Assignment

Some time ago we read a brief article by Charles Bazerman(available under the "In Class" tab of blackboard as "In Class 2/13 and 2/14"). In that brief article, Bazerman claims that "Writing [...] addresses social situations and audiences organized in social groups and does so through recognizable forms associated with those situations and social groups" (35). These "recognizable forms" are genres which we enact when we engage in any writing act. These genres are shaped by the expectations of a range of institutions and communities, reinforced and reproduced over time. Hopefully we are aware of the generic demands of a given rhetorical situation, and able to enact them in our work (though sometimes we may enact the wrong genres, if we mistake some aspect of the rhetorical situation, or fail to reflect on it).

In what ways have you considered the demands of genre in your writing? How have you worked to enact the genre of "research project" as you understand it? Has your perspective on these demands changed? Are the institutional or community expectations where you have enacted this genre been different? If so, what might account for this?

How has the research that you've done (both the work that you have, and have not included in your writing), been shaped by genre? How do you see the genres of your research, and the genre of your own writing intersecting? That is, how does one help to shape and enact the other?

Please write a minimum of 500 words in response to the above. Post your work to both blackboard and your blog.