Digital Commonplace Prompt

WRITING WOMEN: DIGITAL COMMONPLACE 

By claiming a space for contemplation, reflection, and meditation, by observing without rushing to judgment, by noticing without the immediate need to analyze, classify, and establish hierarchies, we allow new vistas to come into view, unexpected leads to shape scholarly work, and new research questions to emerge.

What do we notice when we stand back and observe?...How do we imagine, connect with, and open up a space for the women—and others—we study?...How do past and present merge to suggest new possibilities for the future when we create time and space for contemplation, reflection, and meditation?

--Royster and Kirsch, Feminist Rhetorical Practices, 22.

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Royster and Kirsch emphasize that “new vistas” for the study of women (and others!) arise through the practice of “noticing” and “reflecting” before analyzing, and by merging “past” with “present.” Commonplace books, where writers since the Middle Ages have jotted down compelling quotations and quick observations, have long been used to do this type of mindful gathering. To extend this tradition, our class will be using this blog to create a digital commonplace, which will give us a shared space to collect, reflect, and connect past to the present. And through this process, as Royster and Kirsch suggest, we might just discover something “unexpected” and “new” about “Writing Women.”

For each set of assigned readings, you’ll be asked to create a commonplace entry that includes at least 3 items:

• To show that you have “noticed” past voices, include at least one compelling quotation or passage from the assigned text, along with its page number.

• To help connect to the present moment, include at least one contemporary text that speaks to the quotation you chose. Be creative and associative! And if you choose to link to something, pull out a representative quotation to orient your readers. Here are some possible texts you could connect to:

• A scholarly text assigned with the piece of literature;
• A link to a recent news story;
• A YouTube link to some current social commentary (think Amy Schumer or Rush Limbaugh);
• A written snapshot of a moment in your life, though remember this isn’t a diary, so avoid personal commentary--instead, rely on pure observation;
• A photograph or another image;
• A quotation from a past text you’ve read (either from this class or another one).

• The third item should be a guiding question that draws your commonplace texts together somehow, in turn helping to orient the class and launch our responses.

In keeping with Royster and Kirsch’s argument that it’s important to notice and meditate before analyzing, in your initial post you’ll be asked to avoid using your own commentary to make connections. Just collect, question, and let the items sit next to each other for a while. The time for analysis and reflection will be at the beginning of each class period, when, as a class, we’ll negotiate the connections together in shared writing-to-learn activities.

A note on process: please don’t just Google “quotes from famous women.” Make sure your process of discovery is meaningful and that you can describe the context for each entry in class. And be thorough, as this daily process of collecting and connecting past and present through writing will guide our class discussions and help you build your more formal essay assignments.

Worried about locating contemporary texts? Here are some sites you can follow:
• Jezebel: Jezebel.com
• Feminist Tumblr: http://www.nylon.com/articles/feminist-tumblrs
• NPR’s #15 Girls: Teens Taking Control and Changing Their Fate: http://www.npr.org/series/446115168/-15girls
• Huffington Post Women: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/women/
• The Atlantic "Sexes" Column: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/