BiblioVault - Books about Higher

"K for the Way"

DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies

Todd Craig

Utah State University Press, 2023

“K for the Way” explores writing, rhetoric, and literacy from the perspective of the Hip Hop DJ. Todd Craig, a DJ himself, establishes and investigates the function of DJ rhetoric and literacy, illuminating the DJ as a fruitful example for (re)envisioning approaches to writing, research, and analysis in contemporary educational settings. Because it is widely recognized that the DJ was the catalyst for the creation of Hip Hop culture, this book begins a new conversation in which Hip Hop DJs introduce ideas about poetics and language formation through the modes, practices, and techniques they engage in on a daily basis.

Using material from a larger qualitative research study that illustrates the Hip Hop DJ as a twenty-first-century new media reader, writer, and literary critic, Craig blends interviews from prominent and influential DJs in the Hip Hop community with narrative and interdisciplinary scholarship from writing studies, Hip Hop studies, African American studies, urban education, and ethnomusicology. The voices of DJs sit front and center, presenting a revolutionary conversation about writing and communication in the twenty-first century.

Weaving Craig’s life experiences with important discussions of racial literacies, “K for the Way” is a layered and utterly singular exploration of culture, identity, and literacy in America.

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Keeping An Open Door

Passages in a University Presidency

Keith Brodie and Leslie Banner

Duke University Press, 1996

During the 1980s, many of America’s most respected colleges and universities suffered financial crises, athletic scandals, a troubling upsurge of racial conflict, and the divisiveness of political correctness “wars.” Yet Duke University not only avoided these dangers but changed dramatically from a very good regional university to one of the nation’s top research institutions. Its undergraduate campus was hailed as a “hot college”; its Blue Devils basketball team was pronounced a model for student athletes; its graduate and professional schools gained new national prominence; and its scholars were quoted frequently in the popular press on both sides of the political correctness debates.
In Keeping an Open Door, Duke chancellor (1982-1985) and president (1985-1993) Keith Brodie and coauthor Leslie Banner recount what it was like to lead Duke during an era of change for research universities across the country: how Brodie reached some of his most controversial decisions, including the “Black Faculty Initiative”; his strategy for precluding abuse in Division I athletics at Duke; how his training as a psychiatrist shaped his leadership style and influenced how he dealt with trustees, deans, faculty, and students; and the avenues of power still open to today’s university presidents. The history and feeling of life on the Duke campus during the Brodie era are vividly evoked in photographs and key speeches introduced by the former president’s personal recollections.
Keeping an Open Door provides an insider’s view of issues critical to modern research universities and will interest anyone concerned with the history and future of higher education.

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Keywords in Creative Writing

Wendy Bishop and David Starkey

Utah State University Press, 2006

Wendy Bishop and David Starkey have created a remarkable resource volume for creative writing students and other writers just getting started. In two- to ten-page discussions, these authors introduce forty-one central concepts in the fields of creative writing and writing instruction, with discussions that are accessible yet grounded in scholarship and years of experience.

Keywords in Creative Writing provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the field of creative writing through its landmark terms, exploring concerns as abstract as postmodernism and identity politics alongside very practical interests of beginning writers, like contests, agents, and royalties. This approach makes the book ideal for the college classroom as well as the writer’s bookshelf, and unique in the field, combining the pragmatic accessibility of popular writer’s handbooks, with a wider, more scholarly vision of theory and research.

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THE KIRWAN YEARS

CHRISTOPHER L PERRY

The Ohio State University Press, 2006

Starting under President Edward Jennings and continuing under Gordon Gee, The Ohio State University began a long-term drive to match the school’s ranking in football with a commensurate reputation for academic excellence. Initiatives to admit better-prepared students, attract and retain world-class faculty, and build highly rated programs were promising, but the university needed a broad strategy to coordinate these and other initiatives into a focused approach.

Enter President William “Brit” Kirwan, who understood this need perfectly and whose major legacy became widely known as the Academic Plan. This document became and remains the centerpiece of Ohio State’s agenda, with budget and other priorities emanating from its six strategies and 14 initiatives.

Continuing the Ohio State tradition of chronicling the university’s history through the work of its past presidents, The Kirwan Years recounts the Academic Plan’s creation, acceptance, and initial implementation, along with many major university accomplishments from mid-1998 through mid-2002. It also details the university’s ongoing, uphill struggle to maximize state financial support and its success in private and other fundraising. It provides a compelling look at the complexity permeating today’s research universities. And yes, it describes the firing of football coach John Cooper and the hiring of Jim Tressel.

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The Knowledge Most Worth Having

Edited by Wayne C. Booth

University of Chicago Press, 1967

The Knowledge Most Worth Having represents the essence of education at the University of Chicago—faculty and students grappling with key intellectual questions that span the humanities, while still acknowledging the need to acquire a depth of knowledge in one’s chosen field. The papers collected here were delivered during an often-heated conference at the university in 1966, and include contributions from such scholars as Northrop Frye, Richard McKeon, and, of course, the dean of the college, Wayne Booth himself. Taken as a whole, they present a passionate defense of liberal education, one that remains highly relevant today.

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