Search

In 2015, Roeder and Gatto edited and published Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom, which attempts to present a new understanding of expressivism as a viable means of teaching composition in a twenty-first century world. By emphasizing the self as central to the social construction of reality, Critical Expressivism critiques social-epistemic pedagogy and, more specifically, James Berlin. But the self and the social are so intertwined that they are actually one and the same; we are always-already social beings. The distinction between critical expressivist and social-epistemic rhetorics, then, is more semantic than substantial. To build a connection between these two pedagogies, I explore William Burroughs’s and Brion Gysin’s cut-up method and an associated theory of language and ideology: the “word-virus.” The word-virus demonstrates that composition is neither entirely personal nor entirely social. In essence, the social/individual divide is revealed to be a false dichotomy—one that has potential implications for anyone who teaches composition, particularly those who are still learning to become writing teachers.

This thesis explores the recent movement in landscape architecture towards phenomenological design, and investigates what possibilities could be generated through a process which places primacy on embodied experience. The research project investigates both the body of phenomenological theory and the realm of landscape design. The design processes, as well as the design outcomes, were found to be integral elements of what constituted the design intervention as an continuous, modulating being. The resulting design process is performative in that the majority of work takes place on site, in direct engagement with the landscape. As part of its experiential focus, the design process places importance on what the landscape is doing: materially, operationally, and temporally. In addition, in order to design landscapes that provide for more grounded experiences, techniques of strangemaking are used. In particular, cut-up methods are adopted in order to create design briefs that de-familiarise the familiar in the landscape. In doing so, habitual design conventions are disrupted. In order to maintain a focus on embodied experience, perspectival, rather than bird’s-eye viewpoints, are employed in representing the design work. In this process, representation acts as a generative, as well as communicative, tool. The thesis suggests that phenomenological methods offer alternatives in urban design to conventional analysis, plan-view driven approaches. It also proposes that there is potential scope for application in and examination of experience in rural settings. The research identifies particular resonance in this phenomenological approach in post-disaster settings. Finally, the research reflects on the role of the design-researcher in a phenomenologically-inflected process.