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April 2, 2008

Writing Studies at CCCC

Faculty, Instructional Staff, Graduate Students, and Alumnae from the Department of Writing Studies and the Center for Writing are presenting at this year's CCCC Convention in New Orleans.

Bernadette Longo, along with her co-editors Blake Scott and Katherine Wills, will be receiving their NCTE Outstanding Book award at CCCC this year for their collection Critical Power Tools. Congratulations, Bernadette!

Resisting Neoliberal Reality in the Writing Center: Durable, Democratic Networks in Long-Term Tutoring Practices, Relationships, and Program Development
Chair: Tom Friedrich, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Speakers: Tom Friedrich, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Long-term Tutoring Relationships as Durable, Democratic Networks: Using Hermeneutic Study of the Essence of Long-term Tutoring to Guide Program
Development�?
Kirsten Jamsen and Katie Levin, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “‘What makes a good writing center citizen?’: Two Case Studies of How Long-term Tutoring Relationships Change Writers and Tutors�?
Candance Doerr, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Graduate Tutors and Dissertation Writers as Network Reality: Distributed Democracy or Social Reproduction?�?

Rhetorics and Realities of Change: Reflections on Theory and Practice from a New Department of Writing Studies
Chair: Patrick Bruch, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Speakers: Donald Ross, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Rhetorics and Realities of Writing as a Campus-wide Initiative at Minnesota�?
Thomas Reynolds, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Rhetorics and Realities of First-Year Composition at Minnesota�?
Tim Gustafson, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Rhetorics and Realities of Teacher Development at Minnesota�?
Lee-Ann K. Breuch, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Rhetorics and Realities of Assessment at Minnesota�?


Bodies, Water, and Money: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Images in Science

Chair: Ken Baake, Texas Tech University, Lubbock
Speakers: T. Kenny Fountain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “Whole-Body Gifts: Epideictic Display and Anatomy Memorial Services�?
Fawn Musick, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, “Making Meanings through Visual Rhetoric in the Medical School Cadaver Lab�?
Derek Ross, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, “Sociopolitics and Dam Tourism: Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam as Recreational Areas�?
Ryan Hoover, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, “Scientists, Visual Rhetoric, and Grant Applications: Striking a Balance between Simplicity and Effectiveness�?

Institutions and the Writing In and Writing Out of Voice
Chair: Anthony Arrigo, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/St. Paul
Speakers: Katy Southern, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Writing Histories of the Overlooked: Gender, Status, and the Historical Record�?
Anthony Arrigo, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/St. Paul, “Puny Hands: The Rhetorically Constructed Identity of Hoover Dam Laborers in Early 20th Century Popular Science Texts�?

Rhetoric Department Alumnae
Jennifer Novak, Denver University, CO, “Shaping Future Biomedical Practices: Kairos, Tools, and the Rhetoric of Medicine�?

Open Source and Free Software Users Group
Co-Chairs: Clancy Ratliff, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Charles Lowe, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI

Not Just a Bullet on an Outcomes Statement: Taking Civic Literacy Seriously

Chair: Clancy Ratliff, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Clancy Ratliff, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, “What Can Composition Learn from Bloggers’ Civic Writing? Tapping Into the Agora�?

November 13, 2007

Reading by Eric Dregni, FYW Instructor

weirdMN.gifReading, Quiz, and Slideshow
by Eric Dregni
author of/ Midwest Marvels/ and/ Weird Minnesota/

7 p.m., Saturday December 1st, 2007
Test your knowledge of the must-see sites dotting the highways and byways of the Upper Midwest./ Weird Minnesota/ and/ Midwest Marvels/ are the fruit of years of searching for the scandalous, scary, immoral, disconcerting and, well, funny stories of our region. Only in the Midwest is civic pride measured by the size of a town's roadside sculpture.

In Audubon, Iowa visitors find a thirty-foot, forty-five ton, talking bull erected as a monument to the beef industry. In Minnesota a tourist can visit monuments to Paul Bunyan or the Spam Museum, and North Dakota boasts a 45-foot tower of discarded oil cans, trumped only by the World's Tallest Structure: a TV tower jutting nearly a half mile into the sky. Everyone is familiar with South Dakota's Mount Rushmore and Corn Palace, but less famous is the one and only Outhouse Museum. But only in Wisconsin can a couple get married in the mouth of a 145-foot muskie.

Born in the shadow of the World's Largest Six Pack in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Eric Dregni is a freelance writer for The Rake, Metro, and StarTribune. He is the author of several books including/ Minnesota Marvels, Weird Minnesota, The Scooter Bible, Zamboni, The Follies of Science/, and the forthcoming/ Art Cars: Museum on the Streets/.

Common Good Books, southwest corner of Western & Selby, St. Paul tel. (651) 225-8989
http://www.commongoodbooks.com

The event is free and will be held upstairs from the bookstore at Nina's Coffee Café.

October 15, 2007

Capper Nichols Published

postwestern.gifCapper Nichols published an article in a book now available from University of Nebraska Press.

"Backpacking and the Ultralight Solution." Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space. ed. Susan Kollin. University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

From the University of Nebraska Press

"Postwestern Cultures synthesizes the most critical topics of contemporary scholarship of the American West within a single volume. This interdisciplinary anthology features leading scholars in the varied fields of western American literary studies and includes new regional studies, global studies, studies of popular culture, environmental criticism, gender and queer theory, and multiculturalism. Postwestern Cultures, like all successful studies of western American literature, is necessarily diverse and wide-ranging; it grasps the multifaceted quality of the landscape, literature, and critical analysis by engaging postmodern theory, spatial theory, cultural studies, and transnational and transcultural understandings of the local.

"This collection emphasizes the importance of understanding the region not as a confined or static space but as a constantly changing entity in both substance and form. It examines subjects ranging from the use of frontier rhetoric in Japanese American internment camp narratives to the emergence of agricultural tourism in the New West to the application of geographer J. B. Jackson's theories to abandoned western landscapes."

October 1, 2007

Spotlight on First Year Writing: Jerry Shannon

Teaching Specialist Jerry Shannon teaches first-year writing with a service learning approach. His students have worked collaboratively with those at North High in Minneapolis on a variety of projects, including jazz programs for the station, podcast interviews of local figures, and multimedia websites about jazz music and pressing urban issues.

Student at mixing board Students writing at computers