Dramatic consequences: integrating performance into the writing classroom

Abstract

This dissertation is a teacher-research study of integrating a performance-based practice, students' oral presentations on their writing, into the writing classroom. Drawing on Performance theory, this study demonstrates that a performance-based analysis and approach to the writing classroom heightens sensitivity to aesthetics in non-mimetic works and ultimately argues that aesthetics should be re-approached through the heuristic of Performance to enhance students' writing and to facilitate sensitivity in the production and analysis of texts. Chapter One establishes the connection between composition and Performance studies by looking at four historical traditions which bring to light the oral, literate and performantive dimensions of Composition and Rhetoric.^The similar roots between Rhetoric and theatre, the canon of Delivery in Rhetorical History, elements of Performance in Composition history, and the connections between speaking and writing demonstrate how the presentation possesses performance-based elements that are infused within these traditions and directly correlate to the writing classroom. Chapter two explores the feminist and teacher research methodology which informs the design and implementation of the study of students' oral/visual presentations as performance-based acts. Chapter three analyzes eight students' oral/visual presentations and written reflections on speaking and writing for their aesthetic performances.^These performances demonstrate how students embodied authority in the writing classroom by taking on various "roles," by performing as "experts," by identifying with the audience, and resisting the assignment.Chapter four looks at the implications of integrating performance-based pedagogy in the writing classroom as they bear directly on how students understand ethos, audience, and other rhetorical strategies Larger implications for this study reach beyond the classroom and across disciplinary divisions. Rhetoric and poetic are two divisions that have long been separated in the History of Rhetoric, in the production and analysis of texts and, by consequence, in the writing classroom. The aesthetic qualities of rhetoric, which rhetoric has distinguished from performance, need to be considered in order to render a more accurate account of the rhetorical situation and thus restore performance to the canon of delivery.