Plagiarism, originality, assemblage

Although students work and live in a remix culture, composition pedagogy does not always value the discursive practices of that culture, especially when it comes to producing written work for academic contexts. The reasons for these views are historically determined and tied, at least in part, to relatively traditional notions of authorship and creativity. But “writers” in other contexts, both disciplinary and popular, have developed interesting and useful remix approaches that can aid invention, leverage intellectual and physical resources, and dramatize the social dimensions of composing in this day and age. These approaches, however, ask teachers to reconsider taken-for-granted assumptions about plagiarism and originality.