Interview

Writing about Pop Culture: A Conversation with Sarah Zupko

Sarah Zupko is the founder and editor of PopMatters, a webzine of international cultural criticism covering music, television, films, books, video games, sports, theatre, the visual arts, travel, and the Internet. PopMatters mission is explicitly to bridge the differences between academic and popular writing. As its website (http://www.popmatters.com/about.shtml) states, PopMatters recognizes that creative, compassionate intellectuals reside in all levels of society, in all types of societies, and we value their ability to provide intelligent, entertaining cultural criticism in the form of thoughtful, magazine-style essays. On 15 December 2006, IW Editors Tomoko Kuribayashi, Wade Mahon, and Chris Williams spoke with Zupko by telephone.

Articles

- Context Matters: Recognizing the Effects of Epistemic and Agonistic Contexts in Public Policy Debate.  Elizabeth J. Giddens

Abstract: In a representative democracy, public policy formation usually takes place by means of extended debate including stages for research, discovery, altercation, and compromise. The author characterizes contemporary public debate about education and civil justice issues and posits a conceptual model of the effects of participants goals, public reasons, and normative strategies on the macrostructure of each debate. This model acknowledges the possibility of an agonistic rhetoric as well an epistemic one. Correctly identifying the macrostructure of the debate enables professional writers, critics, and students to engage productively in policy debate.

- Thad: Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Technical Writing.  Bonnie Noonan 

Abstract: At the time of this study, I was primarily a compositionist becoming acclimated into the field of technical writing. I was used to teaching universal concepts of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, editing, and proofreading) and historical concepts of rhetoric (writer, audience, purpose). Furthermore, I am a liberal, from the 70s no less. I emerged into my young adulthood believing that positive social change could be effected primarily by resistance to corporate culture, a culture I perceived as antithetical to individuality. In this study of one document produced by one writer in a large corporate organization, however, I noted a dynamic, as opposed to oppressive, interplay between the writer I observed and the culture in which he operated. I also came to appreciate that it is important for observers to be aware of and honest about their own biases when they enter into a research project. As a result of my study, I cautiously put forth two claims: 1) that traditional first-year writing pedagogies can provide lasting information beneficial to an employees success and 2) that the direct study of writers in corporate structures can aid teachers of technical writing in the methods of writing instruction they choose to emphasize

Reviews

Literacy and Racial Injustice: The Politics of Learning after Brown V. Board of Education, by Catherine Prendergast
Reviewed by Elaine E. Whitaker  

Crossing the Digital Divide: Race, Writing, and Technology in the Classroom, by Barbara Monroe
Reviewed by Laura McGrath

Rhetorical Listening: Identification Gender, Whiteness, by Krista Ratcliffe
Reviewed by Paula Webb

Vote and Voice: Womens Organizations And Political Literacy, 1915-1930, by Wendy B. Sharer
Reviewed by Cori Brewster

Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, by Stuart A. Selber
Reviewed by Paul M. Rogers