Prompt 6

Due Friday
Comments due Sunday

This week we began to think about writing in general and writing at the University. For this post, I want you to consider the idea of authorship and the act of writing and in this way you should be looking forward to your reflection paper (to accompany your media project) and backwards at the writing experience you've accumulated both in and outside of class.

• First, consider formal writing, or what many of your instructors will call "academic prose" or "college writing" - what do these definitions entail? Where do you practice this sort of writing? Why?

• Second, think about informal modes of writing. For instance, as Megan pointed out on Monday, painting your nails might be considered a way of "speaking" through the body - an act of body modification that communicates or expresses something. We also saw how extreme body modification can function as a way to assert authorship or control. What other of our activities might be considered acts of inscription? How do they "write" and what do they say?
  

• Finally, I want you to consider the limits of authorship and writing that we encountered in both the composition pieces and in Victoria Pitts. Where do you encounter these limits (or do you encounter limits)? Are authorship and control not equal terms, as Pitts would argue? What are these limits? How do they function? Is there a way to get around them?