Hi everyone!
I've been scrambling to catch up on work since coming home from Denver,
so please forgive me for not getting back to you about the conference.
The Canadian Caucus went well. Five of us gave short presentations on
our current work and then we went off to dinner at a wild Italian
restaurant in "Lodo" (Lower Denver, the older and trendier area). I
believe that most people had a good time and would like to get together
again in Chicago, March 20-23, 2002.
We agreed at the Denver Caucus that we'd try to have both a Canadian
Caucus and a Canadian Roundtable in Chicago. The caucus is easy-- all we
need is someone who's sure to be going to fill out and send in the
form. Now that the form is online, it takes only minutes to do. So if
there's a volunteer who wants to organize the caucus, please let me
know. Usually, the caucus chair makes dinner reservations, which can be
a bit of a challenge because we seldom know how many will attend.
However, we already know that the "Bella Vista" in Wrigglyville has lots
of room for the crazy Canucks. We had a good time there in 1999. (or was
it 98?)
The roundtable is a bit more of a challenge. We have to decide on a
theme and then people have to e-mail proposals to Graham and I so we can
put together the final proposal. I've copied the first page of the "Call
for Program Proposals" below. The conference theme is "Connecting the
Text and the Street", and we'd be smart to read it carefully when
deciding our own theme. (I think that our last roundtable proposal was
rejected partly because we ignored the conference theme.)
So if you're working on something that you'd like to talk about at the
Cs next year, let's talk about it on the list. The submission date for
proposals in April 23, so we'll have to work quickly if we want to have
a roundtable.
Plan "B" is to do what we did this year-- if there's no roundtable, we
take some time in the caucus to discuss our papers and then continue the
conversation over dinner. It worked well for those of us who knew what
was coming, but a few people who didn't know left before the end. We all
decided that having separate sessions would be ideal (if we can get the
roundtable proposal accepted).
So.... let's start talking!
Janice Freeman
Centre for Academic Writing
University of Winnipeg
CCCC 2002
Connecting the Text and the Street
Theme
Today's expanding volume of visual and verbal texts
challenges us
as writing teachers and researchers to call attention
to the ways in
which language practices shape the worlds we inhabit.
Though
not new, this challenge assumes urgency as the
constant and
growing stream of "information" from electronic and
print media
influences what we know, think, say, and do--what we
are and
how we live. We must improve our students' ability to
evaluate and
respond to the versions of reality inherent in these
texts. We must
teach them to use the texts they already own and to
compose new
texts in ways that affect the quality of lives in the
"street," in all
those sites beyond the classroom-- offices, hospitals,
daycare
centers, workplaces, prisons, homes, and homeless
shelters. Our
writing classes, not constrained by the need to cover
a specific
subject matter, remain ideal sites in which to develop
such
literacies. Chicago, a city of many lives, many texts,
and many
streets, is an ideal place to converse about the
intersections
among the sites.
With these sites in mind, I especially invite
proposals that feature
past, present, and future applications of language to
promote social
change and social justice. How have past cultures used
oral and
written arguments to improve the human condition? What
current
institutional and community projects focus on
strengthening
connections between the public discourses we read and
write and
the lives they inevitably influence? How are we
teaching our
students to talk back, to become doers of the word,
and to put their
language skills to everyday use? How have our
collaborations with
teachers of writing across institutions fostered such
uses? How
are we expanding membership in established language
communities so that more people participate and
redefine them?
How can we and our students develop new vocabularies
to view
old problems with fresh perspectives? How are we
combining the
strengths of our linguistic diversity into more
powerful voices for
change? What theoretical perspectives inform our
thinking about
rhetorical agency in composition? What future language
projects
promise to enhance our ability to manage human
affairs? How can
we do a better job of converting the writing that
students produce
for grades into the writing that they produce as
responsible
citizens participating in public discussions?
http://www.ncte.org/convention/cccc2002/theme.shtml
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