This is the house where genre studies live -- The Genre FAQ

When designing the Build-a-Tool for Genre this week, our final weekly, it was difficult not to reproduce some of the same tools that were created when we built the build-a-tool the first time. Since genre can’t be conceived of a turn, we wanted to create something that would be open for inquiry, but also would be helpful for those interested in research related to genre studies. Joe and I decided to model our tool off of the CompFAQ tool, which is a research tool compiled by the folks who brought us CompPile. The CompFAQ shares relevant questions about various topics related to composition studies and offers responses to key question as well as links to resources. The CompFAQ is, according their mission statement, a wiki site that provides collaborative, research based answers to questions posed regularly by writing teachers and administrators.

How would we find which questions were currently relevant to genre studies? Joe suggested we take a look at the WPA listserv to get a sense of what conversations were going on right now about genre. Viewing the WPA listserv offered a concrete method for accessing these conversations. We could literally search the threads for genre, and the results were plentiful. Over 300 results could be found that contained genre in the subject heading and over 200 additional emails contained genre somewhere in the body of the text. These numbers give evidence to me that genre studies is both as Dr. Graban says, “both a theory and an aspect”. We see genre as a present force and as an organizing principle.

Our Genre FAQ would be a wiki and a collaborative tool. In an ideal scenario, we could invite genre studies scholar to join the conversation and add their voices to our FAQ. As I’m typing this I am envisioning ways that we could make relevant conversations rise to the top our FAQ. If we were able to create some sort of “Is This Helpful?” button, we could use that data to help more relevant questions rise to the top and have less popular entries sink towards the bottom of the queue. We can see the wiki as an ecology in itself, an constantly evolving text that is made and remade by users with use and action. It is as Miller states, “The systems are not given, not limitations on writers; instead they are made and remade by writers in the act of writing” (368). The FAQ could be a place to house the making and remaking of discourse in regards to genre studies and genre theory.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis S., and Mary Jo. Reiff. Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research,

and Pedagogy. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College

English 46.7 (Nov. 1984): 635-652.

CompFAQs from CompPile. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.

Cooper, Marilyn. “The Ecology of Writing.” College English 48.4 (Apr. 1986): 364-375.

Devitt, Amy. “Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” CCC 44.4

(Dec. 1993): 573-586.

Dobrin, Sidney I. and Christian R. Weisser. “Breaking Ground in Ecocomposition: Exploring

Relationships between Discourse and Environment” College English 64.5 (May

2005): 566-589.

Lessig, Lawrence. "Laws That Choke Creativity." TED Talks. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.

Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151-67.

Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” College English 51.6

(Oct. 1989): 602-16.