up to 2003

I'm running out of reading time and, by the looks of things on this blog, you are too! That's ok. It's summer skidding into fall. I wish it were otherwise, but there's no ignoring the steady march toward beginnings...

So, I skimmed the next set of readings (many of which I heard while in the audience, so I have the advantage of memory to lean on). Thematics that rise to the top in this set: diverse community of practitioners that make up the field (i.e., includes 2-year college teachers), the role of race in understandings and practices of rhetoric and the connection to writing and identity, and the hybridity of scholarship in the field (Bishop's piece is part memoir, part institutional history, part call-to-action, and part poem; Lovas's includes multi-media). With this last bit, it's become increasingly the case that people are trying to do scholarship differently, to practice what they preach in the classroom by mixing genres and mediums in scholarly writing too.

What also stands out to me, and what gave me a sense of belonging when I first went down this road, is the sense of community that pervades our work as scholars and teachers--understanding community as plural, as that which encompasses (and does not resolve or fully integrate) multiple differences. There is an ethos of caring and commitment that I find very welcoming and...unique in the context of academic culture.

Selfe's essay has functioned as a kind of siren. The important relationship between technology & literacy has only gained steam since she wrote in 1998. What counts as "writing" has changed dramatically...she got that long ago, and we're living with the reality of that right now in our classrooms.