Dear CASLL members,

I just wanted to let any of you who were attending CCCC in Chicago 
know about new SIG on FYC as an introduction to Writing 
Studies.  This SIG is meeting for the very first time this coming 
Wednesday evening so please do join us if you can!  (see below 
information on meeting time and speakers).  And even if you can't be 
there, do email me if you'd like your name to be added to the list of 
members for next year. The SIG is entitled "The Subject is Writing: 
FYC as an Introduction to Writing Studies," and we'll need to be 
submitting an updated SIG information form soon after CCCC (with an 
updated membership list).  I've pasted in below the people listed as 
members on the info form last year:

Kathleen Yancey                        David R. 
Russell                     Maureen Daly Goggin
R. Mark Hall                               Heather 
Rust                          Doug Downs
Candace Stewart                        Vernon 
Dickson                      Trish Jenkins
Dayna Ottens                             Marcia 
Kinsey                        David Smit
Sylvia E. Morales                        Stacia 
Neeley                         Lahoucine Ouzgane
Cornelia C. Paraskevas               Carmen 
Schmersahl                 Elizabeth Wardle
M. Elizabeth (Betsy) 
Sargent                                                     Tania Smith

Presentations will be very short (3-5 minutes long) so we can allot 
most of our hour to open discussion and further organizational work. 
See below for a description of this SIG.

I remember a discussion on this list recently about trying to come up 
with a time or place for CASLL folks to meet in Chicago, but I can't 
remember if anything was decided.  If any of you show up for this 
SIG, once it's over we could put our heads together and figure out a 
time to get together later in the week.

Anyway, hope to see some of you there!  Betsy
______________________-

The Subject is Writing: FYC as an Introduction to Writing Studies

Session: WSIG.7 on Mar 22, 2006 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Type: Special Interest Group
Level Emphasis: cross-institutional

Most FYC students are denied access to our ongoing disciplinary 
conversation about writing, a conversation from which they can 
benefit and to which they can contribute. To correct this problem, 
some CCCC members have begun teaching FYC as an introduction to 
Writing Studies, assigning rhetoric and composition readings and 
engaging students in primary research about writing-related 
questions. A session on this topic was held at CCCC in 2005 (in 
response to Kathleen Blake Yancey's 2004 Chair's call for 
undergraduate majors in writing as well as to David Russell's call to 
treat FYC as a content course), but we need to continue to explore 
together what it would mean to teach FYC not just as a set of skills 
but as a course about the content of our field. What is the rationale 
for such a course? What would such a course look like? What would 
students read and write in such a course? Those interested in 
pursuing these questions need a regular forum to share struggles and 
successes and teaching materials, a place to sustain and extend the 
ongoing conversation about a writing studies major, about what forms 
it might take and how it would affect the way we conceive of FYC.

All presenters will reflect on FYC as a course whose "subject is 
writing" (in Wendy Bishop's phrase) and will distribute teaching 
materials and/or provide examples of student work written in such a course.

M. Elizabeth (Betsy) Sargent (Chair)

Speaker 1, Candace Stewart, Ohio University: We Start with Plato
The FYC course as it stands in many institutions can become, with 
very little departmental, institutional, and curricular trauma, a 
course in which the "subject is writing."

Speaker 2, Doug Downs, Utah Valley State College: Was It Worth It? 
Student Performance in Writing About Writing
What is the rationale for FYC as an introduction to Writing Studies? 
What are the key findings from ethnographic and discourse analysis 
studies of student performance in such courses? What do students 
learn and how do they respond to the course?

Speaker 3, Elizabeth Wardle, University of Dayton: What Would an FYC 
About Writing Studies Look Like? Wardle will present two different 
FYC courses whose content is the research and theory of composition studies.

Speaker 4, Dayna Ottens, Kent State U, Ohio: What Training Would Such 
FYC Instructors Need to Have?
One of the far reaching implications when we talk about FYC as an 
introduction to Writing Studies is the reconfiguration of graduate 
education (possibly building off/against David Smit's suggestions in 
The End of Composition Studies).

Speaker 5, M. Elizabeth (Betsy) Sargent, University of Alberta: What 
Texts and Tests Would Work in Such a Course? What would students read 
and write in such a course?  What challenges will we face in creating 
appropriate texts and forms of assessment for such FYC courses? 
Samples of student writing from an introduction to Writing Studies 
course will be circulated.

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