Thursday there will be a roundtable on cognitive genre studies in Moscow. I looks like something one should attend. However, in these COVID19-times, we can all participate over zoom and from the comfort of home. Not that I'd mind going to Moscow, mind. But the travel time to my home office is admittedly shorter. Meet me in virtual Moscow Thursday and remember to take the time difference into account.
Among the speakers is Michael Sinding whose work on the topic is admirable. I look forward to hearing him. He will speak alongside Russian colleagues whom I don't know but look forward to admiring as well. Read more here.
After a long wait, Genre in the Climate Debate, is out. It is a research anthology I have edited alongside a very old partner-in-crime, Christel Sunesen of the micro-publishing house Ekbátana(named, I believe, after a poem by Danish master poet Sophus Claussen—no, the Wikipedia-article doesn't even begin to do him justice) with whom I have also published this book on Grundtvig and genre (in Danish). It's been a long wait and as you can see from the volume the afterword was written in August 2019. But fortunately most of its value hasn't suffered from the protracted publication process. And anyway, protracted publication is another name for "academic publication". Good friends helped me formulate some of the presentation for the Det Gruyter homepage, and it ended up looking like this:
The presentation of the book on the De Gruyter homepage reads like this:
Benefits
The volume establishes a dynamic interplay between two high-level research fields: humanistic climate studies and genre research
The volume offer an understanding of the way the structural and ideological issues in the debate over anthropogenic climate change are determined by the genres in play in the debate.
The volume continues key developments in contemporary genre research, in particular the use of genre in political campaigning and the uptake of genre information and action across genre systems.
The greatest conundrum concerning anthropogenic climate change may prove to be in the humanities and the social sciences. How is it even possible that highly exigent information for which overwhelming evidence exists does not make an immediate and strong impact on ideologies, policies, and life practices across the globe? This volumeoffers an intriguing and enlightening new approach to the the climate debate by taking it as a question of genre. Genres are the cultural categories that structure human understanding and communication, and genre research therefore offers a central key to unlocking the conundrum. From a genre perspective, if there is one thing the climate debate demonstrates, it is the inertia inherent in genre use. Patterns of understanding and interpretation once established seem to carry on even when they have long outlived their usefulness.
However, it is also evident that uses of genre can work to change this inertia. Genres play a vital role in human interaction, as we use them to learn, express ourselves, and to act. How individual actors utilize or manipulates genres determines to what extent knowledge of climate change spreads from the scientific community to the public, how it is debated, and to what extent it leads to positive action.
I am, obviously, very happy to see it published. The long wait involved in having edited volumes means that people will submit to you and then you'll keep them in a year-long standby while you wait for all the cogs, wheels and gears to work together. So the release when the book is finally there is palpable.
But there's also another sort of release in a book like this. For decades, literally, I have been scared to the point of paralysis about anthropogenic climate change, and I'm not alone in being paralyzed. In fact one of the most eye-opening studies I read in preparation for the volume deals with "The Dragons of Inaction"—understood as the psychological barriers that hold us back from taking intelligent action on anthropogenic climate change. However, on having finally actually engaged with the topic, I find it less scary, not because it turns out to be less real on closer inspection, or even less dangerous, but because I feel less powerless, since now I experience that I am at least doing something. Moreover, I find that acting also breaks isolation, because it leads me to meet, discuss, and sometimes even work with engaged researcher from other fields equally engaged—sometimes even in a much more committed way—to making a difference. Shared worry is half worry, and shared strength is double strength. Happy to add mine.
Theory for theory's sake is usually the sole realm of pure blooded nerds within a given research field. Thus, much as I may go on about genre and much as I will insert a discussion of genre into well-nigh everything, I could not come up with sufficient students for a full-on genre theory course if my life depended on it. To make matters worse, there is at present no dedicated journal for genre research, so the field has an uneasy existence publication wise—having to recurrently insert itself into scholarly debates about other topics. It's doable, but it requires a fair bit of intellectual dexterity and all but excludes genre theory. Publication wise, Genre research thus exists mainly in individual articles and in topical anthologies. Many are excellent, but genre theory has a hard life fitting into these formats.
So, it's a rare and treasured moment when you get the chance to dive into genre theory with other researchers. The Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie graciously hosted a section of genre theory in its most recent issue (here), and I was even more graciously invited to participate. The occasion was an article by Anne Freadman (here) containing a response to Carolyn Miller's pioneering study "Genre as Social Action" (1984) (here).
If you are in the know about genre research, you'll see at once that this is one of the most interesting meetings you could ever establish. Both researchers belong in the category, I once called "Eminent women in genre research" and for good reason. Miller's article is usually seen as at least one of the central starting points for contemporary genre research. In my own article I try to frame her influence like this:
Carolyn Miller’s (1984) “Genre as Social Action,” the primary topic—or target—of Anne Freadman’s brilliant and thought-provoking article, holds a special place in genre research. If I pick up an unknown piece of research on genre, the first thing I do is look for Miller’s article in the bibliography. If it is not there, the text in my hand will probably be of little value to my work for lack of orientation. (161)
Anne Freadman on her side is a later influence, but it's not unfair to say that the last decade or so has seen a meteoric rise in her reception. If you read contemporary genre research her seminal concept "Uptake" is everywhere. So, if we see this as battle, it is a Clash of the (Genre) Titans. The exchange is everything you could possibly hope for. Freadman lucid, friendly, unexpected (as you would, paradoxically, expect from her) and completely to the point. Miller on her side (here) is brief, clear, and very good at knowing when to hold and when to fold.
This is all brilliant. I've known for quite a while that the exchange would come out, and I've been terribly excited to read the whole thing. But the Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie knew what they had and chose to go over and beyond, so they added three more articles—each a commentary on Freadman's original article. The two other commentators, Janet Githrow and Charles Bazerman, are both forces to be recognized in genre research with a long line of brilliant publications to their name. I'm not going to say very much about their contributions at this point as I'm only beginning to figure out what their place in the debate is. Suffice it to say that both contributions display the intellectual rigor and breadth of vision, I've come to expect from the authors. I will learn a lot from both, once I get my head fully around them (Gilthrow here, and Bazerman here as well as mine here). It is worth noting that we were only given Freadman's article, not Miller's response, and I think that was a prudent move because it took away the urge to adjudicate between the two.
Be that as it may. The whole section now reads not "just" like an exchange between two brilliant researchers, but as an exploration of the foundation and scope of genre research. There is food for thought for many a year ahead. I cannot congratulate the Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie enough for this section.
My esteemed colleague Dr Meredith J. C. Warren has published a fascinating book on a genre called "hierophagy". Here, for your enjoyment and (hopefully) your enlightenment is a post on the book and its use of genre. It is written from an interdisciplinary genre research perspective.
The reference in—sort of—APA 6th:
Warren, M. J. C. (2019). Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (Vol. 14). Atlanta: SBL Press.
And the cover. Not too sexy, but you know this is how these things look:
Let me add, that I really like Dr. Warren a lot. She is both a brilliant scholar and a very nice and energetic human being. I am a better researcher and a better person for knowing her. So, do not expect anything particularly belligerent. Today, I am not in the business of harsh criticism, but in the business of being extremely interested and making remarks to a piece of very fine scholarship. In other words, this is as much fun as academia gets, and I am here to enjoy it, not stomp upon it. I like having academic fun. I am just that kind of guy.
What is "hierophagy"? The book defines it as "specialized, sacred eating" (1). The book chooses it's topic from "Ancient Mediterranean Literature" with a clear focus in the Bible but also with a number of texts from the surrounding historical landscape. The basic idea is that somebody in a text consumes some item of food with an otherworldly origin (note that, apparently a book can be food; at least it can be eaten in a sacred way). The hierophagic eating transforms the eater and establishes a connection between the eater and the otherworldly realm. Persephone consumes food from Hades and is bound to the realm; John eats a scroll and has divine visions.
So, what is the genre angle?
Well, the hierophagic meal is itself a genre. It's a recurrent form of action with a particular social purpose. If you will, a "situation based fusion of form and substance". At this point, obviously, the genre crowd hears the voice of Carolyn Miller reverberating in the background. So here she is—in the foreground—with Chuck Bazerman. Don´t they look just lovely?
But I digress.
The book is not a full-on piece of genre research; we'll get back to that, but it does rest on two moves already made in genre research, and it does so very well.
The first is, as hinted, Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" (1984). If you are somehow and do not know Miller, you can find the article here. It is the most quoted piece of genre research ever, methinks, unless you count Aristotle's Rhetoric. Also, there is a little piece on Miller and her influence on my blog here.
Anway, Miller describes how genres are forms of action. They serve rhetorical purposes in our social life, we use them in situations to achieve aims that are achievable through discourse. We do things with genre. This understanding has been foundational for modern genre research. It has been expanded, nuanced, developed, and sometimes twisted, but it has never been fully replaced, and is as alive today as it has ever been—and that's very much alive.
Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature takes up the hierophagic meals as a genre in this Millerian sense, as it sees these meals as social actions. They are ways things are done in the social world. In the terms of genre research this, incidentally, is an uptake. A concept from Anne Freadman that Dr. Warren would enjoy immensely, I believe. I don't think it's online, but it is discussed in two central pieces by Freadman:
Freadman, A. (1994). Anyone for Tennis? In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 43-66). London: Taylor & Francis
Freadman, A. (2002). Uptake. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T. Teslenko (Eds.), The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (pp. 39-53). Cresskill Hampton Press Inc.
Anyway, Miller only gets Dr. Warren halfways there, because her book discusses "Ancient Mediterranean literature" (emphasis added), not ancient Mediterranean society more broadly, and Miller's concept is directed at an actual sociality. Real people doing real people stuff. Enter stage (right) a lesser researcher; yours truly, who has the honor of playing second violin to Miller's primarius. (Oh, and being second violin to Miller is extremely honorable.Nothing modest here; I'll take that chair any day).
A few years back I made an aesthetic take on Miller by superimposing her concept of genre as social action on narrative literature and thus describing "Genre as Fictional Action". The study—less groundbreaking than Miller, but you can be less groundbreaking than Miller and still be the s....!—can be found here. It is a lot of fun, if you ask me. The basic idea then is, that you can analyse genre use in a literary work in the same way that you can analyse genre use IRL by looking at the genres themselves, the way they are used, and the—intradiegetic—social situation in which they appear as attempted actions. 24/
This enables Dr Warren to make a central move in her own readings: she does not need to address the IRL-role of hierophagy as a genre; she just has to see the way it works within the literary text she addresses with no commitment to a sociality beyond the texts.
I shall not enter into the text readings in Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature. I might be able to add a thing or two from a perspective of literary analysis, but they are basically the scholarly realm of other researchers. Instead, I shall address two questions that are very much genre questions, and where I may have something more useful to add.
1) The position on the book vis-a-vis what I sometimes call genre research proper.
2) The hierophagic meal as an embedded genre.
1) By "genre research proper" I mean the field of research that either works with genre as its primary topic, or systematically uses existing genre research as an approach to other topics with a clear view to influence our general understanding of genre through its studies.
The book is, obviously, much closer to the second approach, but it stops short of engaging with developing theory within the genre research field, among other things because it's field of reference is too slim to make a contribution like that. In case you are wondering: No, this is not a criticism of the book, it's an attempt to locate it in relation to genre research. In fact, the book has its own field or fields, as is evidenced by its rich bibliography from the study of ancient Mediterranean literature. It's first and most important contribution lies here. It's use of genre research is ancillary to this purpose. In that perspective, adding in a truckload of other genre researchers, some a lot better than me, would defeat the purpose by obscuring where the contribution lies.
Should we, nonetheless, choose to see it as a contribution to genre research proper, which is not an unreasonable uptake (there's Anne Freadman again lurking at the edge of the thread) even given what has been said above, we might say that it contributes to a return of aesthetics in genre research. Aesthetics has been well-nigh dormant in genre research proper for decades, but has been slowly resurrected these last years and might get to play a more prominent role in years to come. At least, I'll quote it in that function in future work.
2) By "embedded genre" I understand a genre that is contained within the framework of another genre; a pie chart in a report, a joke in a lecture, a threat in a novel. It is under-theorized in current genre research, and Bakhtin's description of primary and secondary genres has been given too much weight, including in my own "Genre and interpretation" (here). (I have a full-scale research article about it loitering in my drawer, but there are some revisions still missing before submission, so it might be a while).
In the context of Dr. Warren's book, it's worth noting that hierophagy as she describes it is systematically an embedded genre. It is not an overarching genre for a whole work, but is a genre that works as an element in other genres. So, it must always be seen in the context of the larger work, in which it appears. And it has this micro-genre kind of function: it is used as a building block in a larger whole. This does not make it any less interesting—personally I wrote a complete book chapter on the riddle in Grundtvig. Even if it only ever appears as an embedded genre in Grundtvig's writing, it is highly consequential. But it is worth noting because, among other reasons, the biblical form criticism also focuses on this kind of genre; even if it is wholly unaware of a organized field of genre research—often for purely chronological reasons: the form critics largely came first. So the questions become:
1) Does hierophagy exist on a "higher" level; is there such a thing as a work of hierophagy?
2) Does the book's treatment of the embedded genre improve our understanding of the workings of genre in ancient literature compared with form criticism?
3) What can the book teach us about the working of embedded genres generally, even if it does not use the term?
I believe at least question is sort-of answered in the book, but I'll leave the answers to Dr. Warren herself.
Anyway, a highly interesting book. I very much recommend it to you. Go buy, go read!
NB: This thread was originally a thread on Twitter. You can see the thread here.
My newest article on genre research is out now and available for download. The article tries to reach a new audience through a fairly new Chinese university journal: Journal of Zhejiang International Studies University. So it is adorned with Chinese which I cannot read at all, but adore intensely with my dull Westerner's eyes. Also, it contains what may be the anecdote of a lifetime for me. Read it and weep. The abstract for the article reads like this:
The article serves as an introduction to the state-of-the-art in contemporary genre research. It aims to mediate between genre research and scholars working in with genre in other disciplines by laying out six basic tenets of genre research. The article thus describes 1) how genres are almost omnipresent in culture, 2) how they unite regulation and innovation; 3) how they combine to form larger patterns including other genres; 4) how genres are connected in time; 5) how interpretation through genre is tacit and rarely understood as generic interpretation; and finally 6) how our perception of genres tends to naturalize them, thus leading to the question whether teaching genre is a conservative measure whereby the teacher, knowingly or unknowingly, naturalizes existing ideologies and power structures to the students. Drawing on these insights, the second, and shorter, part of the article, exemplifies the role of genre in a concrete social exchange between the author and the West Copenhagen Police. It shows how the participants in the exchange draw on extensive genre competencies without having to reflect upon them. The article closes by presenting some of the consequential and wide-reaching perspectives involved in genre research.
I hope, you will enjoy reading the article. I worked a lot with it. It should be a fairly smooth read. Anyway, you can download it here and see for yourself.
Genres are flexible and
versatile cultural categories structuring human understanding and communication.
On the one hand, they are strongly regulative, but on the other hand, they
allow considerable freedom on the part of both the utterer and the recipient. Genres
combine to form larger patterns through social and organizational structuring
into genre sets, systems, hierarchies, and chains, and through creative uptakes
on the part of individual genre users.
International conference of the CCD network, School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, 12-14 September 2018
The international conference Genres and media landscapes in virtual-physical learning spaces. Moving frontlines?, GeM 2018, aims to create a multi-disciplinary platform for dialoguing on the every-day uses of modality rich, parallel, linked, and hybrid, communicative genres that are embedded in media landscapes and circulate in learning spaces inside and outside institutional settings. The digitized era and the global world of mobility and migration have brought about a shift for human-beings in general and the research enterprise more specifically, thus, making it necessary to (re)consider conditions for communication or languaging as well as for learning and identity production. Today, analogue and digital dimensions are seen as being blurred and interdependent, just as accumulation, density and change, are fundamental features of media landscapes. Genres for representation and communication are created, renewed, transformed and fluid in these flexible and expanding environments
The epithome of a high-impact article in my field is Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" from 1984. It is to a wide extent the center piece of genre research. It is so influential that you cannot simply insert it into an article as "Miller (1984)". You have to call it something along the line of "Miller's groundbreaking/trailblazing/influential/seminal 1984-study".
You don't write that just to pay homage (though homage is indeed due), but more to demonstrate that you know the field well enough to be aware that this is the study you have to pay homage to. It's sort of a rite of passage.
Moreover, with too many texts to read and too little time to read them, it is also an excellent shibboleth to protect your time. If a text on genre does not have Miller on its bibliography, it is well-nigh certain that it's not worth your time to read. Miller may be replaced by a solid line-up of other central genre researchers, Freadman, Devitt, Bakhtin, Bazerman, Schryer, and others (see, for instance, this list), but still, there is a kind of vacuum present in a genre research-article that does not somehow quote Miller.
So, the article is as influential as such things ever get. However, the article's impact wasn't immediate. It would require a thorough bibliometric tracking to trace its full reception history, but insofar as I have been able to determine, "Genre as Social Action" did not conquer the center stage until after the publication of another crucial work, Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway's anthology Genre and the New Rhetoric. It did have quite a lot of happy readers before that, but Freedman and Medway's anthology seems to mark the turning point after which Miller's study had become so crucial it could no longer be simply "Miller (1984)".
So, the question presents itself: When do you know that a study is high-impact? If you measure a study's impact as something taking place within a certain window, how do you know that you actually have the right window? If high-impact is what you are looking for, then to a certain extent you cannot even know when a study is taken up and suddenly gets hurled towards the academic stardom of the "trailblazing" study?
This is particularly relevant since funding bodies, promotion commitees etc will look to promote researcher's who can make an impact, but often this means that anything older than, say five, years, is counted less because it does not reflect the current stature of the researcher, and its impact is already in the past.
But don´t trust the administrators. (Quoth the administrator). Research itself seems to be a much more patient endeavor, and in particular within the Humanities the possibility always remains that somewhere a long time ago, somebody wrote just that article that will blaze your trail, break your ground, or be your seminal influence.
Oh, and if you are interested in narratives, I did a slightly backwards, literary homage to Miller here.
A very learned friend just now asked me a pertient question of cross-disciplinary research communication. She asked:
If you were giving a reading on our rhetorical view of genres for literary doctoral students, what would you consider giving them?
That is indeed a very good question. There is no standard text and no standard curriculum to work from. So what would my curriculum look like. Leaving aside any of my own texts that might apply, this is my suggestion for a minimal reading list:
Bakhtin, M. M.
(1986). The Problem of Speech Genres (V. W. McGee, Trans.). In C. Emerson &
M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech Genres and
Other Late Essays (pp. 60-102). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bazerman, C. (2002). What Activty Systems Are Literary Genres Part
of? Readerly/Writerly Texts, 10(1
& 2), 97-106.
Devitt, A. (2000). Integrating Rhetorical and Literary Theories of
Genre. College English, 6, 698-718.
Devitt, A. (2009). Re-fusing form in genre study. In J. Giltrow
& D. Stein (Eds.), Genres in the
Internet (pp. 27–47). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Freadman, A. (2002). Uptake. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T.
Teslenko (Eds.), The Rhetoric and
Ideology of Genre (pp. 39-53). Cresskill Hampton Press Inc.
Miller, C. (1984). Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151-167.
Miller, C. (2017). "Where do Genres Come From". In C.
Miller & A. R. Kelly (Eds.), Emerging
Genres in New Media Environments (pp. 1-34). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paré, A. (2002). Genre and Identity: Individuals, Institutions, and
Ideology. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T. Teslenko (Eds.), The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (pp. 57-71). Cresskill: Hampton
Press Inc.
The
list is made specifically with literary PhDs in mind. There are three main
considerations involved:
I want my students to read texts central to the RGS-tradition
I want to connect to knowledge they already have
I want them to find their reading relevant and to stay interested
So why these texts? Here are a few of the reasons for each.
Bakhtin's text is the only text in the batch with a claim to literary studies. And his name is known to literary scholars. So it's a good way to connect the two fields. There are, of course, reasons why this text has had a long history in RGS. It is immensely inspiring and full of starting points for discussions of central points in RGS; genre use, genre variance, interlocking of genre, the lingustic basis for genre etc etc.
Bazerman would definitely be represented by another text if I were to just teach RGS, and not RGS to literary PhDs. He, or at least one of his peers, (Russel or Andersen come to mind), should be here to represent the sociologically oriented side of RGS. I choose this one for the literary PhDs, because it deals with literary subject matter, is a quick read, and will annoy them constructively.
Devitt is the RGS researcher who has engaged most prominently with literary studies. Again: other texts might be more viable if I were to just teach RGS, but for literary PhDs I choose these two. The first, because it brilliantly represents the potential for dialogue between literary studies and RGS. (And also displays an actual interest in literature.) The second, challenges some of the basic assumptions in RGS, in a progressive and constructive way. This will accomodate some of the more critical views that a literary PhD would be likely to hold in approaching RGS, and thus open up the conversation
Freadman is quite a headache. You can´t do contemporary RGS without her concept of "uptake". And to do RGS proper you´d want to have PhDs read "Anyone for Tennis?". But getting a grip on "uptake" is hard enough, without having to actually grasp that text. The 2002-article is, of course, less of a heavyweight in terms of influence and originality, but it is much more accessible.
Miller, yeah you have to do Miller. It's just not RGS without "Genre as Social Action". So, grap those recurrent situations for a rhetorically sound definition of humble de facto genre. Then, send a loving thought to Campbell and Jamieson, and go do some social action. The 2017 text is interesting, not just because it's excellent, but also because I have had several literary colleagues recommend it to me already, so has already struc a bell with some literary reseachers. Moreover, I personally like it because Miller returns a little bit to one of my own favorite books on genre, Alastair Fowler's ultra-literary Kinds of Literature which IMHO is long overdue for a renaissance.
Finally, Paré's text. It is one of a batch of texts that work with the dangers inherent in the ideological nature of genre; the way genres control how we think and how we can act, even if this does not reflect reality, or our own best interests. There are several other options on this point, but I like this one, not just because it is a pleasant read, but also because it is very very sharp.
So that would be my bid. Other suggestions are welcome.
Seriously, if you want to know stuff about genre, if you are interested in the manifold aspects of genre, as it unfolds in politics, in institutions, in everyday life, and in our minds, there is a blog you should read. And no, it's not this one, but one that is so much better. I promise to do my very best to compete, but for now it is definitely a no-contest.
The blog is run by one of the Captains of Genre Research, Amy Devitt of the University of Kansas. She is probably among the 5 most quoted genre researchers worldwide; and, I think, the researcher I reference the most at all. Her scholarly work is original and on an extremely high, well-nigh unbeatable, level. Moreover, it is always a distinct pleaure to read for its breadth of vision, its clarity, and its penetrating insights into the subject. Also, if you are nerd enough you sometimes get the chance to laugh while reading her; a rare pleasure in the exciting-but-tedious activity of staggering through scholarly work.
Also, Amy Devitt looks quite friendly:
(The person, btw, is exactly as nice, as you would expect from the picture. She is living proof that you can have a forthcoming, engaging personality, and a working conscience, and still be a contender for the crown. Take heed, young hotspurs!)
Her blog, Genre-colored glasses, is absolutely staggering, and has been consistently maintained for a long time, so by now it is an absolute treasure trove of insights. All laid out in the simplest possible way, but with the complexities of any given subject kept intact throughout.
The blog is also whimsical, personal, sometimes razor sharp, sometimes mild and even poetic; and it is very very engaged.
So go there. (And remember to see Amy Devitt's homepage at the same time). Should you never return here, but just stay with her, I will forgive you. But do remember to send prof. Devitt my sincerest regards.
