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Well, actually, the fall semester wasn’t delayed at all. Only my post to this blog 
.
Welcome back everyone! I have to say that it was pretty incredible coming back this semester and having seven–SEVEN– comp/rhet faculty at our first meeting. We’ve come a long way in terms of faculty hiring and program development in a very short time. When I took over the Coordinator position, we had three comp/rhet faculty members.
There has also been a pretty rapid increase in student interest in upper-level composition courses. ENG 430 Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions, went live in the Spring 2007 semester and this coming Spring, my new course ENG 316 Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy will be offered for the first time. Amy Lynch-Biniek authored a new course, ENG XXX Composition and Rhetoric Studies which is making its way through the curricular process and will be one of the key courses for our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies. Linda Cullum will be submitting her new course, ENG XXX Women, Writing, Rhetoric to the curriculum committees this semester. In addition, our ENU 405 Teaching of Writing, continues to fill every semester with graduate and undergraduate students. Needless to say, we are excited about the direction our program is headed!
This semester I hope to get all our comp/rhet faculty up and running on this blog too. This way you can hear from all of us…of different approaches to teaching, latest scholarship, thoughts on writing and rhetoric, musings, and random contributions to this little space.
I am going to leave for now…but will return soon! Thanks for taking the time to check in.
There are just three days left in the semester and we’re wrapping things up. Like most of my colleagues, I am deep in grading mode. However, I thought I would take a few minutes this morning (before I head into campus and while my son is sleeping) to post.
This past academic year has been pretty incredible for our little composition program. We have one new class on the books, ENG 316 Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy, which will be offered in spring 2010 for the first time. We also have two classes heading for college and university curriculum committees after passing our department unanimously: Women, Writing, Rhetoric and Issues in Composition and Rhetoric Studies. A very productive year for course development and another step toward rounding out a solid concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies at KU.
This past year we also completed two successful tenure-track faculty searches. In the fall, we will welcome Mysti Rudd from Lamar State College-Port Arthur (IUP PhD candidate) in Texas and Moe Folk from Michigan Tech. Over the summer I am going to ask Mysti and Moe to introduces themselves to you, but for now let me just say that both of these folks promise to contribute to our program in exciting ways. As I have suggested before on this blog, our program has at its core an ethic of “conversation.” That is, we are interested in a diversity of approaches at our composition table that can contibute to a lively conversation over the teaching of writing, literacy in the 21st Century, and all things composition and rhetoric. Many of us got into this field because of its lively discussion over the purpose and nature of writing, rhetoric, and literacy…so, it only makes sense that we would want to use that energy, that commitment to discussion as the model of our program. I am sure that Mysti and Moe will both expand and deepen our conversations.
This past spring saw another successful Composition Conference for student writers. This 5th annual conference was expanded to include student writers from all levels of composition courses, which exceeded our expectations. Despite a very miserable weather day, attendance at this year’s conference was the best yet. Our keynote speaker, Steve Parks from Syracuse University, gave an engaging talk entitled “Once I was a Washing Machine: Worker/Writer Alliances at the Edge of the Economic Abyss” (see the pics below). His talk was both well attended and sparked conversations that echoed through our conversations for weeks.
Over the course of this summer we will be planning for what promises to be an exciting new academic year. We will be hiring an additional tenure-track faculty member in Multicultural/Multiethnic Rhetorics; formally submitting our concentration for department approval; expanding our course offerings; deepening our use of new media; and continuing conversations in our weekly meetings and reading groups. Toward the end of this semester, we began some interesting and exciting conversations with our fellow rhetoricians in the Speech Department (soon to be Communications Studies). Frankly, the promise of reuniting rhetoric just gets me all happy (yes, I am a rhetoric geek). In short, I think we are in great shape…or, given that today is Obama’s 100th day in office, maybe I should say: “the state of our program is strong!” :-)
In addition to all the vlogging we did and photos we took, we did our first experiment in podcasting for the KU Composition Conference. Three students from my Advanced Composition class–Tim Crane, Katrina Albert, and Renee Franklin–agreed to having their panel recorded for a podcast. A huge thanks goes out to them for their willingness to try this out.
I just finished loading up the audio (with very minimal editing) and it sounds good! If you’d like to check it out, click on the radio icon above. A QuickTime (or other audio program) should start up and play the file. If you want a little context for the panel, check out the paper assignment that provided the prompt for Tim, Katrina, and Renee’s paper. Or, check out the Ramage-tagged posts on our class blog.
Hey all…I’m back from San Francisco and getting ready for next week’s Composition Conference for Student Writers. And now…the latest vlog:
Yesterday was a great day at CCCCs. All four of the panels I went to were fantastic. I did make one change in my schedule. I didn’t go to “We Have Been Here Forever” as I initially planned. Instead, I went to the session, “Community Literacies and Deliberative Democracy In and Beyond the University,” with Eli Goldblatt, Juan Guerra, Michelle Kells, and Carlos Salinas. Our panel, “Labor Rhetoric and Academic Organizing,” went extremely well…we had a packed house, our papers worked incredibly well together, Eileen Schell posed several key questions in her response, and many audience members walked with us over to the Serrano Hotel for our Labor Caucus Interest Group meeting. More on all of this when I have a little time (right now I am sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for my ride to the airport).
I was really looking forward to being here this year…and my expectations were more than met. The non-panel discussions I had with people who I haven’t seen since the last CCCCs and colleagues I see on a more-or-less regular basis were invigorating…which is, after all, why we come to these conferences in the first place, right?
More to come!
After spending some time reading through all of the sessions running tomorrow, I think I have my schedule for tomorrow:
- 10:30: “From Textile Mills to the Entrepreneurial University: Confronting the Political Economics of Writing”
- 12:15: “We Have Been Here Forever: Towards a History of Composition(ist)s of Color Rewriting Rhetoric within and beyond NCTE/CCCC”
- 1:45: “‘Driving into the Wreck’: A Feminist Inquiry of the Dissertation in Composition”
- 3:00: (no choice on this one, this is my panel) “Labor Rhetorics and Academic Organizing: Possibilities and Predicaments”
- 5:00: CCCC Labor Caucus Interest Group
On the 21st Century literacies the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) released several statements recently, most notably the “Definition of 21st Century Literacies,” which was adopted by the NCTE Executive Commitee on February 18, 2008.
The “Definition” statment follows NCTE’s 2005 “Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies,” which addressed issues of definition and challenges of new/digital/multimodal literacies. Even more recently, NCTE released a set of guidelines, “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education,” which attemps to deal with new issues concerning fair use and copy right. And in 2007, NCTE released “21st Century Literacies: A Policy Research Brief.”
The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCCs), which meets next week in San Francisco, also released “Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments,” in 2004.
The article “Backers of ’21st Century Skills’ Take Flak,” in this week’s Education Week, reports on some of the critics of the call for “21st Century Skills”–that is, “information, media, and technology skills.” The article begins:
The phrase “21st-century skills” is everywhere in education policy discussions these days, from faculty lounges to the highest echelons of the U.S. education system.
Broadly speaking, it refers to a push for schools to teach critical-thinking, analytical, and technology skills, in addition to the “soft skills” of creativity, collaboration, and communication that some experts argue will be in high demand as the world increasingly shifts to a global, entrepreneurial, and service-based workplace.
But now a group of researchers, historians, and policymakers from across the political spectrum are raising a red flag about the agenda as embodied by the Tucson, Ariz.-based Partnership for 21st Century Skills, or P21, the leading advocacy group for 21st-century skills.
Unless states that sign on to the movement ensure that all students are also taught a body of explicit, well-sequenced content, a focus on skills will not help students develop higher-order critical-thinking abilities, they said at a panel discussion here in the nation’s capital last week.
Check out the full article here.
Hello all comp/rhet followers. We’re only two weeks into the semester and already it’s exciting.
As you may know, three of us–Linda Cullum, Amy Lynch-Biniek, and I were in San Francisco at MLA interviewing candidates for our tenure-track position in Comp/Rhet. This week we begin our interviews. On campus interviews are always hectic, but from my perspective they are one of the most interesting parts of my job. It’s an opportunity to talk to great people who are doing excellent work in both their classrooms and their research. At the very least, it’s an opportunity to build networks of connection with other Comp/Rhet folks across the country.
If interviewing candidates for one position was not intense enough, we decided to push to search for a second tenure-track position this year. The position: Digital Literacies/Visual Rhetorics. Our initial plan was to search DL/VR next year along with a position in Multicultural/Multi-ethnic Rhetoric. But when opportunity presented itself to push the search to this year, we went for it.
If we are able to hire both positions this year we will have a total of 6 Comp/Rhet faculty, which will put us in an excellent position to focus on program development over the next couple of years. The addition of a faculty member in Multicultural/Multi-ethnic rhetoric in 2010 will give our little-program-that-could further depth.
In any case, we are looking forward to an exciting few weeks!
It’s hard to believe that we are already in the fourth week of the semester. Wow. I must say that we’re off to quite a start.
Earlier today the Composition Conference Committee met to begin planning our annual conference. Next April will be the fifth year of the conference. Last year’s conference was a grand success thanks in large part to Amy Lynch-Biniek’s tireless efforts as Chair of the Composition Conference Committee, the work of committee members, Keith Gilyard’s excellent Keynote Address, and the fabulous work presented by all of our student participants. While it’s still only mid-September, we’re already planning the conference theme, keynote speaker, and getting materials ready to distribute to faculty and students.
Last week the Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies Reading Group met to decide what we would read this semester/year. We decided on the following texts:
Here’s a look at the other texts we will be checking out this year:
- Kathleen Blake Yancey, “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.”
- Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’.”
- Jonathan Alexander, “Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body.”
- Nancy Welch, “Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Post-Publicity Era.”
- Min-Zhan Lu, “An Essay on the Work of Composition: Composing English against the Order of Fast Capitalism.”
- Donna LeCourt, “Performing Working-Class Identity in Composition: Toward a Pedagogy of Textual Practice.”
We’re starting out with Yancey’s article for our October 9th meeting and go from there! And you may have noticed that CRLS Reading Group has replaced the CRG group and blog. Since we are working on developing a concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies, it seemed to make sense to link our curricular work with the reading group. As you may notice, many of the articles we chose for this year focus on different approaches to composition and rhetoric and curriculum development.
And of course, Composition Conversations are in their second week. As we get closer to the due dates for our first papers, we’ll be sharing ideas for responding to student texts, effective workshopping, designing assignments, generating class discussions, and a whole range of other things!
All in all, we’ve hit the ground running. If you want to know what’s going on and where, check out our new Composition Calendar!
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