When I first entered this class back in August I didn’t know what to expect. You could say that I had no expectations. I thought it was going to be just another English class, that would teach me the basics of grammar and how to write a good essay. The title of this course is Exposition: History, Theory and Practice. I assumed it was going to be a boring class about the history of exposition and rhetoric, but I was surely mistaken. When my professor told us that we wouldn’t be the traditional essay’s, I thought to myself “what kind of english class is this, and where has it been all my life?” I had never taken a class where we could use digital media and blogs as outlets for our learning. I had never heard of the phrase “expressive discourse” let alone knew what that meant. And I had certainly never thought of objects as a reflect of myself, or the fact that objects are also mini-storytellers. This class got me thinking in a lot of new ways.
I go back to one of our earliest projects: the twitter essay. When I first heard of this project I initially thought that meant we were going to be writing the traditional essay through a twitter template. And I certainly didn’t have a twitter, seeing that my relationship with social media only extended to facebook and tumblr (and more recently snapchat). didn’t think it was possible to write about what objects teach us about ourselves in just 140 characters. When I think of expository writing, its hard for me not to think of the five paragraph essay, with an introduction, three main ideas and a conclusion. But the twitter project diminished all of that. You mean to tell me that punctuation and spelling is not important. But this is an english class. Surely my teacher cringes at the site basic subject-predicate error and the uses of there, their and they’re being misused. I think back to the first blog post about writing and material culture and John Maguire’s essay “The Secret to Good Writing: Its Objects Not Ideas” and his obsession with “concrete examples.” He notes that the problem with student writing particularly in exposition is that students rather tell their idea than show and claims that student’s writing are way to abstract. What I liked about the twitter project is that it allowed me to express my ideas in a creative way. I also learned that objects can be used as instruments to describe yourself, not necessarily your whole self, but a part of you.
Then there was our object analysis. Throughout the semester we were given an object that we chose from the Marta artifacts and had to write about them. Again multi modal uses played a role. The object that I had chosen to study was a small teapot. I found it difficult to talk about the teapot without first talking about tea. There was so many different kinds of interesting tea histories and teas that it was hard to keep track of what the actual focus of the analysis was about. But it taught me that objects have histories that often lead to other histories and that object whether we like to think it or not, are more connected than we realize. It brings me back to Jennifer Roberts description of the lava lamp and Prown description of the teapot. The lava lamp, Roberts describes was used to preserve the psychedelic vibes of the sixties. The lava lamp she claims describes this counterculture of the sixties in which it stands for the “mechanistic” force rather than the sixties defined “organic” force. In Prown’s description of the teapot, he associates many women attributes, such as a woman’s body, and invokes feelings of home and comfort. Through these readings I was able to better understand that objects are a preservation of history and we should listen to the stories they tell.
Then there’s the timeline. While researching the history of tea I found numerous histories as to the beginnings of tea and the importance of tea today. It was also interesting to see the femininity of tea compared to the masculinity of coffee. Again this was an important way of learning how objects are connected to us and the histories they preserve.
Overall this class has given me a whole new perspective on exposition and rhetoric, and the wonders it creates when they work together to express ideas. Hopefully I can use these skills in my future endeavors and give my own new meaning to exposition.