Join us for the MSU Summer Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition: a full week of workshops for teachers, scholars, and students of rhetoric and composition. See details below & register by May 1st!

Sunday, June 3rd
Patricia Sullivan, Purdue University
Keynote Address
Seeking Change that Sustains

Patricia Sullivan directs the Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Program at Purdue University and teaches rhetorical history and methodology, digital archives, and digital rhetoric. Her most recent publications are: “Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Students’ Voices” (CCC, Feb 2012), “ Digital and Dustfree: A Conversation” (with Tarez Samra Graban in Peitho, Fall 2011), and “Cool and Credible Web Video” (with Peter Fadde in Educause Quarterly, Dec 2011).



Monday, June 4th
Mary M. Juzwik, Michigan State University
“Responding to Twenty-First Century Trends in Secondary Writing through Partnerships
that Support Transitioning into Higher Education”

The nature of literacy itself is changing rapidly. A wave of recent policy reports and standardization documents, from the Carnegie Foundation’s Writing Next report to the national adaptation of a set of Common Core standards, is re-configuring the twenty-first century landscape of writing practices and writing instruction in secondary schools. These changes have significant implications for first-year writing classrooms as well as for college and university-based preparation of secondary writing teachers. In this workshop, we will first identify twenty-first century trends in secondary writing by reviewing standards documents, recent policy reports, and recent practice and scholarship in writing teacher education. We will then explore how, given these trends, post-secondary institutions and instructors can create effective and innovative responses that support students’ successful transitioning from writing in high school to writing in college and beyond. To facilitate this exploration, a panel of diverse writing instructors from high school, community college, and university settings will share examples of partnerships they have created to facilitate the transition from secondary to college writing in a rapidly changing literacy landscape.

Mary M. Juzwik is associate professor of Language and Literacy in the department of Teacher Education (TE) at Michigan State University (MSU), and is an affiliate of the Rhetoric, Writing, and American Cultures Program and the English department at MSU and a principal investigator at the Literacy Achievement Research Center. She studies issues related to literacy teaching and learning, including the moral and rhetorical dimensions of teaching; linguistic and cultural diversity in English classrooms; writing theory and instruction; teacher identity; and ways of supporting dialogically organized instructional practices in teaching and teacher preparation. She received the Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association for her book, The Rhetoric of Teaching: Understanding the Dynamics of Holocaust Narratives in an English Classroom (Hampton, 2009).


Tuesday, June 5
Kristine Blair, Bowling Green State University
“Triangulating Feminist Pedagogy, Twenty-First Century Literacies, and Curricular Change: Multimodal Assignments in Context”

Ongoing efforts to align feminist pedagogies and multimodal literacies are both political and pragmatic: to explore the ways in which technological spaces are gendered domains that have impacted access and equity across cultures and classrooms; and to create more hospitable spaces that empower individuals to compose in multiple modalities. In an era where many students’ literacies are increasingly web-based, enabling these goals and the pedagogical practices accompanying them within twenty-first century writing spaces is a priority for composition teachers seeking to bridge the gap between academic and non-academic literacies. This process not only promotes student-centered learning but also enables an entry point for students with diverse cultural and technological histories. Thus, this workshop triangulates feminist pedagogy, digital literacy, and composition theory by having participants collaboratively develop both “low-tech” and “high-tech” multimodal assignments to ultimately level the technological playing field for students and their teachers.

Kristine Blair is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Bowling Green State University, where she teaches in the Rhetoric and Writing Doctoral Program. Her research addresses the politics of digital literacy acquisition, and she serves as the editor of both Computers and Composition and Computers and Composition Online.


Wednesday, June 6
Jenn Fishman, Marquette University
“Changing Education, Changing Lives”

This session invites advanced students, teachers, and administrators to use available media to research and represent their own educations against a backdrop of writing history in—and beyond—the United States. Drawing on examples from a variety of undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses, topics for discussion will include:

Making productive use of both old and new media
Relating history to contemporary life
Staging successful public events
Designing effective curricula and assignments

A note to participants: To make the most of hands-on workshop portions of this session, please bring the following: 1) At least one and no more than three artifacts that help you tell the story of your own education; 2) a copy of Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, which you have already read; and 3) one book that you are willing to alter—as in physically change—in order to tell a previously untold or unheard story that you believe has importance for students currently learning about writing and rhetoric. For example, you might bring a regional history book that leaves out the contributions made by a group of people whose stories you want to add, or you might bring a student handbook that you want to alter to better represent the lives and voices of your own students. Basic arts and crafts supplies will be provided.

Jenn Fishman is Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University. Her academic work engages students and colleagues in exploring intersections of pedagogy, performance, and mediation throughout the history of rhetoric and composition. She is the guest editor of the inaugural issue of CCC Online, the Principal Investigator of Kenyon Writes (with Lee Nickoson), and an editor of the Research Exchange Index or REx (with Joan Mullin and Mike Palmquist).


Thursday, June 7
Libby Miles, University of Rhode Island
“Asking Good Questions, Hearing the Answers: Assessment in Writing”

One early element influencing the emergence of twenty-first century literacies is a continual push for assessment and accountability – whether we like it or not. In our current climate, assessment is too often something imposed on us, from far above. During our time together, we will take charge and turn that around, exploring ways to use techniques of assessment processes in order to answer questions that we decide are important. Are students actually learning what we think we are teaching? Are we providing enough scaffolding for students to know and be able to do what we hope? Are we offering enough technological and pedagogical support to our own community of teachers? This workshop will focus first on asking good questions about what students are learning, and then we will practice multiple approaches for answering those questions, using techniques from the world of assessment. We will then examine some results and learn from what the students are telling us. Finally, we will explore how the prevailing atmosphere of accountability actually provides a fissure through which we—regardless of our position in the academy—can work for pedagogical and institutional change.

An Associate Professor in the University of Rhode Island’s Writing & Rhetoric Department, Libby Miles researches and practices institutional change. A former Department Chair and Writing Center Director, she currently teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses including histories, theories, and pedagogies of writing. She was the recipient of the 2010 URI Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award, as well as CCCC’s Braddock and Berlin awards for her scholarship.


Friday, June 8
Jody Swilky, Drake University
“Thinking Geographically: Understanding Writing Instruction and Reform in the Twenty-First Century as Work Shaped by Institutional and External Determinants”

Understanding classroom practice in relationship to both institutional and external determinants (e. g., curricular design, programmatic function, surrounding community, larger social forces and conditions) can help writing instructors and program directors develop knowledge of the functions and effects of our work in institutional settings and the larger public sphere.

In this workshop, we will explore how our work as teachers and program administrators is mediated by a complex of relationships—that is, by the contiguity of our courses with other courses and programs; by the proximity of our departments with other academic disciplines, professional schools, and employers; and by the multiplicity of environments (work, recreational, residential, urban, rural) through which we and our students circulate. We will consider the following questions in relationship to the specific institutional roles and contexts we occupy: How do the distributive functions of writing instruction interact with its ideological functions? How does awareness of institutional space affect events in the classroom? How does our work as teachers and educational reformers contribute to shaping institutional spaces and the public sphere? How do external conditions and social forces, local and larger, impinge on writing instruction?

Through discussion and writing activities, we will illuminate the geographical map of writing instruction at the institutions where we work; after identifying the terrain of writing, and its relationship to intrinsic and extrinsic influences, we will examine the difficulties and obstacles to change as well as the possibilities for meaningful reform.

Jody Swilky is a Professor of English at Drake University who specializes in the teaching of writing and courses concerned with multicultural studies. He has published articles on issues pertinent to multicultural education, the teaching of writing, and the politics of schooling.