Name: Will Kurlinkus
Department: Composition Program, English
Education: B.A. in English and Creative Writing, University of Illinois
Link: University Bio
What do you teach?
Currently I’m a grad student in the English department specializing in rhetoric and composition, so I teach introductory composition (English 15) and English 202 B (Advanced Writing in the Humanities). In these classes my topical focus is usually the ethics of writing; simulacra and rhetorical reproduction; visual rhetoric; and nostalgia.
How did you come to Penn State?
Penn State currently has the No. 1 program in Rhetoric and Composition so that was the biggest draw. I applied here from my undergraduate institution, the University of Illinois, and when I came to the visitor’s weekend for prospective English graduate students I was quite impressed by the inter-collegiality of the students and professors in different areas of English studies.
In a lot of other graduate programs I visited there was a palatable sense of competition; students were being bred to hate one another because they were competing for limited funding, teaching positions, etc. Especially across sub-disciplines: i.e., the creative writers fought the medievalists who fought the modernists. There was a lot of daggers and ninja stars involved–very dangerous, very bloody stuff.
Not so with Penn State. I really needed a department that was friendly across sub-disciplines because my subject matter spans those disciplines — textual studies, visual rhetoric, education, composition, technological studies. I also really liked that I could see the mountains — there’s a definite lack of mountains in Illinois.
How do your students teach you?
Because of the freedom of topic choice in my classroom I’m always encountering new subject material and new perspectives on old topics. For instance, this semester we watched a video about culture jamming (vandalizing advertisements and spray-painting billboards to subvert their messages) as an example of grassroots rhetoric and affecting change at local levels.
Usually my students are like “Yes, awesome!” This semester my class steered the discussion more towards the ethical dilemmas surrounding jamming — is this vandalism or free speech? Is advertising space public space? Aren’t these jammers destroying the hard work of individual advertisers? Each class takes conversations in new directions — good teachers, I think, adapt to the class and those directions. When I first started teaching I didn’t adapt. My students have taught me how.
More on Culture Jamming: http://www.woostercollective.com/
Explain your area of study.
Within rhetoric and composition (the study of writing, persuasion, communication, and basically anything having to do with discourse, symbols, and human interaction), I study communities that purposely make known their technologies of textual production and that charge and commodify their messages by referencing those technologies (graffiti, DIY rhetoric, comics, etc.).
For instance, the graffiti discourse community values productions that are created with boosted (stolen) spray cans. When the audience knows that the writer’s piece was created with a stolen can, they value the piece differently (and to a higher extent) than they would if the paint was bought The same can be said of writers who let their audience know they write with typewriters, with fountain pens, with voice recognition software. So, how can we take this knowledge of commodified technologies and utilize it to make our messages more effective?
I’m also really interested in exploring how medium of delivery affects reception of the message. How is reading an advertisement on the billboard section of a bus received differently than finding an advertisement that has been folded up into a secret message on the seat of that bus? I make it my business to study how written communication can be more effective, but also more complex and interesting I think, for everyone involved.
What is one piece of advice you would give to the current generation?
Remember in fifth grade when you got your first C-, and you were so freaked out, and you cried and tried to hide if from your parents but you couldn’t because Mrs. Hand called home after having not received the parental signature on the paper that she had requested?
Remember how in high school you looked back on fifth grade and saw how it didn’t really matter that much and wished you had spent more time riding bikes with your friends than worrying? It’s a cycle — try to ride bikes with your friends more.
You said you hope to one day bring Old Time Radio to your studies. How do you think you will incorporate that?
I have a strangely intense passion for radio programs from the ’40s and ’50s. I really think it’s an underexploited area for literary and cultural studies because many of the shows give a beautiful snapshot of American life at the time and American communication activities that were going on then. One way I like to use Old Time Radio in my classroom is for discussions of nostalgia and to explore constructions of history (my classroom involves a lot of cultural analysis as you can tell).
We listen to a reality show called ‘Nightwatch’ that is similar to ‘Cops’ and discuss how the domestic abuse, drunkenness, prostitutes, etc., featured on the show bust our ideas of the idyllic ’40s and ’50s. But we also discuss the experience of listening to literature vs. reading it and the different literacy and listening skills involved in each. Why is it harder to pay attention to OTR shows than it is to pay attention to a TV show or even a book? It’s also always fun to explore the metaphor and reasons why OTR actors sound like “they’re talking in black and white.”
More on teaching with OTR: http://composition.la.psu.edu/blog/teaching-with-old-time-radio
What was your proudest piece of writing?
Very sappy and not at all having to do with my field, but the piece of writing I’m proudest of was a short story I wrote sophomore year of undergrad called “Doing the Windows.” It was a piece about my relationship with my grandmother who had just had a stroke at the time, a week after we had washed her windows together.
My grandma never really cleaned her house (or her windows); she dusted and Pledged a lot of things but never really deep down cleaned. So it was almost as if she knew was preparing. Wasps flew in the windows, buckets of dirty water spilled — it was a crazy and fun experience followed immediately by a sad and sobering one. I’m proud of it because it won an award for short non-fiction, but also because I miss my grandma.
Maybe a better answer, my proudest pieces of writing are well-written student essays — the ones that go beyond debates over legalizing marijuana or lowering the drinking age and into discussions of the cultural significance of Armageddon narratives, the uselessness of the penny, why all dogs should be required to learn at least three tricks. The ones that vary sentence structure, develop extended metaphors, and develop complex personal anecdotes — when my students use what they learn in my class to make their writing better, those are my proudest pieces of writing.
Where do you hope to be in 10 years?
In 10 years I hope to have a job as a rhetoric professor. I really like open skies and wilderness so I hope to be teaching somewhere where those are available — I’m terrified of cities. I hope to have a wife, some children, and possibly a dog. Possibly that dog will be an Airedale terrier named Waffles, like the one I grew up with. I also hope to have written both an academic monograph and a book of poems.
