I’ve started yet another project on my very long list of projects. As part of “building” the comp/rhet program at KU (introducing a concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies [CRLS], developing new courses, hiring three new faculty over the next two years) I’ve wanted to give our comp/rhet program a distinct face on the web.
The most ambitious part of this project to date was to migrate–ok, really reconstruct–our program web page to WordPress. That allowed me to add a blog, a more flexible interface, and to more easily link different aspects of our program in one place. Having our program web page in WordPress also makes it easier to add administrators/editors/authors to the page. Put another way, as we build the program it will be easier for other members of our program to contribute content to the page and to shape our web presence. And, not to mention, the page just looks a lot cooler.
I am fully aware that all these initiatives challenge my ability to sustain them. Put another way, sustaining the momentum we have in our program requires work–and work requires people to do that work. Currently our four composition faculty are all working close to our capacities, so introducing new initiatives is tricky. But, I guess I am trying to see what is possible and what works. For example, we have a CRLS reading group which has its own blog. Usually we have a small group of people who come to each month’s meeting. This past month, however, only two of us could meet. That’s part of the realities of having a faculty doing a lot of good work–our energies are pulled in multiple directions. The fact that we were able to persuade our department to prioritize new composition faculty, is incredibly encouraging and promises be able to build sustainably. I should make it clear, that it’s not like we had to push extremely hard to convince other department faculty to support composition hiring–as a department we’ve been having the discussion about the place of composition in the department over the past few years. And, having some our best undergraduate and graduate students choose to pursue graduate work in composition and rhetoric at places like U of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon only helped underscore the importance of developing our composition program.
Anyway, what got me thinking about this was yet another one of my little initiatives. A KU Comp/Rhet YouTube channel. As one of my colleagues said yesterday “how 2005″ 
. Yup. And now we only have THREE years to catch up! So, if you’re looking to burn some time, check out our new channel. And, I have a request. As you will see, I’ve added a bunch of “favorites” that deal with writing, rhetoric, and comp/rhet stuff. If you know of any other YouTube (or other) videos send me the links or post them as a comment.
In the meantime, here’s my introductory video for the KUCompRhet channel:
, which is all the inspiration I need to believe that I too can produce a kids album some day.
was published in May, I have focused my conference proposals/papers on moments of rhetorical intervention–vote of no confidence against our university president, union strike preparation, campaign to save the Early Learning Center at KU–and I’ve continued to explore intervening in “micro-negotiations of hegemony” in my teaching. Barring the Impossible will begin there.
to Rowan.
