Last Friday, the Writing Fellows had our first CUNY-wide meeting of this academic year. After attending the orientation in the morning, I went to one of four concurrent afternoon workshops, titled as “Source Use and Writing with Authority” led by Professor Sean O’Toole of Baruch College.
The workshop was designed to inform us about how to teach students to engage with secondary sources in many different ways other than just to support or back up an argument. For example, sources can be used “as a primary focus of analysis, to establish a problem or question worth addressing, to supply context, background, or information, to provide key terms or concepts, and to grapple with another opinion or interpretation.”
We had two brief exercises: first, we read an article (Stanley Cohen’s “Folk Devil and Moral Panics”) to identify the ways in which the author uses his sources; second, we drew a diagram illustrating our strategies to handle the secondary materials that we use in our own writing project, the technique introduced by Mark Gaipa. Gaipa’s article (
Pedagogy 4.3, 2004) suggests a variety of strategies that are illustrated with cartoons: picking a fight, ass kissing, piggybacking, leapfrogging, playing peacemaker, acting paranoid, dropping out, and crossbreeding. I found that the drawing exercise indeed helped me relieve my anxiety dealing with sources, so I am thinking of using it as an office-hour exercise for my students. It might also be helpful for those of us who are writing a dissertation and having a hard time handling source materials, oftentimes feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. I knew drawing was often used in therapy, but I’d never realized its power before I had the exercise in the workshop.
Thanks for the tip about the article by Gaipa. As a librarian, I’m also very interested in helping students wrestle with the topic of authority as they find and evaluate information.
FYI, the link you provided to the Gaipa article doesn’t work for Baruch students and faculty, but this one should:
http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=14556514&site=ehost-live
This is really interesting and fun, Hyewon!
The one I like best is the “crossbreeding” part. Are we supposed to “crossbreed” our secondary sources, and how can we illustrate this in a drawing? Like if you crossbreed Derrida with Fanon, you end up with Gayatri Spivak or an insight of your own, or what? Maybe I should just go ahead and read the Gaipa article, you are right.
Stephen, I’m glad that you found Gaipa’s article helpful, and thanks a lot for the link that you provided for Baruch students and faculty. Szidonia, I’d really recommend you take a look at the article. The cartoons are actually pretty entertaining. And if you crossbreed Foucault and Fanon, then you end up with Said or an insight of your own?! Just kidding…
Hyewon, I attended this workshop too, and conceptualizing my relationship with sources as simple cartoons really helped me. After reading the Gaipa article and attending the workshop, I returned to some essay and chapter drafts and revised almost every footnote… I’d been picking a lot of fights without even realizing it. After my revision, I do a lot more “piggybacking.” My little drawings are looking a lot more pleasant.