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 ...

In his book, Sustainability and Composition: Teaching for a Threatened Generation (2001) , Derek Owens writes about the absence of sustainability discourse in composition and writing studies classrooms (and in many other academic fields, as well). Composition courses often allow space for consciousness-raising; however, more of than not, the consciousness-raising pertains to what Owens calls "the triad of race/class/gender." Sustainability-- one of the biggest issues we face in the modern world-- is missing from the curriculum. I am often intimidated by notions of "green" or "ecofriendly" because as a middle class consumer, I feel hypocritical talking about "tree-hugger" issues, but Owens really puts the power for change in the hands of the teachers and students. He reminds us that to take some action is better than to take no action at all. Owens believes that the absence of sustainability, both in academia and the world at large, has the potent...