The Material Culture of Writing

Catherine Cooper speaks with Cydney Alexis, Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric at Kansas State University, and Hannah Rule, Associate Professor of English and Composition Rhetoric about studying the objects that are part of writing practice.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Catherine Cooper: Hello, my name is Catherine Cooper. I am here with-- Cydney Alexis: Cydney Alexis. I am an Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric at Kansas State University. My favorite National Park is Grand Teton National Park. I was very excited to see that you work for the Park Service, because I am a big fan of the National Parks. Hannah Rule: And I'm Hannah Rule. I'm an Associate Professor of English and Composition Rhetoric, sometimes called Writing Studies, at the University of South Carolina. And my favorite National Park is … --I'm afraid of the outdoors!. [laughing] Catherine Cooper: Thank you both so much for joining me today. So, you just wrote a book called The Material Culture of Writing. And I was wondering what led each of you to be curious about the objects that surround and are used in writing practice? Cydney Alexis: Well, we were lucky in that we had a friend professor bring us together, because she knew... She had been working with Hannah closely, and she knew that I was writing about objects. And so, we did a presentation together at a conference, which was great. And quickly the book idea began to evolve, but I'd always been interested in objects. When I was a little kid, I loved Richard Scarry's Best Story Book Ever!. And I would just spend countless hours for years with this book. It has little people and little objects that are labeled. Never knew you could study objects in this way, until I landed at University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I was in the English Department studying Composition and Rhetoric, but found that they had a Material Culture program and a Material Culture certificate. And that's when I began to study objects in a scholarly way. The field merges art historians, archeologists, historical archeologists, people from every discipline really. And so, I was so excited to actually be able to study the theory behind this obsession that I had always had. Hannah Rule: Just to go off what Cydney was saying. I think that the origin story of us getting together was possibly eight years ago, and that original conference presentation, from then we were starting the book in a sense. So, it's been a long time coming. But I think for me, I think what brought us together, Cydney is really coming from the material culture studies perspective and has taught me a lot over the course of our collaboration. For me, my work in composition and rhetoric has been focused on composing processes and how people get writing done. Writing itself is a technology of human invention, and it exists only by virtue of things. It literally could not exist if humans didn't take up various objects to make writing also a thing, a material thing that exists and circulates in the world. So, oftentimes in my discipline, people talk about writing in terms of something that happens in the mind or in the imagination, as this ephemeral human act, but I'm really insistent upon and interested in the ways that it's full-bodied and material. So, that's part of, I hope, the work that the book does for people, both inside our discipline and interdisciplinary audiences as well. Catherine Cooper: What was the impetus for putting together these passions into a book and at this particular time? Cydney Alexis: I don't know if Hannah had also been thinking about this book, but I had been obsessing about it already. But when you're thinking about a book and you have no idea how that works, it felt very distant and far away. And when our colleague and friend, Laura Micciche, did bring us together, she said, "You two should know each other. You two should work on this project together." And every time someone encourages you, it