composition

(just for the record, I really don't care for the new Blogger layout) Tomorrow is a big day for me. I will be presenting at the State University of New York Council on Writing ( SUNY COW ), which will be held at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan. While I don't want to give away my entire presentation, I do want to take some time to reflect on the reading and thinking I've been doing lately about public writing and engaged Composition programs because I think this is the way that Composition is headed or should, in some ways, be headed. At the conference, I will presenting on a panel called "Radical Ideas for the Composition Classroom." My piece in particular is "Ethnography and Activist Writing: Sustainable Inquiries for First Year Writing," which I hadn't considered being very radical, but now I suppose it may be. My pedagogical philosophy really aims at giving writing meaning beyond a tool for academic assessment.  I have seen ...

My dad came home on Thursday and told my family some pretty disturbing news: a man who used to work for him, one he called "a kid at the time," went on a shooting rampage at a mental health clinic in Pittsburgh and was shot and killed by police. My dad talked a little about it, but of course, I'd like to respect his right to privacy. He hasn't spoken to reporters who called to ask him about the man and his past, so I don't feel that it's my right to speak on his behalf. What I will note, however, is that much like other sources are reporting, my dad said the man (who he kept calling a "kid" because he was only about 23 at the time) was very smart. He meant it in the bookish sense. As the reports have come rolling it, it's apparent that my dad's assessment is one that others shared. He had a B.A. in chemistry from Carleton and B.S. in engineering from Columbia and had recently become a graduate student in biology. According to a quote from a f...

(This was posted to my course blog that I do alongside my students, but I thought it would make a nice addition here.) As some of you may know, I am a doctoral student. I’ve finished all of my coursework, and I am now preparing for the daunting task of comprehensive exams. To prepare for these exams, I must put together three lists of 20+ sources on different areas of interest that, in theory, will get the ball rolling on my dissertation research. While previous classes had to take a written exam, I was given the option to take the oral examination, so for two hours, I will have to speak on my three lists, which are are Composition and Rhetorical Theory: A General Overview, Digital Literacy and New Media Studies, and the Politics of Writing Spaces. In particular, I’ve been working hard on the Politics of Writing Spaces list. It’s the one that I touched on the least in my coursework, but is the foundation of what I think will be my future dissertation. I am interested in how writers cla...