Week 11: Peer Reviews, I: Representation
11.0 Peer Reviews, 1: Representation
Objective(s): to structure peer feedback in a way that leverages collective insights and respects individual writing practices; to integrate and apply feedback and personal reflection to one’s own project; to schedule project revisions in a manageable and intentional way.
Orientation
Often, peer reviews function in an evaluative capacity, judging and critiquing based on preferences or cultural experience unbeholden to the writer. While this may be effective professionally, for many undergraduates such criticism stultifies. Letting someone read your writing is a vulnerable, brave act. It opens the writer to judgment and scrutiny, oftentimes in nonproductive or unhelpful ways; and, in certain circumstances, harmful ways. Rather than dismiss or disregard this vulnerability, we seek to value and support it through peer reviews.
Peer reviews are contingent upon intimacy, trust, and community. Developing intimacy and trust among students requires careful design, thoughtful observation, and clear parameters. In other words, community doesn’t just happen it is cultivated. Here, peer reviews are contingent upon consent from the writer to specify if and how feedback is desired. In recognizing the particularity of a writer’s project, its scope and audience, and intentions, the responsibility of the peer reviewers are to respond according to the writers’ request and, in so doing, empower that writer’s perspective. Inversely, by defining what is and is not helpful, writers take control of their projects in a more nuanced way, clarifying its situationality, scope, and intent. Rather than evaluate and judge the work, in other words, respondents observe and discuss the impacts that a writer’s choices and tactics have had on them as readers.
There are two peer review sections in the CDF curriculum (week 11 and week 13) that correspond to two different themes, representation and positionality. As intimacy and trust accrues, students are given more latitude to innovate the structure of peer reviews, or to experiment with different approaches. For PR1, feedback centralizes on the following questions: how does the writer structure their story? Who is represented? -How? What moments compelled? -pushed me away? What choices or tactics might underlie these impacts?
The three activities, then, seek to distribute power writers to own and articulate their writing in a public way by repositioning peer reviews in relationship to writers’ needs. (The “Guide to Feedback” moves away from the 4-P structure (i.e., premise, purpose, preparation, and protocol); it is something I share with students during the semester; it employs some profanity, so feel free to edit as necessary.)
Activities
- 11.1 Guide to Feedback
- 11.2 Peer Reviews, 1: Representation Whom does the story represent and how?
- 11.3 Writing Plan, 1: Scaling Attention
11.1 Guide to Feedback
Week 11, Activity 1
Students review “Guide to Feedback: or, how to be a good peer reviewer” or other similar document written by the teacher, or co-constructed by the class.
Sample
“Guide to Feedback: or, how to be a good peer reviewer”
This document describes how to give feedback to group members about their writing. As a general rule, writing is a particular process and each writer has a particular sensibility and approach, so please respect their processes and respond only to what has been requested–and don’t offer unsolicited feedback; it’s annoying, rude, and most importantly it may likely disrupt your colleagues’ writing process. In other words, don’t be an asshole. If you see something, that for you feels obviously helpful, you may ask the writer if they’re open to receiving feedback about this “obvious thing,” but don’t assume your advice is helpful, welcomed, or necessary. With this in mind, please continue reading
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- First, it is helpful to acknowledge feedback functions differently across cultures and so your assumptions about its value and purpose may differ from your group members’. For the purpose of our class, we will approach feedback as a collaborative, constructive, and reciprocal part of the writing process. In general, sharing writing requires vulnerability, honesty, and self-reflection — these are not to be assumed as universally-shared norms, where all members have experience or practice. Rather, these signify common values particular to this course that, as its members, we have agreed to practice from differing points of familiarity and experience.
- Secondly, feedback operates within certain power dynamics that are rarely interrogated and so function as unexamined premises to and within writing communities. (An example of an assumption may be something like: “editors know better than writers because they possess more distance from the subject-matter.”) To affirm the individuality and agency of you, the writers, we will only offer feedback with your consent and in response to your needs. (See opening blurb about not being an asshole.) In other words, writers–you determine the type of feedback you receive from your colleagues. The more specific you are with your request, the more precise your colleagues can respond. And reviewers: respond only to what has been asked.
- Lastly, writing is a situated act: it happens at a particular time among a particular space. As writers, it is helpful to remember that we write from a particular point in time, from within the experiential confines of an accidental fleshbag often referred to as a human body. We didn’t choose when we were born or what fleshbag we were born into, but these nonetheless have influenced our experiences of the world differently. Our historicity and embodiment — to employ more fancy terms — are inseparable from our words, imaginaries, and knowledges; we know in part and so we can only write in part. I mention this for two reasons. One, the more we attune to our individual constraints and limits, the more precise, potent, and compelling our written position becomes. Two, writing is a curious activity and begins at the limits of the unknown. This latter point entails two conditions: a) don’t be surprised by what others find in your words, that is, how your experiences are received by others; and most important: b) don’t be dismayed by what they don’t see — your writing will become clearer if you keep at it. Writing is a practice, like any athletic endeavor; keep training and you’ll see results sooner or later.
Premise
Revision requires a change in perspective. It is difficult to see one’s own work differently. Further, writing is a collaborative endeavor, and rather than pretending that it occurs in a vacuum, it is better to teach students to recognize and leverage their situationality (i.e., lean on relationships) throughout the writing process.
Purpose
On one hand, the purpose of peer reviews is to provide a critical, serious, and sustained engagement with the storytelling process by directing attention to individuals’ processes and approaches (e.g., narrative framing of the story; rhetorical uses of images – appropriative, disruptive). On the other, peer reviews build trust, intimacy, and community; it revalues labor personally and communally rather than evaluatively.
Preparation
Group members review each writers’ work twice (or each project manager’s project) and then write a letter addressed to the writer and signed by the reviewer that responds to the following questions (see below) and adheres to the following protocol. Letters are emailed to writers respectively, before the start of class. (Note: when meeting IRL, I asked reviewers to bring two printed copies of each letter, one for themselves and one for the writer.)
Protocol
Writing groups devote 15-20 minutes to discuss each writer’s essay. In a 50-minute class, this amounts to 2 students per class; in a longer class, more students may be reviewed. Writers listen while their work is discussed, letting their words do the speaking, and refraining from explaining, intervening, or contextualizing until after each reviewer has had a chance to speak. Once each has spoken, a more informal discussion may unfold – time permitting.
Sample
While all of us are writers, it is important to remember that we each approach writing from different sets of personal experiences, cultural backgrounds, language/grammatical systems, and training practices/opportunities. As we approach our first workshop together, there are a few ideas I’d like us to think about together. First, let’s recognize that writing plays a different role in your colleagues’ experience and cultural background. Second, let us agree to approach moments of difference and similarity with curiosity by focusing on the choices, tactics, and moves evident in the essay. Thirdly, be respectful and engaged, take each other’s work seriously – don’t be “mean” or “nice” (we’re not judges on a reality tv show).
Instructions
Read your colleague’s project once without stopping. Read the list of questions (below). Read a second time. Now, organize your responses in the form of a letter addressed to your colleague (and signed by you).
Questions
As a fellow writer, what strikes you about this essay? -what resonates with you?
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- What choices does this essay make at the levels of framing, selecting, wording, phrasing, timing?
- What are the prominent features of the essay? -describe how these features work together.
- How might you describe the way the essay moves? How does the writer structure their story?
- What are your experiences as its reader? -what do you notice first? -what does this essay make you think about? What thoughts, feelings, affects, or memories do you encounter in your body while reading this essay?
- Does this essay introduce thought-structures, inquiries, histories, situations, contexts beyond your embodied experience? -what effect do these have on you? -how does processes these?
- What strategies or techniques do you observe in this essay that influence your writing experience?
- Which moments make you want to lean-in? -what stylistic choices might have precipitated this impact?
- Are there moments that you, as a reader, expected or wanted to lean-in more, but didn’t or, perhaps, felt ‘taken out’ of the narrative? -what components “took you out” of the essay’s timing?
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Read your colleagues’ essay a third, paying attention to representation as we have discussed throughout the semester, thinking about the following questions:
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- Who does the story represent? -How?
- What impact do these representations have on you?
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Revisit one exercise on representation from prior weeks and bring that to bear on this essay/project.
Workshop Schedule
DATE:
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- Writer 1:
- Writer 2:
DATE:
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- Writer 3:
- Writer 4:
Notes:
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- Email letters to writers (and teacher) before the start of class on their due date.
Premise
Revision asks students to see their projects differently; not only does it require a change in perspective, but it may also change what a project may look like moving forward. Harnessing peer reviews and personal reflection, and rather than assuming students know how to metabolize feedback and to mitigate such a transition, support must be offered to the process of peer feedback.
Purpose
For students to have a concrete, tangible action plan that engages their attention and allocates their energies over time.
Preparation
Review notes and review written letters. Students select a personal object that reminds them of or intersects with the course theme (as they understand it).
Protocol
Students identify next 3-5 steps to achieve desired outcomes (based upon feedback and self-reflection). Next, students stage these outcomes across the following deadlines – 24-hours (what will I complete first? What requires immediate attention?), 72-hours (what can I complete in 3 days), and 1-week (what can I only complete after intermediary steps? What requires the most amount of distance to address? (i.e., more time thinking, talking, and analyzing). Once completed, writers post their writing plan to their groups’ Drive, message board, or Slack channel.