Collections". 2008-12-03. Archived from the original on 2008-12-03. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  3. "Patricia Bizzell". upittpress.org. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
  4. 1 2 Ballif, Michelle (2008). Women's ways of making it in rhetoric and composition. D. Diane Davis, Roxanne Mountford. New York: Routledge. ISBN   978-0-203-92984-1. OCLC   213371249.
  5. Bizzell, Patricia (1992). Academic discourse and critical consciousness. Pittsburgh. ISBN   978-0-8229-7155-9. OCLC   887803263.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty", Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 75–104, doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zwb7k.7, ISBN   978-0-8229-7155-9 , retrieved 2021-04-06
  7. Bizzell, Patricia (1986). "What Happens When Basic Writers Come to College?". College Composition and Communication. 37 (3): 294–301. doi:10.2307/358046. JSTOR   358046.