Lead article for the latest issue of College English is Welch's  "'We’re Here, and We’re Not Going Anywhere': Why Working-Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter  (http://www.ncte.org/journals/ce/issues/v73-3). I devoured it. If you haven't already, read it as soon as you can. Wowza.

Join us in Texas in March! You'll be glad you did.

Conference website: http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/index.html
 
NEW deadline for proposals: January 15, 2011, with notification soon after.
For expedited review, submit by January 7. You'll receive notification before January 15!

Writing Democracy: A Rhetoric of (T)Here
For the 2011 Federation Rhetoric Symposium, we invite proposals for panels (3-5 presenters), individual papers, poster presentations, video presentations, or other formats that address any aspect of the conference theme, especially with respect to the shifting dimensions of the local rhetorical landscape in an increasingly global world.

Keynote Speakers include Nancy Welch, University of Vermont, David Gold, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, John Duffy, University of Notre Dame, David Jolliffe, University of Arkansas-Lafayette, and Michelle Hall Kells, University of New Mexico, Elenore Long, Arizona State University, and Jerrold Hirsch, Truman State University. Please note conference updates for details about confirmed speakers and other items of interest.

March 9-11, 2011
Commerce, Texas
conference website: http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/

CFP at http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/cfp.html

We've received many wonderful proposals already, but we wanted to extend the invitation again to those who may have missed their invitation to this can't-miss event. 

Featured speakers include Nancy Welch, whose presentation "What We Teach When We Teach (Only) Moderation and Civility" is sure to inspire, incite, provoke. Visithttp://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/nancy-welch.html for more.

Lead article for the latest issue of College English is Welch's  "“We’re Here, and We’re Not Going Anywhere”: Why Working-Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter  (http://www.ncte.org/journals/ce/issues/v73-3). I devoured it. If you haven't already, read it as soon as you can. Wowza.

Join us in Texas in March! You'll be glad you did.


____________________________________
Writing Democracy: A Rhetoric of (T)Here Increasingly, humanities scholars and educators are attending to the local, the everyday, the public, and the “ordinary.” Trends like these in rhetoric and composition suggest the field has taken what Paula Matthieu has called “the public turn” (Tactics of Hope, 2005) and foreground the real-world implications of and applications for our work. Such trends also illuminate tensions and stark contrasts between constructs like public and private (Welch, Living Room, 2008), local and global (Gold, Rhetoric at the Margins, 2008), here and there, us and them (Duffy, Writing From These Roots, 2007).

It is in this sense that local rhetoric both connects--at times literally--and separates us from the rest of the world.  Thus, March 9-11, at Texas A&M-Commerce, we bring together scholars, researchers, historians, students, journalists, archivists, artists, and teachers to examine our various and expanding notions of (t)here with the following questions in mind:

  • How do we “write democracy”?
  • How do we identify the local, the global, and democracy in everyday contexts?
  • To what end(s) might we identify and draw boundaries around here/there? us/them? local/global? What role does this identification play in a participatory democracy?
  • How might local rhetoric enable change (locally, regionally, nationally, globally)?
  • What is local rhetoric’s role in promoting equity, social justice, and/or democracy for both here and there?
  • How might local rhetoric hinder equity or other aspects of social justice?
  • How might local and global rhetoric be embedded in a variety of texts and to what end?
  • To what extent has “the public turn” across the disciplines, including composition studies, already begun this process through engagement in university-community research and projects? And how might something like the Federal Writers’ Project, part of FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s, serve to link all our projects nationwide to tell America’s story today in its local and global contexts as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?

For the 2011 Federation Rhetoric Symposium, we invite proposals for panels (3-5 presenters), individual papers, poster presentations, video presentations, or other formats that address any aspect of the conference theme, especially with respect to the shifting dimensions of the local rhetorical landscape in an increasingly global world. We understand this theme to be inherently interdisciplinary in nature, thus we seek proposals in areas that include Rhetoric and Composition, Linguistics, Literacy Studies, Film Studies, Pop Culture, English Studies, and American Studies, and all areas of the Humanities (including Art, History, Drama, Creative Writing).  We also request proposals from journalists, librarians, curators, archivists, and others concerned with preservation and access.

Keynote Speakers include Nancy Welch, University of Vermont, David Gold, University of Tennessee-Knoxville,  John Duffy, University of Notre Dame, David Jolliffe, University of Arkansas-Lafayette, and Michelle Hall Kells, University of New Mexico, Elenore Long, Arizona State University, and Jerrold Hirsch, Truman State University, . Please note conference updates for details about confirmed speakers and other items of interest (http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/)

The Federation Rhetoric Symposium is part of an annual series “A Symposium in Rhetoric” that has welcomed many notable speakers to North Texas since the first meeting in 1973. These keynoters have included Patricia Bizzell, Deborah Brandt, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Sonja Foss, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Richard Enos, Cynthia Self, James Kinnevy, Hugh Burns, Kenneth Burke, Wayne Booth, Stephen Toulmin, and many others.

**Deadline for Submissions of 250-Word Abstract: January 15, 2011, with notifications before end of January**
For expedited review, submit by January 7. You'll receive notification before January 15!

Electronic submission preferred. Registration and additional conference information available soon.

Email submissions to [email protected]

Ground mail submissions to
Shannon Carter, Department of Literature and Languages, Texas A&M-Commerce, PO Box 3011, Commerce, Texas 75429-3011
 
To celebrate our most famous early graduate, Texas A&M-Commerce organized the Sam Rayburn Symposium from 1975 to 2001. In 2011, we return to this tradition--remembering Sam Rayburn on the 50th anniversary of his stepping down from service as US Speaker of the House.

Learn more about themes and speakers at Sam Rayburn Symposium from 1975-2001 here.
 
Texas A&M-Commerce's most famous early graduate. Learn more about him here, at The Handbook of Texas, "Famous Texans," and the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

    Author

    Much of Writing Democracy's framework emerged from Shannon Carter's (Texas A&M-Commerce) collaborations with co-organizer Deborah Mutnick (Long Island University-Brooklyn) and others involved with this work. With the endlessly creative Susan Stewart (Texas A&M-Commerce), Shannon worked with Deborah to develop the project that became Writing Democracy.

    Deborah has been tireless in her efforts to engage a new Federal Writers' Project for the 21st century. Shannon has appreciated the opportunity to help bring together the first organized forum in what we hope will be a long line of similar events.

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