Like Leta, I was really intrigued with Muksian-Schutt's incorporation of contact zones to the composition course. I think that encouraging students to do research beyond a simple pro/con stance is something I would really like to include in my lesson plans, but I am not yet sure of how to do that.
My first instinct is maybe to introduce the idea of "continuum" to the course — that is, in order to avoid the binary construct that pro/con sometimes leads into, I would like to find a way for students to understand those ideological spaces that Muksian-Schutt says "are [not] clearly defined, creating confusion for students as to where they can enter a conversation" (339-40). If a continuum is one way to approach this topic, this will also help keep a contact zone from becoming a conflict zone.
In many ways, I was reminded of Gregory's activity that we did in class last week, delineating some of the pros and cons of globalization or internationalism. Some of us saw "learning about other cultures" as a pro, but others of us thought this "learning" was the first step to one culture "correcting a backwards culture" in a fit of neo-colonialism. This shows how not all "pro" statements are "pro" for everyone, and I think that cultural/social differences are a primary reason that these overlaps become contact zones.
I got a lot of new perspectives from this reading that I am thinking of incorporating in my (continuously-)revised syllabus. I think I will still include "biases" as a running theme to the course, but perhaps not in ways that have so much potential to become confrontational. I would like to explore some typical biases (race, gender, class, age, etc.), but I am not sure I would be able to lead an entire semester with these themes. Anyone who can is either much braver or much better-read on the issues than I am.
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I like your plan to introduce the idea of "continuum" into your students' discussion. In some respects, however, I think the ideas of "pro" and "con" are useful. For example, with the example of culture and globablization, increased cultural understanding seems like a very good thing (a "pro"). On the other hand, cultural loss seems like a very bad thing (a "con"). In this respect, I would have trouble mapping this issue on a continuum, because I would have to put different parts of the issue at different ends. I wonder if the idea of continuum might be useful for mapping overall positions on issues, while allowing just plain "pros" and "cons" for various aspects of those issues.
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