English Studies in Levittown: Rhetorics of Space and Technology in Course-Management Software

Abstract

n recent College English article, Johnathan Mauk calls for those in English studies, and more particularly those in composition and rhetoric, to pay greater attention to space. Drawing on the works of several critical geographers, he argues for a pedagogy and theoretical lens that accounts for and engages the spatial and material conditions that constitute the everyday lives of (370); toward that end, he proposes heuristic for orienting teaching and learning: namely thirdspace, conceptual location he borrows from Edward Soja (as others in the humanities have done lately) that resituates students neither in the traditional abstract spaces of academia nor in the concrete conditions of their everyday lives, but rather in juncture of the two, a dimension emergent from the generative collision of academic, domestic, and work spatialities (380). Mauk's call is prompted, he says, by evolving conditions of college life marked by transient students dislocated from traditional academic places and therefore disengaged from traditional academic work. While Mauk does not define what he means by traditional, he is clear in arguing that academia must change to meet students where they are at. Designing pedagogical practices around the construct of thirdspace is Mauk's own attempt at such change within our field.

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