As a doctoral candidate, I use this website mostly to compose my journey to dissertation. Sharing my process with students (and anyone who’s interested) puts into practice many of my values as a thinker and writer. My mind no doubt changes as I read and experience more. What I value isn’t what’s “right” but what’s useful, isn’t product but process. My philosophy centers on an understand of writing as “process” in a Berthovian sense (that references the work of composition scholar Ann Berthoff) valuing a raised awareness of my own thinking as I read and compose. The blog posts, therefore, exist as a kind of dialectic notebook (ala Berthoff). Here I transfer passages from the works I read, noting my own thinking about those works. The dissertation drafting comprises thinking about my thinking about those passages.
All of this to say…I reserve the right to change my mind, my tone, my anything… later. In fact, that reserved right is kind of the point. Truth: sometimes reading theory makes me cranky. I’m not usually cranky. I probably could use a better sense of humor, but alas it’s not built into me that good, so it doesn’t come out much in my writing about reading. I need to laugh more at Foucault, for sure, and Vitanza, and Berlin. Even Ann. Laugh at. Laugh with. These things matter, literacy and all. They matter a lot. But they’re also not going anywhere :).
Paige Davis Arrington pursues a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric at Georgia State University. Her scholarly interests include theories of language, the history and teaching of Composition, and digital pedagogies. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son, and loves thinking about toiling in the garden, hiking, and rock climbing.
