10 The Council Chronicle March 2013

by Lorna Collier

V ictor Villanueva is energetic and enthusiastic when talking about his new role as editor of the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric (SWR) monograph series.

“It is a very exciting time for our field,” he says. “It’s the time to be doing this.”

Perhaps it is also a way for him to remind himself and others that, in addition to his long list of achieve-ments and credentials, in addition to being intimately woven into the fabric of academic life, he is also “other,” a Brooklyn born, Puerto Rican high school dropout who earned a PhD by way of the military and community col-lege and has had a successful 30-year career as a teacher of rhetoric and writing.

In either case, there is little doubt that Villanueva, who has begun his five-year tenure as editor, will spice up the venerable SWR.

The SWR was created in 1983 by NCTE’s constitu-ent group the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), and is considered, according to Villanueva, the “premier monograph series for our fields.”

“I look at rhetoric as well as composition studies. Since my taking over we’ve been flooded with manu-scripts” on related topics, says Villanueva. “The last six months have been incredible.”

Rhetoric and RacismSo what does he envision for the SWR under his leader-ship? Personally, he is interested in proposals that ad-dress the rhetorics of racism “writ large.”

Villanueva says that people think of racism and race with regard to minorities, what he calls special-interest groups.

But, he says, “the rhetorics of racism are not the rhetorics of interest groups; they are the rhetorics of interest, of hegemony.”

“It’s those in power who separate out the special inter-est groups. Part of what I teach is, why is it important to the political economy to make women, blacks, Indians, and others, inferior? In terms of rhetoric, what is happen-ing?

“We think racism is normal, natural, but it’s not, it’s new. It’s only 300 years old,” he says. “Now the old white

VictoR VillanueVa: Bringing His Unique Perspective to the SWR

guys’ arguments no longer appeal to the majority. Why is that? I’d like to see a hell of a lot more of this in the series.”

He has received a couple of proposals on the rheto-ric of African Americans but hasn’t seen any about the rhetoric of Latinos, or of Asians, for example.

“Asian Americans have been bigoted against for be-ing so successful,” he says. “Rather than being accepted, we see them as a ‘model minority.’ In other words, still ‘other.’”

Villanueva has been surprised at the number of pro-posals on the rhetoric of faith and religion that have landed on his desk.

“I’ve never written anything about faith and teaching of writing, but I have received four proposals on that topic,” he says. He also received two proposals within a month having to do with evangelicals. He found this intriguing, while acknowledging that “I know those are our students and we are not well equipped to deal with them.”

Throughout his career Villanueva has been active in both NCTE and CCCC, the national organization for writing and rhetoric. Villanueva has written nearly 50 articles and numerous books, including the award-winning Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. He is also a popular speaker and has delivered more than 100 talks and keynotes around the country. Today he is Regents Professor in Liberal Arts at Washington State University.

The Council Chronicle March 2013 11

Authors who publish in the SWR series draw on work in various fields that inform composition, including rhetoric, communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural studies, and literature. Monograph subjects range from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms, communities and curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts of writing and its teaching. Past titles include Agency in the Age of Peer Production; Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act; and Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age.

https://secure.ncte.org/store/books/series/swr

Digital DelugeBut by far the most pressing issue, according to Villan-ueva, not just for the SWR but within the field of rhetoric and writing generally, is that of teaching rhetoric in a digital world. The future of rhetoric, he says, rests on the degree to which “we recognize we are moving away from ‘stains on trees.’ We are all digital now. Writing is going way beyond the idea of linearity and of writing on paper.”

He points out that most students in his classes were born in 1991 and the Internet was “born” in 1995. This generation, more than any other, has grown up digital.

“When I think about SWR and I think about our field and I think about the job that we have ahead, it is a mat-ter of understanding what it is we do within the digital paradigm,” he says. “The digital paradigm is moving us into new places, and we’re going to have to think about text differently as we move forward. But as we move for-ward, we also have to think about the baggage we bring with us. And that baggage includes certain notions about sexuality, about gender, and about racism that we are not quite being conscious of because we have old language to go with that.”

These kids know technology in ways we can’t know, but that doesn’t mean they know everything. . . . How can what it is they know be influenced by what it is we know? That’s the future of our business; that’s the future of this monograph.

—Victor Villanueva, Regents Professor, Washington State University

Today’s students write more than any generation in history, but their texts are not the same texts taught in the classroom. Scholars need to both recognize the degree to which the digital has taken the field to new realms and also figure out how to both acknowledge this new discourse and also work real “logos” into it, says Villanueva.

“One of my daughters said to me the other day, ‘I see the sense in what you’re saying, but I don’t think what you’re saying makes sense,’” says Villanueva. “So how do we incorporate what we think of as viable arguments into the kinds of argumentation they already employ?”

“These kids know technology in ways we can’t know, but that doesn’t mean they know everything,” he adds. “We have 2,500 years of alphabetic literacy, of knowing how language operates, versus the last 10 years, which, admittedly, have been like going from the oxcart to international travel in a decade” in terms of the speed of change.

“How can what it is they know be influenced by what it is we know?” he asks. “There is a way in which we need to come together. It’s a mutual education process. That’s the

future of our business; that’s the future of this monograph series.

“I’d like to leave a mark as editor who brought us to this new age,” he adds.

Right now Villanueva is seriously considering several manuscripts, including one on “freedom writing,” which examines African American literacy traditions; one on new media with a coauthor looking at new media from a lesbian

perspective; one on how universities can engage with communities in writing part-nerships; and a theoretical manuscript on “responsible writing” that embraces uncer-tainty and remains responsive to the voices and concerns of others.

Some early efforts have been made to think about this new paradigm, but in Villan-

ueva’s mind they are not fully developed and “an argument that hasn’t been well formulated is too easy to dismiss.”

He compares these early efforts to tostones, plantains (platanos) that are still green and boiled in oil. They are good, he admits, but the really great platanos are platanos maduros, which are yellow, even black, sweet, soft, deli-cious, and fully ripe.

Villanueva says he’s looking forward to putting his stamp on the SWR, and given his passion and commit-ment, that seems inevitable.

Deb Aronson is a freelance writer and editor based in Urbana, Illinois.

Quick thoughts In this video clip from the 2012 CCCC Convention, Victor Villanueva shared his thoughts on what’s possible in the composition classroom.

http://tinyurl.com/bheng3n

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