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Articles Conference Reviews |
2011OverviewAn Introduction to the 2011 4Cs Review: Your Conference Story
“Finally, this convention wouldn’t be at all possible without YOU—the presenters, chairs and attendees who, over the next few days, will literally make the conference.”—Malea Powell from this year’s “Greetings from the 2011 Program Chair”
I want to dedicate this review of the 62nd Annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta, Georgia to all of you who attended—and to those of you who could not make it to Atlanta. As with the conference, this review could not happen without your wit, wisdom, and fine presentations. I and all the other members of the editorial collective that put together the 2011 4Cs Review in Kairos hope that this review represents your fine work accurately and well. We also hope that the review extends, and maybe even complicates, the ideas presented in Atlanta in April of 2011. And, if we are really lucky, it may even remind you of the fine ‘extra-curricular’ activities that occurred around the conference, such as the memorable St. Martin’s party at Turner Field—where you could test your ability to pitch, hit, and eat more pulled pork than a person ever should. But what we really want to remind everyone who attended of in this review are the “stories” that you can read in this review. If you read through all the reviews, one of the first stories that you can read is Anne O’Meara’s review of session A.30, “The Power of Stories: Narrative as Action”. In this review you can read about the way narrative can be used across a variety of contexts in composition and rhetoric. Maybe you can even, through the comment function in the Kairos wiki, add your story about attending this session to the review here. If you continue on into the B Session reviews, you’ll encounter Michelle LaFrance’s fine review of a featured session by Gary Greene called "Secrets of Cherokee History: A Storyteller's View". Here you can see the way that LaFrance makes connections between Greene’s exquisite craft and the craft of research and writing in composition. Or, as LaFrance thoughtfully puts it: I went to Greene looking for something a little different in a full day of sessions on research and theory. What I found was instead a reminder that story is central to our craft. A reminder that—researcher, theorist, administrator, teacher—we are all always at heart story tellers, we are all the interpreters of the history we witness and share.
I hope that everyone here will bear witness to the fine stories that populate this review of the 4Cs in Atlanta, and I hope that you will deign to add your story to our story here—enlarging this review and the field as a whole. |