With my sense of academic disconnectedness, Johndan replies: “this divide is part of why I’ve moved out of both tech comm and rhet/comp; my experiences were similar to yours”.
On a brighter note, he welcomes the “recent move in rhet/comp to begin working on a lot of the issues that tech comm has been dealing with for decades—service learning, usability, media, etc”. However, rhet/comp has made this move “without acknowledging the fact that their colleagues in tech comm have been studying this work for some time (or, in some cases, simply using that work but not acknowledging it)”.
For now, Johndan encourages me to continue to approach the discipline of rhet/comp through the sub-discipline of Computers and Writing: “since much of the work in C&W could be characterized as also tech comm work, it’s become sort of a back door into rhet/comp for people who are primarily in tech comm.”. More informally, he advises me to stick around and “hope things change”:
I’m not really involved in either field in a substantial way any longer, so it’s possible that there’s been some progress since I dropped out.
After all, Johndan is my kind of academic and professional hero: an incredibly successful dropout.
No comments:
Post a Comment