18 Writing to Revise (Section Overview)
Yin Yuan
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to
- Reflect on your own writing processes
- Revise your writing projects in order to achieve different purposes and appeal to different audiences, who occupy a diverse range of social locations
Revisit: What is Embodied Rhetorics? (Insert link to Embodied Rhetorics chapter)
“Revision” breaks down into “re” and “vision,” which means to re-see, to see anew. Thus, revision extends far beyond the scope of editing and involves taking stock of your work in order to reimagine it for a range of rhetorical purposes.
For instance, “The Persian Under the Rug” by Saint Mary’s alum Kimiya Shokri argues that Middle Eastern women have been underrepresented and stereotyped in mainstream American media due to structural racism. Imagine that Shokri now has to revise this essay for live presentation at a conference. How might Shokri draw on multimedia elements to make her claims more powerful and persuasive for the people who are attending her presentation? How would her rhetorical decisions change if, instead of an academic conference, she were presenting this to Hollywood producers (most of whom we might assume to be white)? How would the diverse lived experiences of these different audiences shape the way Shokri reimagines her argument?
In the Write to Learn below, consider how attention to the bodies of your audiences might shape your revision process.
Write to Learn: Embodied Revision
Invitations to Read, Reflect, and Write
In this introduction to the section “Writing to Revise,” we invite you to read some sample revision essays from other Saint Mary’s College students. We have also included some invitations to write shared by writing professors at Saint Mary’s College.
Student Writing
We would like to include student writing in this section. If you are interested in publishing your work, please fill out this form and submit a piece of your writing from your writing class. We will work with you to get it published.
Here are some articles about revision written by students and published at other universities. We think you’ll find these mentor texts useful:
Invitations to Write: An Embodied Revision
The chapters in this section should prepare you for completing one of these summative writing assignments. These examples are assignments that we recommend.
Assignment Example #1
“Write yourself. Your body must be heard,” wrote Hélène Cixous in “The Laugh of the Medusa” (published in French in 1975 and translated into English in 1976). In this controversial essay, Cixous rejects the traditional Western separation of the body and mind and argues for a distinct form of writing rooted in her female body. Over 50 years later, we are still exploring this idea about what it would mean for our unique bodies to have a unique language: what would our bodies possibly say? After reading about the theory of l’écriture feminine, you will select one of your previously written essays in this course and, in 750 words, rewrite the text modelled after this more fluid, non-linear style of writing. You will then compose a 500-word reflection on the process.
Works Cited
Shokri, Kimiya. “The Persian Under the Rug.” Queen City Writers, vol. 5, no. 1, Spring 2017, https://qc-writers.com/2017/03/24/1082/
