Judith Clayton Van

jvan@asu.edu

On first hearing the phrase, when I was eleven years old, and asking what it ment, I have wanted to be a Renaissance man--a man of universal genius. I didn't particularly want to become a man, but I did want to possess the qualities personified by Leonardo DaVinci.

Later I was relieved to find a definition of a Renaissance woman. It's a noun, denoting, "A woman who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences." Even later, I found that my personal goal was wisdom not only knowledge. I intuited that this would require a broad education because according to my definition of a Renaissance person--a well rounded, balanced genius--I recognized that synthesis was the key. And yet, my education was spotty, for I rarely went to school if I could help it. Early, I rebelled against the biases and restrictions of a regimented education. I struggled, bored, through school, and after a while I did not go back.

I became an artist but I was more engaged in the art of the streets, than with fine arts, and barely educated in the sciences at all. I became a painter, a dancer, a horse trainer, a mother, an occasional creator of fictions. Because I valued and questioned my own creativity, my interests were the creator, creation myths, religion and philosophy. Reading in religion, lead me to astronomy and science, to physics, different cosmological theories, astrophysics, quantum theory, myth, and anthropology. My search and my synthesis were intuitive.

After years of painting and learning on my own, I returned to college and received a degree in Studio Art. There, I met a professor of Art History who taught me to write and helped me understand writing as art. After graduating I applied and was accepted as a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Fiction Writing at Arizona State University. When,as a T.A., I entered the classroom to teach 9 years ago, I thought I was in prison and the good times were over. They gave me a syllabus, told me what me to teach, and how to teach it. I began teaching composition to first year students.

I was petrified because I was an M.F. A. candidate in fiction, not a candidate for a Ph.D. in Rhet/Comp. It did not surprise me to find that many tenured English professors felt that M.F.A. candidates should not be in the composition classroom at all. Yet, I completed the T.A. training, received the M.F.A. and the school re-hired me as untenured faculty. I was in the classroom again not necessarily because they wanted me, but because of escalating enrollment, they needed me. I felt enormous pressure to prove myself and keep my job in an increasingly competitive field where I wasn't sure I belonged.

I began graduate classes in rhetoric and composition and was fortunate to have Frank D'Angelo a famous scholar, as my professor. He taught the value of a broad general education. He illustrated the adaptability of Classical Rhetoric, drawing on all four boards of the room a huge heuristic that writers can use to discuss any topic from Art to Science, no matter how complex. He explained how it expanded to include all that people can write or speak about. Dr. D'Angelo discussed scientific and social science theories, and how they apply to writing. He engendered hope that there might be a place for me in the composition classroom after all. Unfortunately, Dr. D'Angelo was soon to retire, and the new Rhet/Comp folks, seemed a different breed.

STRUCTURE: Dr. D'angelo inspired me, yet I taught for several more years without referring to my art background because I didn't want these new rhet/comp people to see me as flaky and I didn't know how to integrate my own knowledge with the subjects I was supposed to be teaching. However, meaning did find a way. I was losing steam, passion for writing, and for teaching. Pressure was building within me, seeking escape from the codified, highly ordered, closed system exemplified by the lock-step syllabi, the same book for all, the many meetings to insure the administration that we were all "literally" on the same page.

One day in my classroom while giving a lecture on paragraphing to a group of uninspired first year students, I said the word structure . . . and the sentence trailed away. Turning to the board, I outlined a shepards hut, in the Pyrenees Mountains made of rocks. Next I drew a log cabin, and discussed the pioneers in the west. Next, a suburban house, and how they sprang up after the second world war, and why. Then a castle, then the Pyramids. I talked about the people, the purpose, the situation and occasion of the constructions.

I'm sure the students thought I'd lost it, but they waited politely for me to put an extra defense opening in the castle. I asked what the drawings had in common. A student immediately suggested that everything had a structure, not just buildings and essays. How and why things fit together whether it be essay or building, now seemed more interesting. We discussed organic structure, formal structure, postmodern structure, and why teachers taught the five paragraph essay. A boy said, "that's easy, for the same reason they built all those little houses in the suburbs. It's easier, more efficient, and probably cheaper." But not, we acknowledged very expressive or creative. It was more utilitarian, and designed to be a quick fix for a problem.

I walked from class with a group of happy students and I was happy too because I'd shared in a way I didn't usually. I was also a little anxious because I had the feeling that if one of the rhetoric people had been observing, I'd be out on my ear. It was kind of thrilling, though because I felt like I'd gotten away with something.

STYLE:

Later, talking with another class about style, I found they had little conception of the possibilities of style beyond a vague sense that it related to fashion. The next day, thinking about the discussion, my eye happened on my Jansen History of World Art. I remembered a favorite art teachers lecture on drapery in art through the ages. In the darkened auditorium she had shown us the history of a form. Its evolution from the stiffly creased fabric in early Egyptian Art, to the relaxation of form in classical Greek painting, the undulating movement of drapery in Hellenistic Sculpture, the changes through the Renaissance, then the return, to the modern geometric forms of Picasso.

By isolating the drapery, seeing the thread of one interpretation of form is easy--one idea throughout the history of art. It made a huge impression on me, but I had been an art student. I wondered if my students would find it as interesting, but I figured what they heck. At least I'd be sharing something that had intrigued me. They might grasp the concept, and then be able to pick out threads of similarity in our readings. I didn't know how the knowledge would translate. Nevertheless, through visual images, I had understood the concept of style as culturally influenced and hoped they might too.

Being in a computer classroom that semester allowed me to put the images on my web page and show them to the class. My students were intrigued but they wanted to know why we were looking at these pictures and how they related to writing. Trying to answer, I remembered Winston Weathers,discussion of style. I took the book to class. Weathers, a respected teacher, said style is "proof of a human being's [or a culture's] individuality, . . .a gesture of personal freedom against inflexible states of mind . . . in a very real way has something to do with freedom . . ." and through which ". . . we can reveal to students the connection between democracy and style." He asserted that through the study of style, "The student is equipping himself for a more adaptive way of life within a society increasingly complex and multifaceted."

The student's liked this idea of personal expression and freedom, but didn't know how it related to the drapery . . . and I wasn't sure either. Trying to make the connection, I said, "While each of your are responsible for a persuasive essay, there are many ways, or styles available to write it. Think of the geometric Egyptian, the undulating Hellenistic Drapery, the modern geometrics of Picasso, but still the same form, drapery. I related the draperies to the writing styles of famous authors we had read, including Henry James, Hemingway, and the present day Thomas Wolf. Then explained Weathers idea of Grammar A and Grammar B. We discussed different "Ways" of saying the same thing. Henry James had his way, Hemingway his, and you have yours, I said.

I asked students to write a persuasive essay about style, including descriptions of the art we had viewed and the authors we had read. I gave no other parameters regarding content or form. We read these essays aloud. All good, all different, all fulfilled the writing assignment, yet each student displayed their own style. It was empowering because although quite different, just as the styles of drapery had been, each was clearly valid. It was an Aha, moment for them. By bringing an outside element (drapery), to the assignment we had escaped its static nature.

ELEMENTS OF PERSUASION:

The next major shift in my teaching came like a visitation. I was in the computer classroom, at the new, white board, discussing the Rhetorical Triangle that shows the relationships of three elements of argument. I said, "arguments occur within a social context, that they are produced by writers or speakers who are addressing an audience." I drew a triangle. We discussed the mathematical implications of triangles in terms of origins, foundations, and structures of order.

I explained LOGOS, Greek for "word," and referrs to the internal consistency of the message, it's logical appeal, and wrote it at the top of the triangle. The next point, ETHOS, meaning character, I wrote on one corner. It refers to the the credibility, manner and reputaion of the writer or speaker. The third element, which I wrote on the other corner, is PATHOS, Greek for emotion. This refers to the impact of the message on the audience, with appeals to the emotions of the audience, and its power to cause the audience to act. I concluded with an example, then said Logos, Ethos, Pathos, three elements necessary to a balanced argument . . . and thought I had completed the lesson.

Nevertheless, my hand shot back to the top of the triangle. Beside Logos I wrote Idea, next to Ethos, I wrote form, and beside Pathos wrote force. "Idea, Force and Form," I said, "the Kabalistic formula the ancients posited for creation. A balanced triangle is the formula for an essay, for a life, for any creation. With no idea, the force and form can be powerful and elegant, but you cannot create. If one employs all force and idea with no form, the same result occurs, no creation. It takes the balance of three.

I felt like I'd said something inappropriate-burped in church or something. I had never put this together for my self, and here, impromptu, I had shared a connection of seemingly disparate ideas with impressionable first year students. What if I were all wet? Curiosity caused me to persist,collecting information about triads that I shared with my class.

I came up with quite a list, some obvious, others more buried in myth and subsumed in our unconscious: From western religion, Father, Son, and Holy spirit, from early Cretan origin myth, Gaia--the body of earth. Chaos--the gap between heaven and earth, a state of disorder, a system in movement. Eros--desire, the creative principle connecting Chaos and Gaia. Other triads, too numerous to list, come from many disciplines.

On my quest I found the Serpinski Triangle, a fractal. Fractal geometry, from Mandelbrot's study of complexity and chaos, is concerned with irregular patterns of parts that are in some ways similar to the whole, for example twigs and tree branches with properties of self-similarity or self-symmetry. Fractal geometry has been applied to diverse fields such as the stock market, meteorology, and computer graphics.

My students had seen one possible connection between their composing process and this new geometry. They had considered the Rhetorical triangle, the connections between it and ancient religious and philosopic ideas of creation. The more I open myself to these serindipitious teaching events, the less surprised I am to encounter one of these strange connections.

One day when discussing transitions in an essay, I flashed on the importance of transitions in film, and using a popular film, I began to talk about the cuts from one scene to the next. "What takes place in your mind during those cuts?" I asked. We agreed that cuts can accomplish much work in a short time. They advance the plot, set up relationships, create tone, locate us in time, create suspense and at their best make us understand what is never explicitly revealed, only suggested. It is in the cuts, the dark spaces,quick transitions or fades where our mind synthesizes much of a films information. Was this like residing for a moment in the unknown interfaces Fryxell describes, or could it resemble the leap of faith we make when synthesizing, bringing disparate informaton/disciplines together? Maybe it is.

Even this particular suggestion is another of the wild leaps of faith I make in trying to find connections in a heirachly organized world of knowledge. Maybe this is chaos, the dark space-- the complex dynamic space between--where mind finds new and exciting possibilities and connections, the vast deep out of which something new takes form. Whatever they may be, these unknown interfaces, I believe they are manifestataions of the ways I've internalized interdisciplinarity.

They have saved me and my classes from the entropic action of a field apparently bent on regularizing the teaching of writing. My Interdisciplinary move has allowed me to create newer and higher degrees of order--allowed me to escape the sameness that might destroy my effectiveness as a teacher of writing. Imagine the class, the networked classroom of students, as a complex system and apply chaos models to it. The point where my lack of passion for teaching and the students' boredom had come to balance is the point of equilibrium or entropy. It is when a system is at equilibrium that nothing further can happen, only random fluctuations.

The move from equilibrium requires input of energy, or infromation but from chaos theory's butterfly effect we know this input does not have to be enormous, but can be subtle. And with minimal but sufficient force, nonlinear rearrangments occur and systems make quantum leaps--bifurcations which move systems forward into evolving complexity. These connections came suddenly, usually in the classroom. They began the second semester that I taught with computers, and I consider the addition of computers, one birfurcation point in my teaching that allowed these changes to occur.

Ralph Abrahams contentended that the Renasissance was a bifurcation point in the evolution of knowlege, spurred by another bifurcation, the printing press. Thus perhaps my obsession with the Renasissance becomes more understandable. For me, Bonnie, and the scholars of the Renaissance, these new connections were made possible by desire, broad knowledge in disparate areas, and new technology. For me, and perhaps for them, the situation was entropic, and by that I mean I was usually in a state of frustration and seeking to understand and explain something in a new way.

We have become convinced that by applying the combined lenses of thermodynamics and chaos theory to the classsroom and viewing it as a complex non linear system, we can gain inormation about teaching and learning that may help students and teachers take the leap from the disciplinary system to an interdisciplinary model. This model includes expanded student use of computers, students authoring their own curriculum, with teachers as coaches and or facilitators, creating knowledge instead of only learning what is already known, and all of us coming to understand that our educations will continue over lifetime because of an increasingly complex and technological society.

In conclusion, Fryxell says it wonderfully: "Knowledge is a continuum, like the sphere of the earth but with the uninterrupted vastness of a universe. Our formal academic categories are as arbitrary and artificial as the lines of latitude and longitude we scribe on a globe despite the continuity of the earth's surface."