Geoffrey Sirc

In English Composition as a Happening (2002), Geoffrey Sirc argues that composition studies needs to look for models of composition outside of the traditional essay. He argues against the Modernist canon of reading the same things in composition courses, and argues instead that students should be reading a variety of texts, and, much like the creators of those texts, creating assemblages and collages (7). Sirc takes as his models Happenings artists, punks, situationists, Polluck, and show more Duchamp, to show how they created new texts from commonplaces, and values such techniques as "appropriating, sampling, copying, cataloging, scanning, indexing, chatting, and audio/video-streaming" (19). Part of his goal is to recover the excitement and erotics of the composition course, and to question the disdain for the readymade (and the readymade student!) (57, 60). The field has developed a strict sense of order (encapsulated in the traditional student essay) that needs to be disturbed, as Sirc sees it show less