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Africology Bibliography Compiled by Peter Sands, PhD Department of English/Edison Initiative University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sands@uwm.edu There are few available Africology-specific resources on writing instruction. In the entries which follow, I have instead concentrated on some relevant articles from constituent disciplines, especially sociology, which offer principles or situations which might be adapted to classrooms in the Department of Africology. Items followed by a single asterisk are taken from the Eric database; those followed by a double asterisk are taken from the subject bibliographies prepared by the Georgia State University Writing Across the Curriculum program, available at: http://WWW.GSU.EDU/~wwwwac/.
Examines effect of frequent writing assignments on students' writing abilities. Gave pretest writing assignment to 13 classes in sociology; then in 10 of those classes, gave frequent, little-commented on writing assignments; then gave all classes a writing assignment posttest. Results suggest that lots of writing assignments are not sufficient to improve student writing. What is important is rigorous grading of an entire written paper--this improves writing. Concludes that students' writing can be improved only with effort by professor as well as student.**
Abstract: A six-activity inquiry lesson (constructed to follow the "social inquiry" teaching model) provided students in two 11th-grade English classes with practice in theory building through data gathering and writing activities. Social inquiry has six instructional stages: students (1) are presented with a puzzling situation; (2) in small groups develop hypotheses to assist them in solving the problem; (3) define their hypotheses; (4) clarify their tasks; (5) gather data; and ultimately (6) propose a solution. The lesson plan presented to the students gives detailed instructions for activities which follow the six stages of the social inquiry model, and which involve the research of professor of anthropology (and amateur folklorist) Bedrois Klogapian concerning the possible contact among three now extinct tribes in the Central California Valley.*
Presents two case studies of students writing papers for upper-division social science courses. Concludes that an English professor could not evaluate student papers in the same way as a person in the discipline. People in the discipline can spot disciplinary problems in papers that are mechanically perfect and follow the appropriate format; they can also see beyond mechanical problems to detect how much a student has learned about a discipline and how well a student can think like someone in the discipline. Concludes that upper-level writing in disciplines needs to be taught by professors in those disciplines.**
Examines two texts, from social anthropology and sociology, to illustrate a method of analysis that simultaneously instructs in the rhetorical practices of the two disciplines.
Describes benefits from peer review of written work in a junior/senior-level anthropology course at U. Mass-Amherst. Reports evidence of benefits in both writing ability and in handling of disciplinary content.
Abstract: Reviews the ethnographic criticism literature and considers its potential applications for the teaching of ethnographic writing. Discusses three major areas: (1) textbook organization; (2) use of first-person and other forms of narrative voice; and (3) teaching political awareness of choices of language and literary forms.*
Hoffman describes the structure of a course she designed, "Writing for the Social Sciences". It had five units: Exploring Form, Data Gathering, Writing and Revising, Making Messages (synthesis), and Finale (experiment or case study). Instead of a textbook, the course was based on readings from professional journals in the various disciplines, and focused on learning how to use a variety of resources to gather materials.**
At Utica College, Anthropology 101 seeks to help students begin to detect ethnocentrism in themselves and others, to get an understanding of the varieties of cultural systems, and to see their own society as simply one example of shapes a society can take. An "ethnography project" is a useful device in advancing these goals. Students are responsible for becoming "experts" on a preliterate culture, and are required to share information about it with the class. They submit individual written reports, and also pool their individual expertise to develop group oral reports on specific kinds of societies. One semester Anthropology 101 was linked with a section of English 101, most importantly by the ethnography project. This resulted in many benefits for students, including a better understanding of the ethnographic material, better written and oral reports, a cannier sense of what makes anthropologists tick, and conceptualizing ethnographic writings as a form of literature.*
Abstract: Discusses the curriculum design and instructional goals of an undergraduate urban anthropology service course with a heterogeneous student composition. Compares the pedagogical techniques used with Bruner's theory of instruction.*
In the fall of 1993, six faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh launched what they called the "Looking for America Freshman Semester," a program or course cluster of 16 credit hours in American studies, including anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, composition, and library skills. The core assumption underlying this effort was that writing is learning. Students in the program wrote about 30 papers of varying length during the semester, about 4 or 5 times what the average freshman writes. Curious to learn what students thought they had gained from their writing in the course cluster, one instructor asked his literature students to include in their portfolios the best essay they had written that semester--one not written for his class. Six of the students selected essays written in freshman composition; four of these were on personal topics having nothing to do with American studies. Three of the four expressed gratitude for the opportunity to write about personal topics. The two composition assignments that did relate to the American studies topic did so in surprising ways. One asked students to write about a personal experience with prejudice; the other asked for a short story which helped the student to understand writerly choices. This metacognitive experiment helped the instructor to appreciate the newness of cultural relativity from the perspective of a freshman, and to appreciate anew the importance of English 101.*
Analyzes writing of undergrad political science and economics majors, and legislative analysts; interviews participants; and reviews instructors' comments on the undergraduates' writing. Analysts have a more concrete idea of audience and make more complex connections between a piece of writing and its context or the circumstances (prior history of an idea, etc.). Analysts also have a specific set of strategies that they consciously use when analyzing legislation. The article suggests that students in this discipline might be taught about the use of these strategies.
An instructor's discipline-specific expectations for student writing might influence their perceptions of student writing. To examine this, authors took student papers written for an introductory sociology course and altered them to make them sound less sociological (less jargon, fewer cues to sociological line of reasoning) but still coherent, grammatically correct and logically clear. Then had sociology professors read the papers and talk as they read about their expectations for student papers and whether the original or alter version fulfilled those expectations. Found that when you delete or change the sentences that mark the sociological structure of the argument, the professors think the writing is poor.**
Abstract: Suggests that an undergraduate writing course which focuses on the literature of anthropology and intercultural communication can effectively teach anthropology, writing, and the philosophy of rhetoric.*
Abstract: Strange as it may seem, the classroom is not, by and large, accepted within the composition discipline as a scene for genuine knowledge-making and theory-building. Teachers should go back to the "concrete materials" from which knowledge and theory are made. An example of what can be learned in the classroom comes from an effort to encourage students to reflect on the extent to which people are "constructed" by culture. Students are encouraged to bring up, in class and in their writing, examples of groups with which they are affiliated. As an assignment, students in a community college writing course are asked to identify one community to which they belong and to describe the roles they and the other members play. Turning from community, attention is next directed to culture. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz's "'Deep Play': Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" is used to prompt discussion about culture. Students are then asked to observe a ceremony from their own communities. Finally, students are asked to do a reading of a television advertisement as indicative of the culture's values and beliefs. Students gain much from this kind of research into culture. And just as students have come to see the significance in their "local knowledge," so too teachers may come to see that "what happens" within the community of the classroom on a day-to-day basis is worthy of observation and may even generate knowledge. (TD)*
Argues that the act of writing actually engenders new information, typically inferences connecting bits of information, that the writer did not have before beginning to write. This new information depends on how the bits of information are connected in the writer's mind.**
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