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Mad Handles
This brief talk draws upon the phrase "mad handles" as a device for framing my first
year as a pre-tenure writing program administrator. To establish footing for this phrase, I begin
by attempting a rhetorical cross-over that orients mad handles as the idea operates first
in the context of basketball and then in the context of data visualization, specifically
graphs and charts. Following this set-up move, I have a pair of examples to share: two graphs
that function as mad handles and that in different ways complement pronoia, or tactical foresight,
a key idea for us as we planned and proposed this roundtable.
In basketball, which seems to me a fitting context for Indiana in March, mad handles
is pick-up style lingo for prolific, flamboyant ball-handling skills. Much more the purview
of guards than turnover-prone forwards and centers, handles refer to the ability to dribble
the basketball quickly and securely, while pivoting and spinning, keeping it in possession
amid angle cuts, screen-setting, and defensive resistance--a complex dance of so many bodies
in motion. A point guard relies on handles to negotiate and create lanes, and in this
sense handles are crucial for effectively orchestrating the coordinated build-up toward
more advantageous and more prosperous positions.
At this point I should take a quick timeout to say a bit more about what I mean by "mad."
Mad handles are mad in that they risk appearing gestural excesses--all glint. But mad points
at the specific conditions--frenzy and excitement--underpinning the development of these charts and graphs
over the past several months more than any attitude of fury or anger.
To widen slightly the scope of this analogy, mad handles serve as one of many generative
axioms for the courts where I spend my time these days: not basketball courts,
but rather the institutional, departmental, and programmatic courts across which I have
accepted professional responsibility for play-calling, for updating, maintaining, and advancing the
program I direct.
Now to bring mad handles more fully in bounds, the phrase operates with a second significance,
one related to data visualization--the graphs, charts, maps, and readouts that temporarily
reduce and simplify complex situated activity, thus rendering the activity and embedded patterns
or trends more accessible. Bruno Latour refers to these visualizations as handles, and, in
my nine months as a WPA, I increasingly consider them vital equipment for knowing and for influencing
how others think about and know EMU's first-year writing program. Here the twin valences of
mad handles--for point guards and for data visualization practices--converge and the
cross-over sets up another move--one useful to junior WPAs.
I just have enough time to introduce two such examples.
The first is a simple pie chart that accounts for the total number of GAships in our English
Department this year. Before this chart, we did not have a concise or straightforward
device for answering the simple questions, how many? and where are they? Represented
as slices of the pie chart, here are the 38 half appointments funded from the department's
budget--a no-nonsense freeze frame explaining where the GAs are assigned. This particular
handle, rudimentary though it is, has been especially important for us this year as we
continue to get to know where First-year Writing fits in the larger department.
Next, this line graph shows my department's budget for GAships. It simply reports the
wonderful news of a positive trend line, a line item with more in it today than there
used to be.
But late last fall, we learned that the First-year Writing program had over the past three years
been assigning fewer GAs than in previous years. So there's a second important and contrasting
trend line--here in orange--angled in such a way as to offset the wonderful news suggested
by the blue (budgetary) line.
I hope by this point it is clear why we might think of this as a mad handle. It captures
a question for which we have not--or rather have not yet--been able to find an answer.
The line graph expresses the question directly, and I think it will be useful to us in helping
others understand why the question mustn't slip away, passing unaddressed.
For new, untenured WPAs, creating and circulating representational slices of data is invaluable
for programmatic self-awareness, increasing visibility, documenting recent history, and
planning upcoming adjustments. In her 2008 book, The Activitst WPA, Linda Adler-Kassner
emphasized the importance of telling a writing program's story--a principle I fully embrace--though
with mad handles in mind, I am arguing for the value in speaking for our programs data-visually,
with open data and linked visual models, that will, if things go well, boost the tactical
foresight required to improve a writing program's collective position.
END
In memory of Joe C. Meriweather, 1953-2013.