UW-Milwaukee Visit

I've been too lazy busy to update my blog, but here is a report from my visit to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

My primary hosts were Dani Goldstein and Shereen Inayatulla, doctoral students in rhetoric and composition at UWM--it was great getting to know them. They picked me up at the airport and drove me around, which brought back lots of fond memories from my Wisconsin days. What a treat!

I also got to meet many interesting students, including Rie Kumaki, a doctoral student from Japan. It was also nice to see some familiar faces--Chuck Schuster, Pat Goldstein, Kathy Kaye, Sheryl Slocum and Mary Louise Buley-Meissner, as well as Mike McDonald, a UNH graduate. Mickey Noonan also came to the talk and sent me a kind message afterwards--thanks!

Dani, Mike and Rie served as "respondents" for my talk, but after looking at their "responses," I though it would be a great idea to start with their questions and then to give my talk in response, so I asked them to go first. I thought it worked out well. I hope that wasn't too much of an imposition.

After the talk, we went out for a few drinks at a local pub. (Milwaukee has always been known for beer, but it seems to have gotten even better since my last visit in the late 1990s.) We then went to Alice's house for a nice potluck dinner.

This visit was initiated by a group of graduate students who had read and discussed some of my work. They told me that they were not sure if I would accept an invitation from graduate students, so they asked Alice to initiate the invitation. Of course I would have accepted it if it came from graduate students directly!