CFP: Panel on Resisting Language as Weapon (open until 9/30/17)

Calling #teamrhetoric!

With a little less than a month of “official” summer left, I wanted to let everyone know about a panel I’ll be running at the 49th NeMLA Annual Convention that will take place in Pittsburgh from April 12-15, 2018 at the Omni William Penn.

Resisting the Weaponization of Language: A Panel (https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17008)

As specialists in language studies, we have a particular affinity for and accompanying responsibility to use language in ethical ways. We embrace the power of language to change the world and ourselves for “good,” but are rightfully hesitant to focus on the potential for language to cause harm out of concerns regarding silencing and censorship. Yet, there can be no doubt that language can and does cause harm. Abstracts are encouraged that examine such weaponization of language from a variety of perspectives including, but not limited to, “grammar” as cudgel, misgendering and/or dead naming transgender individuals, and dehumanizing language in public discourse.

Follow the link above to submit a 300-word abstract before the September 30th deadline. Members and non-members of NeMLA may submit to as many sessions as they want, although they may present on only one paper presentation panel and only one other type of session (a roundtable or a creative session).

Friday at NeMLA2016: Evaluating Writing Roundtable

I’m excited to be chairing a roundtable on evaluating student writing today, Friday March 18 at 1:15pm, for the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference in Hartford. We have a great line-up of presentations and hope to see you in Capital 3!

7.17 Evaluating Student Writing I (Roundtable)

• “Using Genre Studies and Rhetorical Analysis to Evaluate Student Writing” by Whitney James
• “Feedback in the Electronic Writing Classroom” by Joseph Gansrow
• “Training the Student to be Editor-in-Chief”  by Jayanti Tamm
• “In-Conference Writing Assessment” by Maureen McVeigh

• “Terms of Assessment” by Lisa Blansett (@Prof_Blansett)

• “Numberless Ways: Dialogue and Reflection for Developing Writers” by Paul Graves
  

If you can’t make it to the panel, here is a copy of the take-away we created that covers the key points and reminders: NeMLA_2016_Eval_Writing_Takeaway

 

Friday at NEMLA2016: The Student as Writer

I’m proud to be chairing a panel on embodiment and disability in the college writing classroom today, Friday March 18 at 11:45am, for the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference in Hartford. We have a great line-up of papers and hope to see you in Marriott A!

The Student as Writer: Embodiment, Mindfulness, and Disability in the Composition Classroom (Panel 6.21)

In this session, we review ways to approach the First Year Composition and other writing classrooms by focusing on the students as embodied writers, taking student-centered pedagogy to a new level. A combination of theoretical and practical perspectives will be employed to locate the student as embodied writer within the disciplinary tradition.

• “In Body and Mind: Re-embodying Reading in the Composition Classroom” by Carolyne King, University of Delaware.

• “Embodied Pedagogy: Silence, Energy, and Everything in Between” by Hilarie Ashton (@HilarieAshton), Graduate Center-CUNY.

• “Ableism and Attendance: Making the Writing Classroom Accessible to all Students” by Catherine Prendergast (@cjprender), University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign.

 

If you can’t make it to the panel, here is a copy of the take-away we created that covers the key points and reminders: NEMLA2016_Embodied_Writing_Takeaway_Cover

Mementos of Transformation, or Treasures Found While Packing

A lot of changes are in store for me this summer, with the two most extensive being that I’m leaving Central Connecticut State University to join the English Department at Fitchburg State in Massachusetts and that I will become a homeowner for the first time when I buy a condo in Fitchburg in July.

The prospect of another inter-state move five years after I left Pennsylvania to come to Connecticut has me sorting my possessions like crazy, shredding or recycling pieces of paper almost as ruthlessly as George R.R. Martin prunes characters in the Song of Fire and Ice series. And after more than ten years of teaching, and seven years of graduate school, I have a lot of paper.

Yet, not everything is becoming victim to this purge. I found two amazing pieces of paper the other day, both more than ten years old, that unmistakably mark the start of the path that I am currently taking to Fitchburg.

The first is a printout of a May 2000 email (back when we used to print such things as a matter of course) from the director of the brand new Rowan University Master of Arts in Writing program. I had been investigating graduate programs for a little while, trying to figure out the next step in my career and a former professor of mine put me in touch with Diane, who (as you can see in the picture) invited me to join an Issues in Composition class that was starting that evening so I could see what it was all about.

I received that email early in the morning of May 31 and by 6:30 that night, I was introduced to a world I hadn’t even known existed, and which I haven’t left ever since: Composition and Rhetoric. All of my current composition work and the basis for Science Fiction Reboot can be traced to that single impulsive decision and I’m beyond grateful that I have this physical artifact of that profound transition period in my life.

I discovered the second piece of paper a few minutes later in the same folder as the Rowan MAW file. It’s just a simple Word document, single-spaced, with no header, title, or other identifying marks. I’m not even sure why I created that document, let alone decided to print it and save it for more than a decade, but the content leaves no doubt that this memento contains my initial thoughts and reflections from my first World Science Fiction Convention (World Con) in Philadelphia in 2001.

Attending that convention was another spontaneous decision, made with as little awareness of what I was getting myself into as the one to join Issues in Composition the year before. I had never been to a science fiction convention, ever, but saw a link on the SciFi Channel’s website for something called Millennium PhilCon over Labor Day Weekend in my hometown. I thought, why not?

Why not, indeed? It is no exaggeration for me to say that those five days in 2001 changed my life. I have described before the way in which that convention (specifically Greg Bear’s Guest of Honor speech) inspired my first book and that the idea for Writing and the Digital Generation was also sparked at a later World Con (LACon in 2006). But what is particularly remarkable about the reflections I found the other day was this tidbit: “The big question is: will I go to next year’s World Con in San Jose, CA?” I laugh even now reading that because not only did I attend the 2002 World Con, but I have been to eight of them in the past twelve years, and attended two North American Science Fiction Conventions when the World Con was off the continent and I couldn’t make the trip.

As my reflection from twelve years ago also says, that weekend I found “a greater sense of this science fiction and fantasy community I have belonged to for so many years but just didn’t know it.” What I also didn’t know at that time was how that community would come to define, in many ways, my identity as a scholar and as a professor.

The time it took for me to sort through those files was certainly well spent even if these pieces of paper didn’t make it into the recycling after all. They will be coming with me to Fitchburg, and wherever else this journey takes me, to remind me that while it’s a good thing to make plans, I also need to leave myself open to take those opportunities I didn’t even know would be coming.