Virginia Tech Visit

I'm writing this at Roanoke Airport, on my way home from Virginia Tech. At Diana George's invitation, Bruce Horner, Tom Fox and I got together for a panel and a workshop on language differences. It turned out to be a great combination, all of us representing more or less the same critical perspective but contributing different types of examples in different styles of presentation.

Virigina Tech is about to launch a new Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Writing, and there is a growing community of people in the field. I got to see some familiar faces--including Paul Heilker and Katy Powell. I also met some new faculty members: Kelly Pender, a Purdue alum, and Kelly Balanger. I didn't get to see Jim Dubinski because he was on sabbatical. Well, maybe next time.

Both events were well attended, and we discussed a wide range of topics--from highly theoretical to practical. The panel on Friday was mainly for the composition staff. The workshop, organized by Monique Dufour, included two people from engineering and education as well as people from the English Language Institute and the composition program.

For the first two days, all three of us stayed at The Inn at Virigina Tech, a nice hotel located on the edge of campus. On the second day, I woke up extra early to have a big buffet breakfast with Bruce. On Saturday night, Tom and I stayed at Diana's house, where we had a nice dinner with Kelly, Kelly, Matt and Gary.

CFP: Writing Research Across Boarders

WRITING RESEARCH ACROSS BORDERS
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE
2008 Santa Barbara Conference on Writing Research
University of California Santa Barbara
February 22-24, 2008

Call for Proposals

Theme: Writing Research Across Borders
Due Date: May 1
Length: under 300 words

The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and the Writing Programs at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of California, Davis invite proposals for their interdisciplinary conference, "Writing Research Across Borders," to be held February 22-24, 2008 in Santa Barbara, California.

This is an exciting time where research on writing is having many births, rebirths, and growing spurts in many nations, with foci on many levels of schooling and development across the lifespan. At the 2008 Santa Barbara Conference on Writing Research we hope to foster dialogues across different writing research traditions, located in varied national, disciplinary, and programmatic venues. We have invited a premier panel of plenary and featured speakers to represent the diversity of writing research in the world and to open the door for further broad participation from researchers of all nations interested in exploring writing across all life stages, institutional settings, and disciplinary approaches.

This conference follows on the successes of the 2002 and 2005 Santa Barbara Conferences on Writing Research, which had the themes of "Writing as A Human Activity" and "Writing Research in the Making." Information about the 2005 conference is available at http://education.ucsb.edu/netshare/wrconf05/.

Further information about our upcoming 2008 conference is available at http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/.

We invite proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual presentations that discuss works in progress, completed research, and reflections on how writing research is conceived, proposed, funded, carried out, published, and responded to. Conference proposals should be submitted by May 1, 2007. Proposals should be under 300 words and in English (for a fuller statement on language diversity at our conference, please see http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/language.html ). Please send proposals via email (as a Microsoft Word attachment or in the email body) to writing@education.ucsb.edu or send paper copies to the address below.

TRAVEL ASSISTANCE FELLOWSHIPS:

In addition, through the generosity of the Writing Program of the University of California at Davis and Chris Thaiss, the Clark Kerr Professor of Writing at UC Davis, we are able to offer a small number of fellowships to help support travel expenses for speakers. Fellowships will be awarded based on financial need and proposal quality. If you would like to apply for a fellowship, please submit a separate fellowship application letter explaining your need for funding.

If you have questions about the fellowship application letter or other aspects of the submission process, please feel free to contact Dr. Charles Bazerman or Suzie Null, the Writing Research Across Borders Conference Coordinators. Both can be reached at the address at the bottom of the page.

Thank you for your interest in our conference. If you have any questions please contact us at the above addresses below.

For the Organizing Committee,

Charles Bazerman
Sheridan Blau
Robert Krut
Susan McLeod
Suzie Null
Paul Rogers
Amanda Stansell

http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/
writing@education.ucsb.edu

Committee Contact Information:

writing@education.ucsb.edu or

Writing Research Across Borders Conference Proposal Committee
c/o Charles Bazerman
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
UC Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA 93106-9490

UTEP Visit

The first major trip of this semester was a visit to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I knew the name "El Paso" since when I was in elementary school because "El Paso" and "Houston" were the names of two lines of shoes produced by a Japanese shoe company. I didn't know much else about El Paso before--but I learned a lot about it during this trip.

El Paso is located in the far western tip of Texas, bordering Mexico and New Mexico. Across the river is Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city with shops and restaurants. It's also fairly close to Las Cruces, New Mexico. El Paso has a strong economic ties to Juarez, and many of the UTEP students cross the border every day to attend classes. UTEP boasts itself to be the only major research institution where a majority of the students are latino/latina.

UTEP has a relatively new Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Composition. It is well-staffed with 11 faculty members, including Evelyn Posey, the Department Chair, and Maggy Smith, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies. The program has a strong focus on intercultural rhetoric. The program brochure even says: "We don't just study intercultural rhetoric--we live it." It also has undergraduate and graduate certificates in bilingual professional writing. Naturally, there seemed to be a strong interest in language issues not only in the program but also across the university, including Dean Howard Daudistel, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting.

UTEP faculty include some of my favorite people. Kate Mangelsdorf, who has been active in the L2 writing community at CCCC, was the one who invited me and coordinated the visit. Isabel Baca is also active at CCCC. Helen Foster and Carlos Salinas are my rhet/comp friends from Purdue--in fact, we started together, took most of the courses together, and finished at about the same time. In addition, I was thrilled to find out that Maryse Jayasuriya (my officemate from 410 Heavilon Hall) and her husband Brian Yothers (also from Purdue) were teaching at UTEP. We got to spend some time together.

During my visit, I sat in on Kate's graduate seminar on language and culture in the writing classroom, and enjoyed the lively discussion on critical thinking and critical pedagogy. I also had a meeting with 18 graduate students (including two from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces) who asked me intriguing questions about my work, about writing for publication, and other issues. They were all bright and enthusiastic--I enjoyed meeting all of them!

My talk in the afternoon on language differences in the composition classroom was well attended. I hope people in the audience enjoyed the talk and the discussion afterwards as much as I did. At the end of the session, Isabel gave me a nice gift basket she had made just for me (thank you, Isabel!).

I also enjoyed the conversations over Mexican food with some of the students and other colleagues, including Elaine Fredericksen and Tony Stafford. It was especially great because of my inclination for Mexican food. (In fact, I made fajitas for dinner tonight.)

Thank y'all for your hospitality. I had a great time in El Paso!

¡Muchas gracias a todos!