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!
Tags: composition, CRLS, english department, kutztown, rhetoric
Leave a reply