|
Articles Conference Reviews |
2008IrvinA Broad View of CCCC 2008 It's impossible to reduce the multiplicity of what is the CCCC, but I did hear a certain theme that I thought I would share. The theme runs something like this: in this age of accountability, scarce resources and growing public concern over the state of higher education, we need to rethink how we argue for the importance of our work as compositionists. Cheryl Glenn, the keynote speaker at the General Session on Thursday morning, entitled her talk, “Representing Ourselves.” In her address, The Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women's Studies and Co-director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State University, Glenn urged us to pursue a new way of conceiving ourselves and spoke poetically about “coalescing for a common goal” as she voiced a refrain of “I hope for hope.” The middle section of her address was a catalog of the treacherous landscape we tread today from within our profession (No Child Left Behind, the Spellings Report, the labor situation) to the violence in our society (at home and in Iraq). Glenn’s call for a strategic representation for change was echoed minutes later by NCTE President Kathleen Blake Yancey who urged us all “to get serious about advocacy.” This theme of “representing ourselves” was repeated by Peter Elbow in a session examining Donald Murray’s work on the last day of the conference. During the questions and discussion after the panel, Elbow mused upon what he described as a repeated theme of the conference. He summarized the theme this way: “We have advocated for years for important changes to our work and how our work is perceived, but what I am hearing is that this advocacy is not working. We have advocated through strong arguments and research, but these methods have not been effective.” Elbow continued by saying that perhaps we were going about it rhetorically all wrong. He ventured to suggest that we might consider using story as a more rhetorically effective means of advocacy, or we must use the power of narrative to get our points across. One possible place for us to tell our stories—and get others to tell their stories—was announced at the WPA Breakfast by Linda Adler-Kassner. The WPA Network Media for Action has begun a “National Conversation on Writing” ([http://www.wpacouncil.org/nma]) to gather personal accounts of people's everyday experiences with writing. The web site has information about how you or your students could contribute to conversation. Also, Adler-Kassner shared that WPA has recently partnered with the National Writing Project on this effort. Now we must tell our stories on the mountain—and change the world. We can hope for hope. |