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Articles Conference Reviews |
2009OverviewAn Introduction to the 2009 4Cs Review: Wave, Particle, Field As anyone who read the conference program knows this year, the conference theme for the 2009 CCCCs (Conference on College Composition and Communication) was “Making Waves.” It’s a great theme, and it is a theme that many of the authors of this review play with. As for me, I want to offer up another metaphor for thinking about this year’s interactive CCCC review: Wave, Particle, Field. In a note-taking exercise, borrowed from Gretchen Legler, that I have used for years in class (located at http://litsite.alaska.edu/workbooks/legler3.html), Legler says that: The name is derived from physics, and has to do with the way light behaves under different circumstances--it can behave as a particle, or a wave. The field part of the theory refers to the idea that the field is the larger environment that affects the overall way light behaves. The PWF theory is analogous to the way ideas or objects can “behave" as you look at them from different time and space perspectives.
The metaphor of this fine writing exercise works particularly well for this review of the waves made in San Francisco. According to Legler, the particle part of this exercise starts with writers recording “details about the object or idea you are looking at or pondering.” Here we have a direct analogue to the notes that all the reviewers took of the sessions they were going to review. All of the reviews in this conference review, regardless of how polished, started out as particles, jottings of what was seen, heard, and experienced. Of course there is the “wave” associated with the given particle; here Legler points out that the writer asks his or herself “questions about how ‘X’ changes over time”. This “change over time” is the thing that this review is, in certain ways, all about. We want to both preserve what was said at the 4Cs, comment on what was said to preserve it, and also foster an ongoing and changing process of thinking about what the CCCC means to us as people, teachers, researchers, and a field. Finally, Legler points out that note-takers, involved in the Particle, Wave, Field Exercise, need to ask themselves what “what larger systems "X" is a part of.” This is where you, dear readers, come in. I invite you to observe what was said in San Francisco, add to what was said in the conference or by its reviewers, and create, in some important way, a part of our collective field—composition studies. I encourage you to start with noting how Will Hochman conveys a sense of what the CCCCs might mean to us—despite not being able to attend the conference this year. I invite you to think about the many sessions that Joel Wingard reviews so concisely and expertly. And I invite you to take a look at the variety of ways people viewed the waves created by the Research Network Forum. Ultimately, I hope that you find this review re-newing (in the sense of Misty Rudd’s piece on “Re-Conferencing”) and engaging, and I invite you to add to the field with your own particles and waves. Work Cited Legler, Gretchen. “Particle Wave Field Exercise” LitSite Alaska, 24 Nov. 1997. Web. 1 Aug. 2009. < http://litsite.alaska.edu/workbooks/legler3.html >. |