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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