“But even if treating discourse ‘nonpragmatically’ is part of what is meant by ‘literature’, then it follows from this ‘definition’ that literature cannot in fact be ‘objectively’ defined.  It leaves the definition of literature up to how somebody decides to read, not to the nature of what is written.”
 –From Terry Eagleton’s landmark 1983 text, Literary Theory: An Introduction

What is this all about? 

This website is a collection of college composition papers geared toward rhetorical criticism of culture and literature.  Students spent the entire semester researching various strategies employed by literature, the new media, and popular culture.  The class treated spoken, written, and visual text as primary materials.  The purpose of this pedagogy was to (1) offer students an opportunity to follow their noses in search of meaningful research; (2) encourage college students to write with a critical consciousness; and (3) recognize writing and rhetoric as a public, socio-political tool.  Students knew that their final papers would be printed online, in an effort to write “beyond the professor” and for the public.  Students knew that by posting their term papers online, their voices would indeed be heard; these papers serve as a “talking back” to culture that students often do not enjoy when writing term papers that do not get published online.  Click on the links to see the final essays written by the students (all papers have been posted anonymously to protect privacy).  The students were enrolled in College Composition II, a writing course required of all graduates at a major research university in the South, USA.  These papers have been posted online in the same form that they were submitted for grading.  (No editing has been done by the professor so that the students can see their work as they crafted it.)      

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