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February 23, 2004
Spring Conference 2004-Transnational Pedagogies
Spring Conference 2004
Transnational Pedagogies
February 26th and 27th
Amitava Kumar from Penn State (Guest Lecturer): "The Rate At Which Writing Travels"
Abstract: People travel. Books do too. What is the rate at which, in a globalized world, writing travels in comparison with people? Amitava Kumar's talk--a reading from published as well as new work--will be a report on migrant writing. It will be a commentary on the borders not only between nations but between conditions of knowledge that leave us among a divided world and a divided people.
Professor Kumar will show and lead a discussion on his documentary "Pure Chutney."
Posted by mryonker at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2004
Film Screening: _MURDER and Murder_
February 20—MURDER and murder (Yvonne Rainer, U.S., 1996)
This hybrid film enfolds documentary data into a fictional framework, resulting in a work of emotional power and intellectual rigor. This story of two middle-aged lesbians facing the effects of breast cancer also manages to interrogate the neglect of lesbians by the health care profession, the split between gay identity and "queer theory," and the conditions of filmic representation.
Posted by mryonker at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2004
Classroom teacher stance
Diversity Forum 3—Spring 2004
Classroom teacher stance
"In today’s classroom and larger cultural climate, overtly politicized 'critical' composition pedagogies may only exacerbate student resistance to issues and identities of difference, especially if the teacher is marked or read as different her/himself. I therefore suggest that the marginalized teacher-subject look to contemporary theoretical notions of the “radical resignification” of power as well as to the neglected rhetorical concept of mêtis, or “cunning,” to engage difference more efficaciously, if more sneakily. Specifically, I argue that one possible praxis for better negotiating student resistance is the performance of the very neutrality that students expect of teachers."
From Karen Kopelson, "Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance." CCC 55.1 (September 2003): 115-146.
Posted by mryonker at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2004
Rationale for Working Groups
Given that there are many points of entry into this very large topic, we propose that the grant fund seven to eight working groups over the next three years. The main task of these groups will be to produce teaching materials to be disseminated throughout the program. The groups will:
be composed of representatives from the main constituencies in the Writing Program (full time faculty, professional writing instructors, CCR graduate students, and possibly English graduate students)
be given a budget (up to $5000) which they could use to develop teaching materials in whatever ways they find useful (e.g., they may use the money to pay teachers stipends for developing materials, or to bring in speakers, or to purchase films or other texts, or to sponsor a student conference)
make these teaching materials public by posting them to the diversity website, by presenting them at Fall Conference and Spring Conference, and by other means such as student conferences or publications develop ways to assess what happens (e.g., each year we do a descriptive study of student writing produced in the new TA version of WRT 105).
Posted by mryonker at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
Working Groups Spring 2004 #2
Working Group #2: the coordinating group exploring visual rhetorics and literacy will use their funds to develop teaching materials on transnational approaches to visuality (e.g., document design, websites, graphics, etc.).
Posted by mryonker at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
Working Groups Spring 2004 #1
Working Group #1: the service learning coordinating group will use their funds to develop literacy initiatives at one of the elementary or middle schools near the campus as a site for students to work with these school kids in a host of ways - tutoring, drama productions, publishing literary magazines, etc. We will approach Levy Middle School first, because it is within walking distance and because there is a clear need and a new principal.
Posted by mryonker at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2004
Film Screening: _Bamboozled_
February 6—Bamboozled (Spike Lee, U.S., 2000)
At the time of its release, Spike Lee's media satire was widely rejected as too outlandish, too out of touch with reality. How could America be swept by a blackface minstrelsy craze? Today, the film looks less like a paranoid fantasy and more like a prescient, speculative fiction.
Posted by mryonker at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)