Cezar Ornatowski Featured Speaker for Theory Day 2007

 

On Thursday, May 3 from 9 AM until 1 PM in 500 Hall of Languages, the Writing Program will host Theory Day 2007 featuring Cezar Ornatowski, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University. Professor Ornatowski will be speaking on Rhetoric, Social Change, and Emergent Democracies in Central/Eastern Europe and South Africa: Toward Global Perspectives on Discourse and Social Change (click to download the text of Professor Ornatowski's talk) .

 

Since 2001, Professor Ornatowski has been Fellow and Honorary Co-Director, Center for Rhetoric Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa. In 1999, he was also a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in the Culture Study Unit, Institute for Philosophy and Sociology, at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw 1999. Since 2005, he has been a member of the Advisory Council, Artes Liberales Foundation; this is an inter-university network connecting universities throughout Poland and Central/Easter Europe to help study and research in the liberal arts and humanities. In 1999, he also presented the Inaugural lecture at the Second Meeting of the Forum entitled "Quality in Education," organized by the Ministry of National Education, Center for Teacher Training. Warsaw, Poland. This was a national forum for training a core cadre of "seed" teachers from all levels of Polish education to spur the implementation of a far-reaching program of educational reform in post-communist Poland. He also gave an invited presentation and workshop on "Writing as a Way of Learning Across the Disciplines" at the National Plenary Meeting of the "Kreator" Program, part of an educational reform project sponsored by the European Union and the Polish Ministry of Education. Through the United States Information Agency, English Language Programs Division, he conducted week-long "English for Specific Purposes" workshops in Technical and Professional Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, and Lodz University—both in Poland—during October 1996. Thus he brings considerable experience on discourse and social change in emergent democracies.

Ornatowski with Lech Walesa in 2004.


What: Theory Day 2007

When: Thursday, May 3, 9AM-1PM

Where: 500 Hall of Languages

 

According to Louise Phelps, Cezar is an exciting scholar and an engaging teacher who will enjoy exchanging ideas with fellow scholars, teachers, and graduate students. He brings a refreshingly different perspective to our studies of international rhetorics, from two perspectives: the evolution and uses of public rhetorics in new democracies; and writing instruction as means of developing democratic dispositions in learning and teaching, as well as preparing students for civic rhetorical practice. After growing up in Communist Poland, he escaped its stifling oppression as soon as he could and came to the U.S., where he went into a career in professional and technical communication. He teaches now in an independent department of writing and rhetoric that has an M.A. program and is considering development of upper division writing courses and eventually a major--similar to the path the Writing Program has followed. After the Iron Curtain fell, Cezar reengaged with Poland and began to study its public discourse during the transition to democracy. He has extended those studies to South Africa, working with Philippe Salazar, and recently accompanied Louise Phelps and Gil Harootunian to Armenia to evaluate her project there to develop a democratic writing pedagogy for Yerevan State Linguistic University in Armenia. He is an enthusiastic student of pedagogy (as Louise can testify after observing classes with him in Armenia for a week) and is interested in comparing our studio pedagogy with the kinds of writing instruction that he has observed or tried to encourage in European and other emergent democracies.

Readings for Theory Day:

 

 

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