Cynthia Selfe

I once heard that English majors were a unique kind of nerd - and they thought there were better than the other nerds.

Over the years, among English students, grad students, and professors, I have sensed a certain resistance to technology, not just from the older people. There is a romanticism to English - reclining on a garden swing while reading from a beautifully-bound volume of essays, hand-writing a 3-inch thick manuscript in a dimly-lit attic, banging away for hours on a manual typewriter, spending years "in the stacks" in libraries, shopping for the proper pens and paper, etc. We love to pretend we are Jane Austin. Are we afraid that technology will steal the soul from our beloved language arts?

In a 1999 essay from College Composition and Communication, Cynthia Selfe said,

"A central irony that has shaped my professional life for as long as I can remember goes something like this: the one topic I actually know something about - that of computer technology and its use in teaching composition - is also the single subject, in my experience, best guaranteed to inspire glazed eyes and complete indifference in those portions of the CCCC membership which do not immediately open their program books to scan alternative sessions or sink into snooze mode."

I don't think they are bored - I think they are afraid.

It is interesting to note that Selfe didn't set out to become a computers in composition guru. She was in the right place at the right time and didn't shy away from a challenge. She says, "Someone showed me how to code my dissertation on the university mainframe because I didn't have enough money to have it typed. So in 1980 that made me a specialist. At my first job, PCs were just coming in; I've had a career contemporaneous with personal computers in education."

I'm in awe of this woman!