Invention in the context of writing studies encompasses generating ideas as well as negotiating identities. Drawing from classical rhetoric’s systematic approach to invention through the topoi—through categories like definitions, contexts, comparisons, and relationships—our chapter explores how invention functions not merely as a method for generating ideas, but as ongoing processes of people inventing themselves within academic communities. This series of videos represents our stories that explore invention through discovery, collaboration, and community engagement, demonstrating how these interconnected processes continue to transform both individual scholars and the academic spaces they inhabit.
Part One: Introduction
As Volosinov writes, a word is a bridge between utterer and utterance, a connection point among speakers. Invention, for me, is a conversation. I think what fills the space in between is invention–it’s a collaboration between the utterer and utterance, the speaker and the listener. Invention is ephemeral, imperfect, and always not-quite-it-but-close. As such, invention is always on the cusp of something new. My segment describes the invention of the online Class of ‘41 Studio, and it highlights the collaborative forces at work behind technological invention.
Part Two: Morgan Studio
Programmatic invention within academic settings at times can operate as a response to perceived needs and at other times as spaces to encourage others to create new possibilities within disciplinary spaces. Drawing from Anis Bawarshi’s understanding of invention as a process of socialization where ideas are exchanged to generate further sites of invention, this section examines how two academic programs became spaces for ongoing curricular innovation and negotiating identities in those spaces. In either case, programmatic invention functions as a recursive process that includes strategic planning and allowing for the unknown, providing spaces that are foundational and adaptable to meet current and future needs within academic communities.
Part Three: Michael Programs
Invention played a significant role in my time working with Kathi as a graduate student. During that time, I had the opportunity to take a course in everyday writing with her, and out of that course came the Museum of Everyday Writing. Created by Megan Keaton, Sarah Marshall, and I – under Kathi’s guidance – the Museum of Everyday Writing (MoEW) is an online archive of artifacts of everyday writing, or writing which is written by ordinary, non-elite people as part of their everyday lives (Lillis; Sinor; Lyons; Barton and Hamilton; Powell). You can visit the MoEW here: https://museumofeverydaywriting.omeka.net/. Since we launched in 2015, the MoEW has grown into a site of research and invention for graduate administrators, undergraduate interns, and site users, and continues to grow under its current leadership Over the course of the two years we spent inventing the MoEW, I learned from Kathi three critical lessons about invention that I would like to discuss.
Part Four: Jennifer MoEW
Kathi’s three lessons about invention – considering context beyond the “Rhetorical Situation,” thinking critically about collaboration, and allowing for reinvention – contribute to a definition of invention that is capacious and transferrable, as can be seen in the MoEW, the EWM major, and the Class of ’41 Studio.
Part Five: Coclusions
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts, Dover Publications, 1996.
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 5, no. 1, 1986, pp. 4-23.
Barton, David and Emily Hamilton. “Literacy Practices.” Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context, edited by David Barton, Mary Hamilton, and Roz Ivanič, Routledge, 1998, pp. 7-15.
Bawarshi, Anis. “The Genre Function.” College English, vol. 62, no. 3, 2000, pp. 335-360.
Consigny, Scott. “Rhetoric and Its Situations.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 7, no. 3, 1974, pp. 176-186.
Edbaur, Jenny. “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 4, 2005, pp. 5-24.
Lauer, Janice M. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, 2004.
Lillis, Theresa. “Writing as Everyday Practice.” The Sociolinguistics of Writing, Edinburgh University Press, 2013, pp. 74-99.
Lyons, Martyn. “New Directions in the History of Written Culture.” Culture & History Digital Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 2012, pp. 1-9.
Powell, Katrina M. The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park, University of Virginia Press, 2007.
Sinor, Jennifer. The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary, University of Iowa Press, 2002.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 2, 2004, pp. 297-328