Transcript
Intro script—spoken by Megan Adams: In this interview we spoke with Dr. Laura Micciche. Dr. Micciche is an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. Her latest book, Acknowledging Writing Partners, treats the genre of written acknowledgements as a lens for viewing writing as a practice of partnerships. We talked with her about how her hometown influenced her journey to rhet/comp, the importance of collaboration, and how to find and be a good mentor in the field.
Laura Micciche (LM) interviewed October 6, 2017, at the Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference in Dayton, Ohio
Interviewers: Megan Adams (MA) and Mariana Grohowski (MG) / Oct. 6, 2017
Interviewee: Laura Micciche (LM)
MA: So our first question is: tell us where you're from and then how has that place or has it not shaped who you are today.
LM: I'm from Canton, Ohio, which is northeastern Ohio and it's a steel town. It used to be a paper-mill town, and my grandparents worked in paper mills and the steel mill. My father worked in a steel mill for about forty years and then became a bus driver after that. It's your typical Rust Belt city I'd say. A lot of those industries now are dying off but that . . . I grew up about a half mile from the TimkenSteel company. So, out my bedroom window I would see the flames going up the chutes at night when they were making steel, and you could hear the machines operating in the factory and so forth. And oftentimes my dad was there because he would work evenings. So I just sort of think about what's he doing in there. [laughs] And so I definitely had a sense of labor. I guess I would say from that. And my dad was in the union, and when they were on strike at the steel company, he would come back and tell stories about what it was like standing on the strike line and after that going to play euchre in the bars and . . . just definitely had a sense of, you know, I guess, fair labor practices. And that just the idea of work was really prominent to me. And neither of my parents went to college. Both of them, as soon as they graduated from high school, immediately went to work, and I think they wanted my brother and I of course to go to college, but they also had no sense of what that really meant. And neither did I because most of them most of the people in my family didn't go to college. And so I actually thought—and this is funny to think about right now—but I actually thought when I was in high school that because I was from Ohio, I could only apply to colleges in Ohio like that [laughs] was the impression that I had of what you were permitted to do. And we didn't have, really, guidance counselors. So I applied to only Ohio schools as a result of that and ended up going to Ohio University, which was a fantastic experience for me. But . . . so I think at the time when I was growing up, I guess you could say we were probably a working-class-that-ultimately-became-a-middle-class family and lived in a pretty diverse neighborhood where, you know, black kids and white kids spend a lot of time together playing at each other's houses. And that was kind of normative to me. I forget what the rest of the question was . . .
MA: The question was kind of like do you think that time has shaped who you are today and how you teach or research or any aspect of what you do?
LM: I think so, yeah. I have never bought into the idea of you know working in higher education as being somehow elite. And to me working with students is where the energy is—that's why I'm there. So even though I have had an active research career, to me the most important thing I'm doing is really working with students and making that connection with students at the one-on-one level. And I suppose probably my background has something to do with that because I never . . . I didn't have this entitled sense that obviously I'm going to college, and, you know, I never . . . that was sort of a question for awhile, I think. So connecting with students is, has been really important to me in my career, and working collaboratively with people has been really important to me, as well, as opposed to more of a lone-wolf kind of model. So . . . I'd say there's, there's maybe some connection there that I’m not fully [laughs], that I haven’t fully worked out.
MA: Yeah. So we're interested, too, in finding out, like how do you find rhet/comp?
LM: Yeah.
MA: Because it's always interesting to hear how people came to the field, too.
LM: Well, when I started my MA program, I started as a poet at Ohio University. I did my BA and my MA there. So I was in my first year of coursework, and I took a class that I now teach all the time, “Teaching College Writing,” and I took it with with Mara Holt at Ohio U. And it was really one of the most engaging classes I'd ever taken. And I loved the emphasis on working with students. I didn't think about writing as itself an object of study. And that's what I learned in that class. And I just found it absolutely fascinating. So Mara, I would credit Mara with really helping me see what's possible in this field and the kinds of really varied work that people were doing. I also liked that she brought to that class a kind of social-justice focus. Her work is on collaboration and starting with historicizing in the 60s and 70s out of political movements and thinking about how that connects to classroom practices. And I thought that was also just . . . for me, I hadn't encountered that way of thinking about writing up until that point, so . . . it brought these worlds together in a way that I thought was really interesting. And I knew I didn't want to be an academic poet. Ultimately, I knew that wasn't where I was going. And I just didn't want to talk about poetry all the time [laughs] and stuff so. So I just fell in love with it, and she helped me identify programs where I could study it—which I had no idea of anything. And she actually led me to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is where I ended up. So she was instrumental in all of that. We're still friends today—in fact, I'm bringing her to my campus at the end of October to do a couple of talks.
MA: Great, yeah. Could you talk more about—I know you've gotten . . . so you don't have to if you don't want to—but can you elaborate more about . . . are there any, like, I guess specific instances or times when you just felt like . . . like I have this moment where she . . . her and I . . . I guess a better way to say it is: any moment or story that really reflects your relationship with her or anything else you want to say about that relationship?
LM: I just remember sitting with her in her office when I had written personal statements to apply for PhD programs, and I had no idea what I was doing. I mean I had very surface-level knowledge of the field at that point, so I could reference articles we read in her class, but I hadn't really digested them in a way that could, you know, go into a coherent narrative. And we sat, I think for about two hours, and she just talked to me and you know we just sort of went through and talked about everything I was trying to say in this document—that is also a painful document for anybody to write, I think—and it gave me more context on the ideas that I was trying to wrangle with. And . . . just her patience and her—at some level she believed that I could do this, even though I had no idea really what I was getting myself into. And that was empowering to me, you know.
MA: Do you now take pieces of the relationship that you had with her as, like, do you—because your work is so focused on, you know, like mentoring graduate students and graduate-student writing (or pieces of it)—so does that . . . do you think that—like, obviously she impacted you. But we've heard people say, “I hear her voice. I see her.” And so I just wondered if that's true of your relationship, as well? Maybe it's not, but . . .
LM: Oh absolutely. I mean she showed us how to be not just a teacher but how to be a mentor, how to be a colleague, you know. But I also, when I went on to do my PhD, I worked really closely with Lynn Worsham. She was my dissertation director. She I would credit with really teaching me how to write for the audience of rhet/comp scholars. It wasn't always pleasant, I would say. That, that learning process—it was difficult. And so she also taught me how to be difficult and how to care about something enough where you feel like it's important to be tough with people, to be real with people, not to gloss over the things they're getting wrong or the things that they just haven't quite, you know, sort of mastered or whatever—that it's important also . . . The praise and support is important but the criticism is important, too. And I really—so Lynn's voice is very much in my head, and sometimes I don't want it there. [laughs] And I still have all the papers that she responded to, and sometimes I show them to my students and show them you know the subsequent versions of things that I wrote after I got her feedback, what I did with it . . . just as a way to talk about what can we do with feedback. How do we engage in revision, especially difficult revision, when we know really what this person is saying to me is, “This doesn't make sense. This argument does not make sense. You need to go back and rework it.” And that's a scary thing to hear when you're operating at a pretty high level and you think you know what you're doing.
But there is something about when somebody gives you tough criticism, you know they're taking you seriously at least. At least in this case—I knew she was taking me seriously because she also cared in other ways. So criticism without care is a different category, I'd say, but . . . And there's something about, there's something scary about being taken seriously when you yourself are not ready to even say you are there, you know.
MA: Could you talk more about, you know, being where you are in the field now—and, again, given your research—could you talk more about how, you know, for those of us who are new faculty and kind of maybe still in that place, or grad students who maybe don't take themselves seriously yet, or they don't have somebody like you perhaps, or they're not in grad school or maybe they're in school and they're not getting that type of criticism or help . . . Do you have any advice for them about, maybe, I don't know, how to empower themselves but also how to how to improve their writing, I guess? Any writing tips there in terms of revision or being able to critically look at your work, I guess?
LM: I'd say the most important thing is having a group of trusted readers that you can go to, and they don't have to be your mentors or your former advisors. And maybe they shouldn't be really. Maybe they should be your new alliances of people who are operating at the same level as you, you know, other assistant professors, for instance, or peers at your institution or whatever. But I really think it's important to just show your work a lot. Show it in process. Get some feedback along the way and get used to that. Get used to just . . . already accustomed to the idea that you're going to have to revise no matter what. So I just think having that kind of support from a group of your own making is really important, and it will last you throughout your whole career. You keep leaning on these people, and they keep leaning on you.
MG: When did you take yourself seriously? You said that . . . you said something that resonated with me where if you didn't . . . if you don't take yourself seriously but somebody else did, like Lynn did—where was that turning point? Can you give us an example or did something stick out to you?
LM: I don't know, to be honest with you, because I would say there's still times when I have doubts about what I'm doing. There's still times when I think I don't really know what I'm talking about. [laughs] In the midst of a writing project, you know—especially in the midst of a writing project. So I don't . . . I mean, I take the work seriously and approach it seriously, but there are times when I question, “Can I do this?” I suppose. I think one of the one of the early pieces I published in College English on disappointment and WPA work was a confidence booster for me in a lot of ways because—not just because it was in College English, which was very important to me, but because I got so many responses to that piece personally that people wrote to me. So I knew that I had zeroed in on something that resonated. So I think having that kind of audience response is something that, you know, can be very powerful.
MA: I—I also love what you say, too, about, like, “I show my students my work in progress. I show them that.” So how do you, I guess—do you think it's important to do that and then— obviously, you do it—but why do you think it's important? Or could you to elaborate more on this idea of, like, learning from our failure and being able to say like, “Look I'm here, but I still . . . we all have to work at it, and nothing's ever . . .” It’s always a work in progress, right? But sometimes I think that's particularly hard for graduate students or when you're new in the field, right? To get that type of . . . but I think in showing them, you’re humanizing yourself, too, right? So, could you talk more about why you do that and maybe it's important for us to do that more?
LM: Well, I think, when I was a graduate student—to just start there—I had this fantasy that you had a good idea and you wrote about it and then you were done. [laughs] You know? I didn't really . . . I knew as a poet that I revise, but I didn't really think about critical writing as something I really had to work on or keep returning to for some reason. And I think it's just because the culture around that—at least at the time when I was a student—was such that the process movement wasn't fully integrated, really, into the curriculum in English classes that I was taking except for in creative writing. So it was a one-shot deal when I was writing about the Hobbit in my Tolkien class or in my Dostoevsky class when I was writing, you know, about Brothers Karamazov. It was a one-shot deal; it wasn't me getting feedback and learning how to process that and figuring out what to do. And so part of it is just the culture of schooling and the different level—the different kinds of values and priorities we attach to different forms of writing. So . . . so I have always used writing and process in my classes and asked students to produce their work in stages so that we can talk about it in workshops, much like creative writing workshops. And I think it de-mythologizes the whole process. It gives them a sense that this is real labor that you're doing and it takes time—it takes other people's perspectives to help you figure out how to sharpen and make it come to life. And it's creative work—I think that's really important to impress upon people. That coming up with an idea and following it through—it’s not just about finding the right quotes and all that stuff, right? It's, it's a creative, imaginative work—it really is—to do critique and to do program-building and to do any kind of project that's central to critical writing. So I—I like to also impress that upon them. “You're building something here.” You know? “It takes time." I think when you do that in class, too, everybody starts to see, “Oh, it's not just me that she gave this feedback to," you know? We're all kind of in the mess of this, and we have to figure out, you know, how to get to the other side somehow. So.
MA: That's great advice.
MG: Do you give your handwritten feedback or do you do electronic feedback?
LM: I do both. Yeah.
MG: I was just curious. I'm curious about all this if there's anyone or anything that has been particularly inspirational to you.
LM: In terms of writing?
MG: That's a great question. [laughs]
MA: I think in terms of, like, being here. So like, I was mentioning earlier I think it's really nice—at least for me, and it seems like this is a theme—we haven't interviewed so many people yet. But it's intimidating, I think. Writing, of course, is very personal and intimidating. And coming to the field is intimidating, I think, because it is so large in many ways and diverse and wonderful, right, but it can be hard to kind of find your place maybe, find your people or your tribe or however you want to say it. But yeah, so in those—I guess you could take them both ways? Like in terms of, like, coming into the field but also in terms of, like, we are field of writers, and that's this extremely personal, I think, process, right? Which you've been talking about, too. So has there been any, like, piece of work or a place or any person or people that have inspired you to just stick with it and to be here?
LM: Yeah. Colleagues. The collaborative element of it. Seeing the same friends over and over again. My friends from graduate school who I'm still close with and share ideas with and write with occasionally as well. So that community to me is the most inspiring part of it. You realize—kind of like what I was saying with it in the classroom—everybody is working in important ways and contributing to this conversation we're all having, and everybody struggles a little bit. You know? Everybody feels at times some despair about what they're doing, I would say. And so that recognition that we're doing this together is, to me, a hopeful and kind of idealistic one in some ways, you know, you hope that we can . . . we can sustain this. So I think that's really the most powerful thing.
MA: So it's interesting to me that as a field we're speaking about these issues about how we can value collaboration in, like, these specific ways, like with tenure and promotion and publication. And so I don't know if you have any advice or if you—if there's anything that you know of in the field that can point us in the right direction or just any way that we can communicate with folks across the disciplines about how and why we should value that work visibly.
LM: In tenure and promotion cases specifically?
MA: Mmhmm.
LM: Yeah. Well I think some of that is changing, I would say. Slowly, incrementally it's changing. One thing that some people do, I know, is they make sure that when they have reviewers of their case those reviewers speak specifically about collaboration and the value in the field so that they're contextualizing for this departmental university audience that may not be onboard fully. So that's one way to do that. But I think it is a continual—I mean, the answer is not a good answer in some ways because it's like, “Keep working.” Keep convincing people that this is not unusual in this field, and actually it's partly the culture of the field is to value collaborative work, and so that I'm submitting these collaboratively written pieces is not off the grid in some way. This is right within the culture of my field, and I know there are probably some professional statements about this, right? I believe? So maybe bringing those to one's chair, but I think it's a combination of getting people to advocate for you at that important moment when they're writing for your case and you advocating for yourself in your field and drawing from the resources that exist out there but also just trying to make a case. As a journal editor myself, I’ve, I've written a few letters for junior faculty who are going up for reappointment, and they asked if I would write a letter that talks about the importance of collaboration because they have collaboratively written piece that's published in Composition Studies. And in those cases I've done that, and they've just put it in their file. So I suppose that's an option, too, is to have the people who are publishing the work speak back and say why this is legitimate. You know?
MA: That's a great idea. Thank you. And then also—this is also . . . I always like this question, too—do you have any suggestions for young women entering the field about how they can be successful?
LM: I feel like I keep saying the same answer: collaborate. [laughs] Don’t be . . . don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to do everything by yourself in order to succeed in the academy. And if you don't have close colleagues in rhet/comp, which many people don't in their departments, find people across the university, you know, who can be part of your cohort who can be your support system there. I think sometimes the temptation when you're faced with all the stress and difficulty of what we do—of just doing all the administrative work and dealing with upper administrators who don't understand what we do in composition and rhetoric—sometimes the temptation is to hunker down and to just not reach out because it gets exhausting. But I think that in the end is really a mistake and that people need to build alliances across the field, across their universities. Find people who support them. So I think that that is . . . that’s crucial to success in the academy in my view.
MG: And is that partly how you are able to balance administration, editorialship, research, teaching?
LM: Yeah yeah and there—and I have to say to myself sometimes, “Okay, this week I'm not going to do this one thing that well. [laughs] I'm going to do it okay. I'll get by. But it's not going to be . . . I’m not going to be at the top of my game, and I'm perfectly fine with that.” You know sometimes you just have to put your energy or focus in certain directions. And I think that's okay. It's that . . . that supermom, superwoman idea. So yeah. It’s so debilitating that you have to be good at everything all the time. You know? Who is that person? I don't know.
MA: Kind of going off of that question to you.:How do you maintain or do you have any advice for maintaining a work-life balance. I know we hear self-care all the time, but I think that that's much harder in practice than it is . . . And so yeah we're just curious if you do that, if you have any strategies. You just mentioned one but . . .
LM: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I have great advice about that, to be perfectly honest with you, because I feel like it's so organic—the way people manage those things—and no matter what you say to people, they are who they are. They gravitate to do what they do. And so it's really hard to change that. But I guess for me I've always tried to remember the things that I enjoy that aren't related to school. And I always try to make time for them during my week—whether that's listening to music, or going for a run, or watching a good TV show, or hanging out my kids, or whatever. Just . . . trying not to get too single-minded about the work. Because it could take over my whole life. [laughs] Right. And so there's always that risk that it will take over everything because there's no hard lines between work and not work when you're an academic. So you yourself have to build that structure, and yeah, I don't have any pithy advice about that. I wish I did. [laughs]
MA: It's okay, honestly. Just an acknowledgment of it, I think, sometimes to say you have to kind of figure that out, right? Would you say that doing those things helps enrich your work when you come back to it? ‘Cause I know that certain people will say, like, “I need to do this or I don’t do this thing well.” Right. Are you that way?
LM: Oh absolutely. I think physical movement getting outside to me is so crucial. Otherwise I just can't get my head straight to write, to think, to teach. So to me that balance is really crucial.
MG: I'm desperate to know about your book.
So. It's a study of acknowledgements—of written acknowledgements in books in composition studies and in some satellite fields, like theory books and stuff like that that get referenced a lot in composition studies. It's a look at partners that get identified—writing partners that get identified in acknowledgements. So it focuses specifically on feeling, time, and animals.
MG: So why did you have us in that group with the animals, because we didn’t acknowledge . . . we aren't writing to acknowledge our animals?
LM: Because the animals chapter looks at a few acknowledgements but also is . . . uses this qualitative study to enhance how people think about animals in relation to writing. Yeah.
MA: But building off that question too, what else are you—are there anything, like places in the field or conversations in the field that you're really excited about or are interested in or thinking about now?
LM: I think the work that young people are doing in cultural rhetorics . . . I guess maybe I shouldn't say “young” because who knows? I mean, people of all ages are working on that, but the new work, let’s say, on cultural rhetorics is really exciting and is really transforming how we think about what a writer is, what rhetoric is, what the history of the field is, what process is, what process leaves out. I think all of that is much needed and long overdue.