My, oh my! Christopher Burnham opened my eyes in just the first page!

This article was fascinating to me in so many ways…

Christopher Burnham opens the article's introduction talking about James Berlin and something he says hits me really hard; "…any single approach supports an underlying set of values while questioning others" (p 19). I truly agree with this simple yet profound (in my eyes) statement from Berlin because I truly believe that anything we deal with, especially while learning to earn a degree, we should know that there are several approaches to everything we do, every way we think, and if we close our minds to only one way of thinking, means we are truly missing some other values that are associated with the subject. Bringing this back to composition, pedagogy, and rhetoric, this in my eyes is why there are so many conflicting views and so many different theories out there. There is not a single view to look at any of these fields, while I may strongly agree with one theory or another and I support those underlying values, but it leaves the values of other theories being questioned. How does this affect my teaching, the quality of my teaching, the style of my teaching?

I also enjoyed how he explained "voice." Burnham talks about it as a presence and calls it ethos, goes on to talking about this being a key factor that expressivists look for when they are evaluating papers. I find this funny because this is how I have always looked at papers and never knew there was a word or for that matter a group of theorist out there who identified this. I also enjoyed the definition he gave for expressivism by using Berlin's triangle method. Basically using this method the writer is in the center and is able to articulate theory and develop a pedagogical system that assigns the highest value to the writer and their imagination, psychological, social, and spiritual development and how these development influences individual consciousness and social behavior, leading to the presence or voice (Burnham 19).

I do agree with bell hooks and that there is a "great value and responsibility on the teacher as well as to the writer" (Burnham 19) and also find it interesting that she would be such an ally to expressivists, even Burnham says that allies are from "sometimes conflicting ideological backgrounds" (p 19) and boy, oh boy is she ever from a different ideological background! hooks is such an awesome feminist who stands for so many different things, but what I find so fascinating about her is the fact that she is a teacher and takes what she believes into her own classroom and uses them, which to me says she practices what she preaches and that is incredible.

All in all, I feel in love with this article just after the first page of reading, of course that is only the introduction, but it says so much about this article and where this article is going to go and say.