The Selfe Who Pays Attention

In our Computers in the Composition Classroom text, Cynthia Selfe has four articles she either wrote or co-wrote. In those articles she talks about rhetoric, about politics, and about literacy and paying attention. In her presentation on Selfe, Cathy Bergin revealed more of Selfe's ideas on technology: urging teachers to "incorporate technology into the classroom," teach students to be "technology scholars," and "be careful" with technology as we teach composition - in other words, once more - pay attention!

Of all the theorists we have read so far who directly deal with the topic of technology in the classroom, Cynthia Selfe seems to have the best grasp on the balance that needs to be maintained. Like Yancey, she urges us not to become "irrelevant," but, in "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones," she and partner Richard J. Selfe, Jr caution that technology could also be a geopolitical landmine currently "[representing] the dominant tendencies in our culture" (Computers in the Composition Classroom, 65) - we need to pay attention on a larger scale both inside and outside of the classroom.

Her "areas of expertise" (as listed on Bergin's handout) also show other ways in which Selfe pays attention to diverse issues ranging from Feminist Theory to Video Games, from Literacy to Technical Writing.

Selfe pays attention in a world - and possibly a theoretical field - in which people too often accept the status quo. She is a role model to whom we would do well to pay attention.