rhetoric and composition

The purpose of this supplemental text is to reinforce the concepts that are taught in developmental reading, developmental writing, and freshman orientation courses so that students may continue to address and improve those skills while mastering the material taught in their college-level writing courses.  This text especially works well used in conjunction with a college writing textbook in co-requisite writing models where students are transitioning between both developmental and college-level writing courses in the same term. 

What does it mean to tell the truth? Are we obligated to inform, or reveal with specificity? What approaches do creative writers apply in disclosing the personal? Does experimentation hide or reveal the truth? Our creative essays and poetry engage with inherent obstacles of truth in life writing. Following a reading of our essays and poetry, we will invite conversation on the ways in which experimental literary forms test the boundaries of truth-telling and subjectivity, and complicate the defining and teaching of genres. 

Panel Proposal for the SSSL Biennial Conference in Fayatteville, AR (February 20-23, 2020)

Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s Emerging Scholars Organization

Chair: Elizabeth Gardner, Louisiana State University 

Call for chapters

A kairotic moment, 2019 marks a surge in US state legislatures establishing laws tied to reproductive rights, health, and justice, some of which are intended to challenge and overturn Roe v. Wade. While Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah passed bills that limit abortions, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont have established laws protecting abortion access. At the same time, no policy changes to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicaid coverage of abortion, are in sight. But abortion is just one issue of reproductive rights, health, and justice—concerns that affect people in local, national, and global contexts.

Call for Papers, Academic Administrative Leadership at CEA 2020

March 26-28, 2020 | Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on Academic Administrative Leadership for our 51st annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

Since the nineteenth century to the present, fragmentary writing has been widely deployed in literature and philosophy (i.e. Ernst Bloch, Schlegel, Mallarmé, Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Kafka, Beckett etc.) as a strategy to disrupt the idea of totality by and through writing. Fragmentary writing as an incomplete totality, bears absent voices and traces and alludes to a whole.

This panel examines the teaching of college writing, rhetoric, and composition in the digital age by exploring rhetorical situations, genres, and technologies in both the professional and academic realms, with particular attention to digital rhetoric, pedagogy, information and media literacy, and literary and cultural studies. This panel engages deeply with NeMLA’s conference theme of “shared spaces and places” online and in the classroom, and focuses on the cutting-edge of “shaping languages and cultures” in the digital sphere.

How do we teach Dickens now? What do Dickens’s works have to do with the #MeToo movement; with social media; with the Anthropocene, extinction rebellion, and climate change; with racism and living, as Christina Sharpe has put it, “in the wake” of slavery; with technological rupture, the gig economy, and radical job transformation; and with other questions of modern life? What do we do with Dickens’s long prose and today’s allegedly shorter attention spans and alternative narrative forms?

This panel invites scholars to address what Dickens’s fiction offers the present and why Dickens matters now. The Dickens Society requests paper proposals (250-500 words) for the panel “Teaching Dickens Now” (ID 18079).

Humour seems to be an essential feature of human life – ‘the ability to be amused by things, the way in which people see that some things are amusing, or the quality of being amusing’ (Merriam-Webster). It is not just about jokes but a way of looking at the world. Individually, it is beneficial to health, relieving negative energy and invigorating the mind and the body. Socially, it is an indicator of frankness and sociability. Economically, it generates communication, improves teamwork and increases efficiency. Politically, it is an important form of protest and disobedience. Historically, it has proven to be a powerful weapon in times of crisis. And it can be wielded negatively, as a weapon or entrée into dark social arenas such as racism or hatred.

Depending on the institution, the department, the politics, and the history of a space, composition and literature faculty often face constant pressure to legitimize or explain the work that we do. However, few opportunities are available to do so in real and tangible ways with departments and faculty outside of our own. This panel seeks to explore the ways that writing and English courses function within and across institutions throughout the country in an effort to develop real-time strategies that increase the visibility of our work, including its interdisciplinarity. How can we increase collaboration with faculty outside of our own silos in order to foster a stronger writing culture across campuses?

Subject: Call for Papers: Peace Studies at CEA 2020

Call for Papers, Peace Studies at CEA 2020

March 26-28, 2020 | Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on Peace Studies for our 51st annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

My name is Denae Dibrell. I am a Lecturer at UTRGV. I will be chairing a roundtable in Boston in March for the NeMLA conference. I am so excited about this. 

Feel free to share this Call for Abstracts, submit an abstract, or reach out to me with any questions or concerns.

"Feminism in the Writing Classroom: A Conversation About Feminist Theory and Decolonization"

The 21st Century Englishes Conference is hosted by the Rhetoric Society of the Black Swamp, Bowling

Green State University’s (BGSU) Student Chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America, and BGSU’s

Rhetoric & Writing Ph.D. Program. It is sponsored by BGSU’s English Department.

Date: Saturday, November 2, 2019

Time: Registration opens at 8:00 AM; Opening remarks begin at 8:45 AM

Location: Bowen Thompson Student Union, Bowling Green State University

Contact Information: Co-Chairs Emma Guthrie & Morgan McDougall

21stcon@gmail.com