ENGL 3860: Introduction Slide Deck

Public writing
write the World
ENGL 3860 | Nathaniel A. Rivers | saint louis university | fall 2023

People have to have a language to speak
about where they are and what other
possible futures are available to them.
These futures may not be real; if you try to
concretize them immediately, you may find
there is nothing there. But what is there…is
the possibility of being someone else, of
being in some other social space from the
one in which you have already been placed.
Stuart Hall addresses a Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND) rally in Trafalgar Square in
1958. Photograph: Courtesy Stuart Hall estate / Allen
Stuart Hall | Cultural Studies 1983

Our worlds are built of things that matter: values,
relations (friends and family), institutions (cultural,
political, religious), infrastructures (roads, schools,
utilities) and cultural productions (literature,
music, movies).

Cahokia as it may have appeared c. 1150 CE; painting by Michael Hampshire.
Cahokia was first occupied in AD 700
and flourished for approximately four
centuries (c. 950–1350). It reached a
peak population of as many as
20,000 individuals and was the most
extensive urban centre in prehistoric
America north of Mexico and
the primary centre of the
Middle Mississippian culture. The area
was later named Cahokia (meaning
“Wild Geese”) for a group
of Illinois peoples that inhabited the
area in the 18th century.

The Cahokia Site in its geographic and topographic context with Monk's Mound at center
right.
The Cahokia Site in its geographic and
topographic context with Monk's
Mound at center right. The remains of
the most sophisticated prehistoric
native civilization north of Mexico are
preserved at Cahokia Mounds State
Historic Site. Within the 2,200-acre
tract, located a few miles west of
Collinsville, Illinois, lie the
archaeological remnants of the
central section of the ancient
settlement that is today known as
Cahokia.

After the fire that devastated much of
St. Louis in 1849, city leaders passed
an ordinance requiring all new
buildings to be made of noncombustible
material. That law, along
with the rich clays of eastern Missouri,
led to a flourishing brick industry here.
Historians say that at the industry’s
height, around 1900, the city had
more than 100 manufacturing plants,
and St. Louis became known for the
quality, craftsmanship and abundance
of its brick.
Ruins of the Great Fire of 1849. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly, 1849. Missouri
Historical Society.

Map of the mines of Cheltenham
(Dogtown) in Saint Louis, MO. This
area of Saint Louis sits atop the
Cheltenham Syncline, which is rich
with clay deposits necessary for the
production of fire brick, which the
city is famous for. The use of such fire
increased after the great fire of 1849,
which prompted city ordinances
requiring the use of fire brick in all
new construction.
Map of the mines of Cheltenham (Dogtown) in St. Louis, MO.

The things that matter to us—our beliefs and values, the places and
institutions that shelter and sustain our modes of being, the cultural
productions that give meaning and direction to that being—must be
argued for. Like gardeners we must cultivate the lives that matter to us.
The world as we know it and the worlds we might want otherwise must
be persuasively articulated in order to be kept and made real. A term
precious to democratic life, republic (res publica), means simply “a public
thing”: a thing held together in common but also over and about which we
argue.

This means that our writing too must be public. No mere
diary entries or talk among aficionados, you must produce
public texts for unfamiliar audiences who might not yet share
your commitment to public parks, accessibility, pop music,
food security, bricks, the environmental and social justice.

Rhetoric
Most generally defined, rhetoric is the use of symbols to produce an
effect (e.g., a verbal command to “Stop,” a red traffic light, or a Journey
song imploring us “Don’t Stop Believing”). From this viewpoint, rhetoric
assumes that the use of language is symbolic action. The famous “word
vs. deeds” distinction has no place here. Though rhetoric has become a
negative word within political circles and contemporary media, it has a rich
history as one of the oldest intellectual pursuits in the western world. With
a focus on audience, context, and identification, rhetoric is a potent
motive force within a community. Successful persuasive practice is a
predicated on an emerging rhetorical understanding of that work.

Advocacy
Though most people associate advocacy and a related term, activism, with
the (radical) fringes of society, this course views any concerted attempt to
shape (change or maintain) the local public environment as advocacy at
its core. Advocacy can include any movement that works for political,
bureaucratic, legal, service-oriented, or attitudinal changes. Note that
advocacy is about actively (re)shaping environments; advocacy is not
reducible to something like “raising awareness.” Awareness is an aspect of
advocacy but never its sole end.

Ethics
Ethics, within the context of rhetorical advocacy, demands integrity, the
inclusion of relevant perspectives, audience identification, thorough
research, and situational awareness. Ethics is about more than following a
static set of protocols; it is about openly engaging others. The Greeks
had a name for this approach to ethics: agonism, or the productive strife of
a public gathering. Rather than producing clear winners and losers,
agonism is about generating a stronger whole. Agonism can be contrasted
with antagonism, which literally means “against the gathering.”

“Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology,
the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place
once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive
what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their
evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they
doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge
into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and
economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often
unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be
less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than
we tend to assume.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our
understanding of the human past and offers a path toward
imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society.
This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated
by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

“A zine is a handmade magazine or mini-comic about anything you
can imagine: favorite bands, personal stories, subcultures, or
collections. They contain diary entries, rants, interviews, and stories.
They can be by one person or many, found in stores, traded at comic
conventions, exchanged with friends, or given away for free. Zines
are not a new idea: they’ve been around for years under various
names (chapbooks, flyers, pamphlets). People with independent
ideas have been getting their word out since before there were
printing presses.
This book is for anyone who wants to create their own zine. It’s for
learning tips and tricks from contributors who have been at the fore
front of the zine movement. It’s for getting inspired to put
thoughts and ideas down on paper. It’s for learning how to design
and print your own zine so you can put it in others’ hands.
Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? is for anyone who has something to
say.

Other readings

Things That Matter
For this ongoing project, you produce a series of zines devoted to a thing
that matters to you. The zines are composed for a particular public and will be
released on a regular basis. You have complete creative control over your
productions in terms of medium, style, and content. The only requirement is
that these texts be public and for an audience that needs to be persuaded.
While you are in creative control of your productions, there are a few basic
requirements that all projects must meet. These requirements are largely
procedural, keeping us on track and insuring high quality productions every
three weeks. Basic components include:

Things That Matter
A proposal (1,500 words), which addresses, among other things, the topic to
be taken up and its importance; the technologies to be used in producing the
texts (e.g., word processor, Photoshop, specialty paper, still camera); features
of the texts (specify the kinds of pictures, text, or design elements you will
feature—this section should be fairly fleshed out); the specific and concrete
audience for this production (i.e., freshman smart phone users, vegan foodies,
disabled undergraduates). Additionally, point to two or three specific models
for your project.

Things That Matter
3 tri-weekly productions. Expectations for these productions (i.e., length,
production quality) will be negotiated on an individual basis both during the
proposal stage and throughout the semester.
A touch-point working in concert with your your zine (e.g. stickers, buttons, posters,
mixtapes)
Workshops. During these workshops, students will share drafts of their zines with
the class for feedback and evaluation. Think of these workshops as focus groups.
Following the completion of all productions, you will compose a postmortem
outlining and assessing your productions as a whole. The postmortem will include
both your own assessments as well as any audience feedback.

Zines

Why zines
materializes circulation with its analog rather than digital
form
Zines
foregrounds affective dimensions of writing through its
generic features
invites a multiplicity of compositional modes: writing,
photography, drawing, document design, typography,
paper craft
emphasizes cultural contexts and contents that are
frequently underrepresented

The city itself is less a situs, say Amin
and Thrift, than a certain way of
processing. In fact, it may be more
appropriate to rethink “city” less as a
noun (implying a situs) and more of a
verb, as in to city. We do city, rather
than exist in the city. Amin and Thrift
argue that cities are more about
movements and processes than the
elements that materially construct
their borders.
Edbauer | Rhetorical Ecologies | 11

[I]nvites us to consider the world’s earliest
cities as places of self-conscious social
experimentation, where very different
visions of what a city could be like might
clash—sometimes peacefully, sometimes
erupting in bursts of extraordinary
violence. Increasing the number of people
living in one place may vastly increase the
range of social possibilities, but in no
sense does it predetermine which of
those possibilities will ultimately be
realized.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 326