WSRL 2004 Presentation Abstracts

A B C D E F G H J K L M O P Q R S T V W X Z

Ackerman, John M.--The Rhetorical Capacity of Neighborhood
Different conceptions of education and society lead to very specific forms of curriculum and pedagogy, which in turn embody designs for social futures.--Cope & Kalantzis, Multiliteracies

My paper takes the philosophies and policies of the New London Group at their word by arguing that Rhetoric and Literacy studies must focus more squarely on the multiple “publics” and public spaces that constitute the public sphere (Hauser, 1999). Simply put, our curricula will keep pace with a globalized society if we allow for the discursive and material domain of “neighborhood.” This will necessarily entail more than the importation of theoretical work of Harvey, Gregory, Lefebvre and others. It will require a disciplinary identity and raft of critical/empirical methodologies so that, as scholars and teachers, we “go there” as often and with the same vigilance and spirit that we bring to professional domains and classrooms.

Our history has been one that readily equates “writing” or “composition” or “literacy” with the works, days, and texts of the university; and while this legacy has enabled the formation of a discipline, or inter/discipline (Goggin, 2000), our “social future” and the social futures of our stakeholders lead me to argue for more attention to locale , as Appadurai (2000) defines the material, historical construct in which we live, outside of school and encompassing school. Neighborhood is not, in my paper, a replacement term for “discourse community” or its variations. Neighborhood gains rhetorical capacity because it is a material and discursive domain that operates isotopically and heterotopically. Where we live, work and play have been codified and homogenized but in each location we find the capacity for reflection and engagement.

My paper will review the invention of neighborhood as a design construct in architectural and urban design practices in line with what deCerteau (1984) has termed the “concept city.” My goal will be to open neighborhoods up as sites for interrogation and participation, as represented in the notion of the “insurgent architect” by Harvey (1999) and in the literacy practice of “scenario planning” from Lankshear & Knobel (2003). To illustrate, I will draw from my on-going study of a first-tier urban neighborhood (the first ring of sprawl in the early 20 th century) that illustrates both the constructive and invasive designs of professional designers and how this locale has the capacity for resistance, accommodation, and vitality. With implications toward course work and curricula, I will end with the Tschumai's (1999) prospects for a new architectural practice that combines the disciplinary components of “concept and experience, image and use, image and structure” to produce a new image of the “conditions” that gave rise to new architectural forms in the first place: “No more master plans, no more locating in a fixed place, but a new heterotopia” (p. 176).

Al-Abdullah, Rita--Genre and New Media Literacy
Competing definitions of genre characterize it variously as similar forms of discourse, audience, modes of thinking or rhetorical situations. This poses a dilemma for theorists. According to Miller, a stable classifying concept of genre that is rhetorically valid must be devised for genre theory to serve as an explanatory principle to interpret and invent texts. Miller (1984; 1994) believes the value of genre study resides in its emphasis on the social and historical dimension of rhetoric: “ a theoretically sound definition of genre must be centred not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish. (p. 23 ).” At the turn of the millennium, competing conceptions seem to have coalesced, achieving a synthesis which Coe (2002) defines as “..a socially standard strategy, embodied in a typical form of discourse, that has evolved for responding to a recurring type of rhetorical situation (p.197).” Bazerman (1995, 2002) establishes the broad theoretical framework of genre analysis, observing that “genres and the activity systems they are part of provide the forms of life within which we make our lives” noting that this is true of “our systems of work, creativity, community, leisure, and intimacy (p. 15).”

With the advent of digital media, conceptions of literacy, like genre, are evolving. According to Gunther Kress, literacy is currently being reconceptualized because it can no longer be limited to language as the primary means of communication since language alone cannot convey the meaning of a multimodal text. A theory of literacy then must account for new media's multimodal discourse that can simultaneously engage the senses through sound, image, movement, color and graphics. In Literacy in the New Media Age , Kress (2003) identifies genre as the central category in literacy. He does so to validate the necessity of reconceptualizing what we consider to be text. His aim is to broaden the concept of text, from thinking of text not just as print text, but rather the result of social action: “If we do extend the category of genre to modes other than linguistic ones, it will need to be defined in non-mode specific ways (p. 86).”

Banning, Marlia--Local Empathy, Global Justice: The Politics of Resentment
Criticism of criticism has appeared in U.S. mainstream media and public dialogue with accelerating frequency since the September 11, 2001 attacks. On a national and global scale, t he censuring of dissent and criticism itself is clearly a political effort to shut down debate in various arenas of public discourse. Recently, this national cultural politic has coincided with a discourse emerging in English Studies that echoes, to my ear, the national pattern. Though not meaning to equate the powers of national and global political machinery with scholarship in English Studies, I do want to foreground, for my argument, that criticism of criticism is appearing locally in English and globally at the same time.

Some scholars in English Studies are questioning whether the agenda of critical pedagogy adequately serves white working-class students—and in one case middle-class students—in composition classrooms. Although divergent in their foci and analyses, these works converge in their proposal that critical pedagogy withdraw its critical agenda in order to affirm students' identities. Through its prescription for what I term “local empathy” for students' culture and identity, this position preserves a number of silences, perhaps the most damning of which is the significance of a politics of resentment in which students traffic. Resentment is fundamentally rooted in unequal power relations, as Nietzsche observed, and premised on the key “practice of defining one's identity through the negation of the ‘other'” (McCarthy The Uses of Culture 84). This politic is expressed in everyday and public venues; it always involves a displacement premised on the inability to speak or act directly; and it results in the expression of negative, emotionally loaded beliefs that are directed laterally or at subordinate groups.

While those voicing this position note the repeated expressions of resentment by working-class and middle-class students, they stop short of investigating its significance either for literacy instruction or the landscape in which the discourse circulates. It is a mistake, I think, to over-emphasize the local plight of students while under-emphasizing the macro context and it material and discursive effects on students. Masking, ignoring, or redirecting attention away from the politics of resentment in order to affirm students' subjectivity only re-inscribes regressive class and race relations in the long run, and misses the crucial work that this cultural politics indirectly performs for a variety of elite, corporate and government interests. Ultimately, if inadvertently, this critique of the critical in composition classrooms becomes complicit with elitist, nationalist, and transnational capitalistic agendas and practices.

The politics of resentment functions to displace attention from material conditions, including the new economy and work order attending changing national and global conditions, that are likely to impact our students and all of our lives. In this paper, I illustrate the critique that this position offers and suggest what is troubling about it for literacy instruction . I then elaborate on the material conditions that have given rise to the politics of resentment and demonstrate its central function, which is to displace attention from, and thus stifle public debate over, class, gender and race formations. Because anti-critical discourses and the cultural politics of resentment will likely define the social landscape and structures of emotions through which students read texts and the world, I argue that these discourses become the topics of literacy and rhetorical instruction.

Bauer, Holly--Institutionalizing ‘Good English': Grammar Ideals, School Writing, and the University of California's Examination in Subject A
This paper describes and analyzes attitudes towards student writing that emerge in policies and practices involving the University of California's Examination in Subject A. This analysis of the historical legacy of the Examination in Subject A will be used to argue that the exam helps both to create and maintain a problematic and reductive view of writing as a set of isolable technical skills that are out there and that can be learned once and for all.

Beatty, Jamie; Nordbrock, Anita--Understanding the Language of Aviation: Communication-related Problems and Concerns
Since September 11, 2001, the aviation industry has come under closer scrutiny concerning issues of aviation safety and how to make the skies safer. In the field of aviation, accidents usually happen because of mechanical failures, weather problems, and/or human/pilot error.

Several scholars have addressed the community and workplace literacy of aviation and its communication-related problems (Beneke, 1993; Cushing, 1994; Ott, 2003). In the analysis of several airplane crashes by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), investigators have been able to directly attribute the problems to communication-related issues of ambiguity, reference, intonation, and inferred meaning. Such confusion has resulted in fatal crashes, accidents, and near misses. The linkage of imprecise talk to such incidents should be of concern not only to the workers in aviation but also to anyone who steps into an aircraft.

The discourse of aviation (Roger, alpha, bravo, Charlie, delta, echo, ATO, TSA, ASRS, IACTFLAP, etc.) is a mystery to people who are not in the field. It is a powerful global language which excludes outsiders but demands accuracy of Standard English which also is skewed by speed, radio interference, and style of delivery which has to occur within set parameters. This paper especially describes and provides examples of specific acts of literacy, especially oral communication, vital to this field/profession. We will open a critical dialogue about aviation safety issues and the misunderstandings that result from the use of English as the language of aviation communication in this multicultural/multilingual industry. It will make connections with recent scholarship regarding aviation safety, cockpit training and aviation communication skills.

Begert, Sonia Apgar--English Lit, Alt/Dis, an' All Dat
Critics of allowing students' use of alternative literacies in undergraduate courses attack (among other things) what they perceive to be a lack of academic rigor in classroom. This paper investigates what happened when students from disempowered backgrounds used alternative literacies in a number of English literature survey courses--generally the venue of some of the most traditional academic discourse. Examining ways in which "Literature" is both ideologically determined and politically significant, students engaged in the production of alternative discourses, examining not only the variety of literacies they might enact, but also the consequences of those choices, both within the academy and beyond.

Beles, Kate--Writing to Power: Academic Genres and the Negotiation Between Assimilation and Critique
I will draw on the work of C. Bazerman, David Russell, and Anis Bawarshi in order to discuss the tensions raised by genre theorists for writing instructors who hope to offer students ways to gain greater control of their own language. Employing Bazerman's definition of genres as “forms of life, ways of being, frames for social action,” I will suggest ways for writing instructors to help students simultaneously critique and assimilate academic genres. I will use Anis Bawarshi's ideological understanding of genres as places in which “communicants enact and reproduce specific situations, actions, relations, and identities” while also negotiating with Russell's claim that students must learn to appropriate academic genre conventions in order to be heard within the academy. I will then outline some possible pedagogical strategies to navigate the tension between students' need to appropriate academic genres and their right to understand the ideologies that are inherent within these genres.

Bensel-Meyers, Linda--The Rhetoric of the NCAA and Corporate Erosion of Higher Education
With the erosion of federal funding for higher education and the economic instability of states required to pick up the slack, institutions of higher education have been forced to lobby directly with corporate interests, compromising not only research agendas but the entire academic mission of the university. Because higher education was established to preserve and perpetuate those humanistic values not encouraged within a capitalistic system, the corporate takeover of higher education has resulted in the erosion of a socially-responsible rhetoric and its attendant motives. I contend that the destructive effects of this evolution of corporate governance are nowhere more evident than in the rampant growth of intercollegiate athletics.

The history of intercollegiate athletic/academic reform movements reveals how prevalent and persistent the conflict between collegiate sports and the academic mission has been. However, it wasn't until the NCAA co-opted oversight of each program's academic mission via manipulative rhetoric such as “student athlete” and “athletic scholarship” that we completely lost control over the problem. Although the Knight Commission's two reports have revealed the primary problems—rampant commercialism, the facility “arms race,” declining graduation rates, and lack of presidential control—none of these problems can really be addressed until we remove the NCAA from its rhetorical role as the public's academic guardian. The only way for this to happen is to remove the NCAA from the business of athletic scholarships as a way to regulate trade by exposing the commercial motive behind their rhetoric.

Bolton, Micheal Sean--Texting the Body: The Problem of Identity in Cyberspace
In her essay “Making Theories for Different Worlds: Making Critical Differences,” Threadgold observes the essential relationship of literacy to self-image. According to Threadgold, individuals' self-images are defined “through the interaction between self and culture” by means of signifying systems (229). In the interaction of individuals with society, the body itself becomes a sort of text which is read and interpreted by others. The ability to employ and to manipulate appropriate signifying systems to establish self-image constitutes an important type of literacy in our society. Identity, when viewed in this light, is never a completed project, but is always a work in progress. However, it is important to remember that bodies are always pre-inscribed with certain socially valued factors such as race, gender and socioeconomic background. All of these factors can serve as obstacles to the construction of a socially successful identity, as they may result in the development of literacy practices not valued in social settings—such as educational or business institutions—which have been culturally and historically defined to be determinants of success.

Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media , notes that the advent of electronic media such as the telephone, radio, film and television in the twentieth century served to change our culture's definition of what it means to be literate in society. As the preferred means of information acquisition shifted from the printed word to the spoken word (via telephone and radio) and later to the union of spoken language and the visual image (via television and film), definitions of literacy, as well as our senses of identity within society, also shifted (McLuhan 1964). With the emergence of the recent Internet technology, literacy practice, and its role in identity construction, is once again shifting, this time from the visual and auditory back to the textual. As Mark Poster notes, “…the phenomenon of communicating at a distance through one's computer, of sending and receiving digitally encoded messages, of being ‘interactive' has been the most popular application of the Internet” (88). Internet tools for communication such as e-mail, chat rooms and instant messaging promote the employment of text to create identity. Whereas theorists such as Terry Threadgold speak of creating identity by “making bodies literate,” the Internet has created social settings in which individuals' bodies are essentially text.

Recent advances in computer sciences, particularly Internet technology and the cyber communities it has engendered, force us to again reassess identity and its construction and interpretation in on-line social settings. In the cyber-environment of the Internet the absence of physical bodies raises a number of questions with regard to identity and its construction. I will be discussing the various ways in which writers on cyber culture have envisioned the nature of identity and community in what has been popularly termed cyberspace, and the implications these visions have for the inhabitants of cyber-environments. In addition, I will address some of the issues involved with identity formation and social interaction in a setting wherein identities are constructed almost exclusively using text.

Bowman, Jim--"A Few Good Listeners”: Rhetorical Dimensions of Listening Project Methodology in Civic Discourse and Public Politics
New Rhetorical and contemporary theories of rhetoric typically privilege transactional, interactive relations of rhetors and audiences. However, few scholars of rhetoric explicitly examine the rhetorical dimensions of listening, and how listening can itself be theorized as efficacious rhetorical strategy. Questions that rhetoricians have often failed to consider include the following: What does it mean to be a “good listener?” What are the political consequences of effective and ineffective listening? How is listening a constitutive element of rhetorical action? What ethical responsibilities and problems accompany listening as rhetorical action?

Within civic discourse and grassroots political activism, listening has long been used for strategic purposes. Two decades ago, the Rural Southern Voice for Peace (RSVP) initiated its first “Listening Project,” which trained volunteers to conduct one-on-one interviews in order to “bring forth the determination of people in the community to explore new ideas and develop their own solutions for change.” Today, Listening Projects continue through the work of other organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Currently, the Tucson chapter of AFSC is in the midst of a “Listening Project on Peace and Security.” Dozens of trained volunteers have visited Tucson community members and listened to their thoughts about issues of peace and security that affect people locally, especially along Arizona's troubled borders, and nationally, as our military engages in armed conflict . Results of the interviews will be used to create a formal report, local street theater performances, media outreach initiatives, and other public actions.

This presentation will briefly survey how rhetorical theory has typically conceptualized listening and then reflect on the AFSC listening project's rhetorical dimensions, and how theories of rhetoric can grow from more sophisticated attention to listening as an ethical strategy for political and personal action.

Branch, Kirk--Trickster makes this classroom: Pedagogic Rhetoric and the Aporia of Reproduction
In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde describes the ways that tricksters in tales from around the world create a porous environment, noting the etymological link of “pore” -- from the Greek “poros” meaning ‘passageway' -- to “opportunity.” In these stories, tricksters create burrows with more than one entrance, which serves them as an easy mode of escape. They also are expert at sealing up those entrances, thus turning escape routes into traps for what they prey upon, or for what preys upon them, in the burrow. They close up pores, in other words; Hyde notes that humpback whales create a net of bubbles to confuse prey, and that the octopus clouds water with an ink to enable escape, linking natural history to these trickster stories. What these tricksters do “is turn an escape route into a trap, a hole into a snare, a poros into an aporos , a clear medium into an aporia” (49). Hyde connects the rhetorical meaning of aporia - “a contradiction or an irreconcilable paradox” -- to these trickster stories: “To experience aporia is to be caught in a tunnel with a fire at either end, to be bewildered by clouds of ink or encircled by a net of bubbles. No matter how many times you reverse yourself, you're still caught. Aporia is the trap of bafflement, invented by a being whose hunger has made him or her more cunning than those who only think to travel forward through a transparent world” (49).

Bourdieu and Passeron, in Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture, perform an amazing feat of sealing up multiple exits in an argument that, while adroitly dodging a mechanistic model, manages to make a stunning case for the notion that under all circumstances, in all cultures, in all cases, under any pedagogical model, schools function primarily as a means of class reproduction, and any notion that it functions otherwise is part of the means of reproduction. Thus, school, first and foremost and always, irreversibly, reproduces and justifies existing class divisions in society; teachers can do no more, and no less, in their classes. The exits are sealed, and we can feel our skin begin to sear from the fire coyote has built to keep us in. This is, by the terms of this conference theme, a Big Rhetoric of pedagogy.

As Hyde indicates, escaping that trap is also a matter of learning to move in other ways than traveling “forward through a transparent world” (49). These models of strong reproduction demand response, simply because they are so compelling and because, if we take them seriously, they have rhetorically sealed off our exits. Following Hyde, I argue that a response to such aporia demands as well a trickster mentality.

In this paper, I look at two possible resources for a trickster. Myles Horton, the founder and longtime director of the Highlander Folk School, demonstrates a practical example of moving sideways, resisting the urge to seek out the transparent, and challenging through practice the limits placed on education and educators. Within an official educational institution, however, such movement has even more limits, and I turn to the “pedagogic device” developed by Basil Bernstein to suggest that teachers can seek out vulnerable places in processes of reproduction, not to escape those processes, or to avoid them, or to pretend they are not operating, but only, if in small ways, to find a place in which to resist them in potentially productive ways. Like the trickster, such action requires continual rhetorical flexibility and a willingness to keep responding, to keep challenging systems and processes that will adjust, change, and constantly challenge back.

Cahill, Lisa; Susan Kay Miller; Veronica Pantoja; Shelley Rodrigo--Roundtable Abstract: Opening the Door of the Garret: Knowledge Construction and Literacy Development in Graduate Student Writing Groups
In this roundtable, the presenters will describe the potential benefits of participating in a graduate student writing group and will also discuss and theorize how academic writing groups can serve as a source of support to help graduate students as they research, write, and contribute to their fields' conversations and knowledge. In addition, graduate student participation in academic writing groups will be discussed as a means of challenging traditional academic notions that “good” or scholarly writing is achieved when individuals labor alone. Graduate students can develop a set of literacies as they interact with writing group members that empowers them to simultaneously break into the discourses of power in their fields and into the larger academic environment.

In Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only (1996), Linda Brodkey describes a common image of the writer: “When I picture writing, I often see a solitary writer alone in a cold garret working into the small hours of the morning by the thin light of a candle” (p. 59). This roundtable proposes that graduate student writing groups can be used to contest the myth that scholarly writing must occur in isolation because, through writing groups, the participants, in essence, invite others “into the garret” as they compose. In writing groups, graduate students participate in the social construction of knowledge in their discipline, practicing the literacies that will gain them access to the discipline while they help each other negotiate knowledge construction and decide how to participate in or challenge certain literate practices or acts.

Participants in a writing group can blur the boundaries between student writing groups used in classrooms (Gere, 1987), collaborative writing (Lunsford & Ede, 1984), and professional writing groups (Spigelman, 2000). Specifically, graduate students can use their participation in writing groups to further initiate themselves into the practices of writing for and about their disciplines. In essence, they can practice, construct, and exchange disciplinary, theoretical, practical, and pedagogical knowledge through their group discussions about their writing-in-progress. This roundtable will also focus on the ways that graduate student writing group participation can provide students with a safe and productive space to “practice” and enhance skills and literacies necessary for more confident participation in scholarly discourse.

Ultimately, graduate student writing groups can function as a way of making participants more aware of the tacit knowledge about genre-specific, disciplinary, and professional discourse expected by individuals and groups who are in positions of power and who, thus, often regulate access to and membership in discourse communities. Without explicit discussions of such expectations and without methods for navigating or negotiating particular literacies, graduate students may run the risk of remaining outside the power structures that serve to validate knowledge and that have the potential to effect change. Hence, writing groups function as communities that make space for graduate student socialization and empowerment.

Callaway, Micheal--The Slow Creep: Hip Hop Music, the mainstream and Intercultural Rhetoric
Although greatly maligned in the popular press, hip-hop music fosters a critical awareness of environment, offers notions about the public sphere and deals with issues of empowerment. Perry Hall (1999) keenly recognizes that “black music functions to validate black humanity in cultural spaces separate and distinct from dominant culture” (142). At this moment, hip-hop music is the strongest form of Black influence on the mainstream or White America; the lyrics and fashion sense of the hip-hop culture is now being accepted and consumed at a steadily increasing rate by Caucasians. However, with that influence comes a great deal of misunderstanding. There is no transferability of the different ways of knowing and experiencing the world. In “Talking Across Difference: Intercultural Rhetoric and the Search for Situated Knowledge,” Linda Flower (2003) argues that we need to formulate some sort of intercultural rhetoric that allows us to “talk across differences.” The “situated knowledge” of hip-hop music is very much different from that of mainstream America. My presentation will position hip-hop music within African-American oral tradition and then examine reasons for the differences in “situated knowledge”—focusing specifically on the theory of Pierre Bourdieu to explain the differences.

Much like Blues music of past eras, hip-hop is an official literacy outlet and can be placed within oral tradition that has been associated with African-Americans over the past 400 years. The slow but steady creep of hip-hop music from a situated knowledge within the African-American community into the mainstream calls for an intra/intercultural rhetoric to understand the difference and embrace multiple voices.

Canella, Chiara--A New Civic Engagement: Applying the Social Justice Model
Traditional models of civic participation are inadequate in fostering democratic engagement in a multicultural society because they amount to teaching students to adopt prevailing discourses of power. Conventional models of civic education teach students that their success depends upon their accommodating themselves to existing systems. Few programs consider what resources are needed for the self-identified priorities of their communities. In contrast, the social justice model offers students the chance to learn not only how to participate in prevailing systems, but to contest and reimagine them. Students become actors, and the objects of their civic engagement come to represent their values. Failure to teach students to participate in civic activities and change institutions and services keeps in place exclusionary discourses of power. Only when civic literacy seeks to re-create educational and social systems to equitably reflect the priorities of all participants may we fulfill the promise of a democratic education.

Card Laura--The Re-Positioning of Business Writing in the University
This presentation examines how business writing has been re-positioned in the discourse of the University of Utah's School of Business. National ranking systems, such as the one published by U.S. News and World Report, literally position schools in hierarchical standings. Rankings have power over business schools in material ways—including how they receive funding and other benefits connected with status. The School of Business is not currently ranked in the top 100 business schools, which positions it disadvantageously in the larger discourse of the business world. In looking for differentiating factors between the School of Business and top-ranked schools, it became evident that, among other things, the top-ranked schools usually emphasize a business writing curriculum. Under pressure to produce graduates who can successfully participate in the larger business discourse and help it rise in the national rankings, the School of Business is collaborating with the University Writing Program to create a rigorous writing curriculum, thereby re-positioning business writing in their business school discourse.

Carrion, Melissa--Pacifist Rhetoric and Military Women: Developing Critical Media Literacy
Feminist scholars such as Sara Ruddick have long proclaimed the manner in which women's identities are bound up in their ability to nurture life. Along with the anti-militarist stances of feminist critics like Cynthia Enloe and Eileen Feinmen, this has produced a rhetoric of feminist pacifism that rivals that of integrationist feminists who would demand female inclusion in military action, and I maintain has become increasingly influential in public perception regarding female soldiers.

This pacifist rhetoric has its roots in literature and history, from the suffragists to the strong emergence of pacifist sentiment during World War I, as well as the New French Feminists who have been significant in establishing both a modern sense of feminism as well as a consciousness of the implications of the female image as it is transposed and utilized through modern technology. With increasing concern for the “feminization” of American militarization, and what I contend is the concurrent mystification of violence and neo-imperialism that it allows for, it is important as rhetoricians and educators that we not only recognize the feminist anti-militarist rhetoric as consequential but also acknowledge the way in which it can be, and is often, even unknowingly, called upon and manipulated in popular media surrounding military conflict.

In order to investigate this issue I will examine these early feminist texts with regards to the manner in which they depict women as necessarily non-violent, and their tendency to resolve conflict in non-violent ways, or else resort to violence as only a last resort and necessary evil. I will then examine popular media representations from the most recent War in the Gulf, including newspaper and magazine articles as well as television news programs and dramatized productions (i.e. “made-for-TV movies) that depict both male and female soldiers, with attention to the way that the actions of female soldiers are justified through this pacifist rhetoric, as well as the way that the military action itself is made more palatable for public consumption through a focus on women's participation, rather than the more traditionally recognized tropes of masculine warfare.

Carter, Geof V.--From Stuttering to Style : The Power and Politics of Major Language Divisions from Locke's Essay on Human Understanding to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus
This paper traces John Locke's effort to maintain boundaries between languages in his Essay on Human Understanding . I submit that his effort to delineate a cognitive capacity between British and American English continues to inform language instruction insofar that implicit in the belief of fundamental differences between languages justifies and motivates what counts as a “standard dialect.” Locke's effort to make clear cognitive distinctions between languages informs such notion that one's perception of the world is essentially shaped by one's vocabulary as demonstrated in the misleading commonplace of Eskimos who are supposed to know more about “snow” given their lexical range. By examining Locke's argument in the context of his essay, I endeavor to show that the essential differences he posited between languages were politically motivated, particularly insofar as British-American and their other colonial interests were concerned, and that, moreover, such an investment in essential divisions between languages simplifies the complexity of language acquisition and possibilities for language instruction.

Clark, Irene L.--So What? When Graduate Students Write Thesis Proposals
I will discuss the problems graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences often encounter when they are confronted with the task of writing a thesis proposal. When asked to develop a proposal, a number of graduate students experience difficulties similar to those encountered by first year students in their Freshman Writing courses—that is, they lack understanding of the disciplinary context for which they are writing and of the expectations of the conversants within that community, who constitute their implicit audience. Like Freshmen, graduate students will immerse themselves in outside sources and incorporate their sources' arguments in their own texts. But they are insufficiently familiar with the genre of the graduate thesis to be able to use those sources as a mechanism for developing their own topic for research. Presenting the thesis proposal as a distinct genre with specific rhetorical goals and disciplinary conventions can enable students to enter the scholarly conversation with greater insight. This presentation will examine the political, social, and rhetorical context that informs the graduate thesis proposal and discuss genre based strategies that can enable students to construct a thesis proposal more successfully.

Clary-Lemon, Jennifer--Re Envisioning Research: Feminist Praxis and the Question of Academic Literacy
This talk analyzes two graduate Rhetoric and Composition seminars, Computers and Composition and Feminism and Composition , that have re-envisioned the possibilities of research as service. Questioning the dis -location of the graduate community, one “marked by the legacy of leisure time and characterized by expectations for virtuoso performance that recognize no real obligation to insure that claims for justice and action are worked out in material space,” (Vandenberg, in press), this talk explores distinctly service-oriented, community-based approaches to graduate research. Issues such as those outlined by Speakers 2 and 3, informed by service to communities outside the realm of academia, bring into graduate research a reminder of an ethic of care, the possibilities of transformation, and a return to some of the questions of feminist theorists: “Who will be affected by our research and how?” and “will our research contribute to a caring community?”(Noddings 1986). These projects, critical of the complex realities of perceiving academic literacy as a fundamental “good,” aim at making these the central questions of composition research and scholarship.

Cole, Kirsti--Revisiting the Sad Woman in the Basement: The Female Graduate Student Teacher and the First-year Composition Classroom
There is a long history of feminist scholarship analyzing the ways in which women are perceived in the writing classroom, but what happens when the power associated with the masculine title “Dr.” or “Professor” is removed? The framework of feminist theory about the female body teaching, the feminist methodology that Patricia Sullivan presents in Feminism and Metholdology in Composition Studies , and a survey conducted at Arizona State University in Fall 2003 establish a lens through which I explore this issue. In the survey, I asked female graduate student teachers to discuss the various ways in which they perform “instuctor” and how their pedagogies influence their self-presentation in the composition classroom. In my presentation I will investigate the possible implications of naming, performance and self-presentation that a female graduate student may face as a teacher as well as the possible and varying student perceptions of and reactions to feminist methodology and the female body teaching

Corbett, Steven J.--If You Want to Accommodate Me— Novel Me: The Pedagogical Potential of Bakhtin's Dialogism and Laughter
I will explore recent efforts by compositionists to incorporate Bakhtinian dialogic perspectives into their praxis. Specifically, two aspects of creative nonfiction that activate dialogic potentials in writers are treated: the possibilities of blurred genres, and the often overlooked role of laughter and humor in teaching writing.

Crowley, Sharon--They're Out to Get Us: Conspiracy Rhetoric and the Liberal Notion of Agency
This paper examines the emergence and proliferation of conspiracy rhetoric in American public discourse. Conspiracy rhetoric has grown in sophistication and intensity since the Cold War, and elaborate conspiracy theories have been constructed to explain the death of John F. Kennedy, pollution, and the 2001 attack on the Pentagon (not to mention the election of George W. Bush).

DaPra, Rebecca--“Seeking and Developing Empowerment in the College of Engineering
DaPra examines how changes in the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria over the last decade has encouraged the University of Utah's College of Engineering to rethink written and oral communication within the engineering classroom. (ABET's influence on the academy of engineering and the growing impact of how professionals in engineering have influenced ABET evaluation criteria will also be discussed.) Via a newly formed Center for Engineering Leadership, undergraduate engineering students are learning what their specialized rhetoric is and how to participate in that discourse. This presentation examines how engineering students are empowered by that discourse by increased literacy in it.

Dobyns, Ann--Writing's Cultural Capital in the Corporate University
The good news is that universities across the country are beginning to recognize the central role writing plays in education and thus are initiating writing reform. The bad news is that the demands of the corporate culture lead some administrators and faculty to define writing as corporate capital, or writing translated into the terms of the knowledge economy. Proficiency in writing becomes a skill necessary for the student's marketablility. In a move that parallels the conservative back to basics agenda manifested in “no child left behind” programs, writing is defined by its surface characteristics: grammar, syntax, use of evidence—countable subskills of the writing process. Such definitions enact both the post Ramist view of rhetoric and the “current-traditional model” of writing classes of the twentieth century but run counter to rhetorical approaches to the teaching of writing..

When professors of rhetoric attempt to enter the discussions about the reform of writing programs, all too often their voices have little weight; their positions little authority. In part this response is explainable by the strange position rhetoric professors hold in the academy. As Sharon Crowley has observed, “rhetoricians in English Departments are alienated from their colleagues in both literary studies and composition” (“Communication Skills” 90): often from their literary studies colleagues because of their association with writing, often a service program in English Departments and sometimes from their composition colleagues because of the theory/praxis split in some writing programs or the humanities/social science split in others. Sadly, the pecking order of the English Department is reenacted in the larger context of the university. Like Education, Writing, with its connection to pedagogy, is not considered a real discipline. Further, writing is something that everyone in the academy does and therefore is not “owned” by English departments.

And so, with little input from professors of rhetoric, the professionalization of writing in the knowledge economy of the corporate university had led to the appropriation of writing programs, displacement of some writing directors, and creation of a new class of professional writing instructors. With these changes, writing has the potential of becoming a flashier version of the old service course, one that teaches form separated from rhetorical engagement.

Donehower, Kim--Is Self-Sponsored Literacy Possible?
In a landmark essay in the May 1998 issue of CCC , literacy researcher Deborah Brandt coined the term “literacy sponsors” to mean “ any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way.... Sponsors set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty” (Brandt, 166-167). Literacy research has been strongly influenced by this paradigm ever since; Brandt's formulation is extremely useful to document the powerful relationships among institutions, models of literacy, and literacy practitioners.

However, for a certain type of person, literacy appears to be self-sponsored—acquired and practiced largely outside networks of institutional literacy sponsors. This presentation explores the possibilities of self-sponsored literacy, drawing on interview data from research with rural autodidacts. It examines the motivations and methods of these people, who avidly pursue reading and writing largely in isolation. Brandt's model is adapted to examine how the self can (and cannot) act as a sponsor, standing in for the kinds of powerful institutional sponsors Brandt describes.

Downs, Doug-- Powerful Discourses in the Teaching of First-Year Writing
This presentation studies how cultural discourses within and without the academy have positioned first-year writing instruction as basic and universal, imagining such instruction as remediating weak skills and preparing students to learn real content at other sites in the university. Drawing, as the other speakers do, on Bourdieu's notion of habitus and Gee's notion of Discourses, Downs examines the irony of Big Literacy's function, in relation to first-year writing, as limiting literacy by attempting “general writing skills instruction” (Petraglia) or “writing with no particular content” (Kaufer and Young). In claiming to teach a universal literacy, these powerful discourses instead teach almost no literacy at all.

Duffy, John--Letters from the Fair City: A Rhetorical Conception of Literacy
In this paper, I explore what I call a rhetorical conception of literacy. I contend that in contexts of developing literacy skills, such as those that prevail in many immigrant, migrant, and refugee communities, rhetorics of public and civic life influence how people learn, use, and value the possibilities of written language. To illustrate, I look at anti-immigrant letters published in a Midwestern newspaper between 1985 and 1995-letters that decried, among other things, the purported decline of "our Fair City," to quote one-and the responses to these by a group of Southeast Asian Hmong refugee writers. Reading the letters side by side, I highlight the relationships between the two sets of letters, the connections of content, form, language, and imagined audience to show how the rhetoric of the anti-immigrant letters became the basis in the Hmong community for new forms of "public writing," or what Susan Wells defined as the work of constructing a public sphere through discursive practices.

Endres, Bill--Not Paying Attention to Technology and Literacy: The Institutional Privileges and Power of Specialization in English Departments
A rhetorical conception of literacy stands in sharp contrast to standard treatments of literacy acquisition by immigrants, refugees, and adults generally, which are often framed in terms of lifeskill competencies, vocational training, and citizenship. Such treatments typically view literacy as instrumental; a means for assimilation into the dominant culture, political institutions, and economy of the United States. In a rhetorical perspective, literacy practice is framed more dynamically, located within arguments about race, language, history, and the place of the "other" in contemporary American life. In this way is literacy development seen as a response to rhetoric and the rhetorical worlds in which writers live, learn, and in some cases seek to intervene.

In Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention , Cynthia Selfe offers educators of English and language arts reasons for why it is important for them to pay attention to cultural forces—especially those of government and businesses—as they operate in ways Deborah Brandt describes as "sponsors of literacy" (19), working to "connect individuals to the human systems of their time and place" (6). Of particular concern to Selfe is the Clinton Administration's 1996 Technology Literacy Challenge, a nationwide educational initiative that offers as its vision for economic prosperity, "a twenty-first century where all students are technologically literate" (qtd. in Selfe 3). This initiative concerns Selfe in the ways that it "connect[s] individuals" to literacy and computerized technology, ways that Selfe views as serving these cultural forces' economic and political agendas and furthering or maintaining the power structures that advantage them. While Selfe addresses a few brief reasons for why English and language arts teachers tend to stay on the sidelines when it comes to computerized technologies—like their desire to "remain free to focus on the teaching and study of language, the stuff of real intellectual and social concern" (22)—her main purpose in explaining the ideologies at work in government and businesses is in hope that her critique will resonate with her readers and ultimately motivate them to "pay attention" and, more importantly, to act.

Although Selfe's book is important in seeing these larger systems and ideologies at work, it does little to help understand the forces at play that prohibit, discourage, or lead to the unresponsiveness of English and language arts teachers in paying attention to computerized technology and its linkage with technology. To understand this issue, a further analysis is necessary that focuses on the hegemony within English and language arts teachers' professional activities and professional structures. In my 20-minute paper, therefore, I will examine this issue, looking particularly at the power and privileges afforded by specialization. In doing so, I will use both John Higham's understanding of the role of specialization in organizing and generating knowledge in colleges and universities and Pierre Bourdieu's critique of scholasticism as it relates to the ideologies and practices at modern universities.

Fox, Regina Clemens--Digital Literacy Capital in the Composition Classroom
I will extend the concept of genre to explore the kinds of digital literacies that first year students come into college with from contexts both inside and outside of academic environments. If, as Cynthia Selfe suggests, much of the student population has been familiar with digital literacies from an early age on, then many students are already literate in many areas of technology when they begin first year Composition. Thus, they are likely to possess a cultural and literacy capital that we, as Composition instructors, can help them tap into, enabling them, as Anis Bawarshi notes, to position themselves within a genre and thereby “invent themselves” in order to begin to write. This presentation will discuss the results of a confidential survey conducted with first year writing students which aims at uncovering many kinds of literacies that students currently have, which instructors can help them build on to operate effectively in new genres of literacy.

Gould, Eric--Knowledge, Power, and Rhetoric
Universities clearly see themselves as players in the commercial market at large, whose economy increasingly claims to be “knowledge-driven.” We develop the investment of “human capital” for the “knowledge economy.” Knowledge in this market becomes decidedly utilitarian, important above all for its exchange value and its ability to contribute to institutional reputation. The outcome is clear: the academy has difficulty affirming the autonomy of knowledge apart from its market value and the gap has widened between the intellectual/symbolic and commodity values of knowledge in the university. Even if the contemporary university does not enjoy the same power for legislating cultural legitimacy that it once did, it still provides strong constructions of social reality by appearing to link the intellectual and the economic value of a degree as a credential. It also embraces corporate management and public relations strategies, professionalization of the disciplines, decentralized power structures with competitive incentives for growth, universalist (even if contradictory) mission statements, profitable ancillary products, and an interest in establishing knowledge as especially powerful in the home institution.

In the face of this egregious pursuit of the profit-motive—often masked by claims of “service to the community”—the agenda for liberal education has often seemed hopelessly idealistic, especially when we insist that knowledge exists “for its own sake.” The modern American university has experimented with both aesthetic humanism and a pragmatic education, but such abstract and philosophical motives for a liberal education—especially those of the humanities—frequently rub up against the impatient needs of global capitalism and the market maneuvers of the university itself, and appear to lose almost every time.

The reliability of knowledge, its ability to develop and replenish itself readily and to work for the lasting public good through ethical and interpretive functions, has more to do with its symbolic that its exchange value. Knowledge in liberal learning is based in a rhetorical context, in its staying power as argument. For our skeptically over-pragmatized age, there may not be such a thing as knowledge for its own sake, but many academics who embrace the need for a liberal education speak affectionately of the power of ideas as having an argumentative resilience. Thus in a liberal general education we must above all empower students through the art of rhetoric, joining with them to form a community of authorship. That is the basis of a democratic education, which is an education for democracy, an education that derives from democratic values, and an education that democratizes learning itself through argument . A t the very least, the university must be in the business of developing useful knowledge for the common good and not merely for individual gain or the gain of the disciplines. And while we are unlikely ever to agree about what that knowledge might be, we can define the “common good” as not merely a matter of doing good to others, or even just being good, but above all of the capacity to discern and argue for what is good. That is the difference between the democratic agenda for knowledge as power and professionalized knowledge that simply has exchange value.

Graff, Harvey J.--Lessons from the History of Literacy: Legacies for the Future
Harvey J. Graff reflects in part on the unusual opportunity that he confronts as the founding Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies and Professor of English and History at The Ohio State University--a transformed location especially for a social historian (even if an unusually interdisciplinary historian}.

Revisioning/reimagining myself and my contributions professional and academic-institutional provides an opportunity to foster, promote and even "institutionalize" a different and fresh, historically grounded but also expansive, critical, and comparative approach to literacy and its study. From the Department of English to the humanities and social sciences and beyond, I will attempt to bring historical perspectives and modes of understanding to new relationships institutionally and intellectually. This might be construed in terms of simultaneously deconstructing and reconstructing literacy studies differently, from historical ground(ing) upward and outward.

Greene, Cheryl--S for Scopic: Wellesian Visual Rhetorics and Myths of White Female Beauty
In my own years of obsession with the Welles films, I have come to call this central figure of desire and contradiction the Power Baby, the eating, sucking, foetus-like creature who... in Touch of Evil sucks candy and cigars in a face smoothed into featurelessness by fat as he redefines murder and justice according to desire...-- Houston

Touch of Evil , director Orson Welle's great film noir about a Mexican cop trying to solve a murder that takes place on the United States/Mexican border, has had a controversial history since its first release in 1958. To begin with, Orson Welle's was so infuriated by studio changes made to his film that he would never make another film in Hollywood ever again. In his battle with the studio, he produced copious director notes asking the studio to reedit the film and restore it to the way he had shot and cut the scenes. Welle's notes offer key insight into his method as a director and show the importance of key filmic elements like sound and voice – demonstrating how representation is constituted by much more than image. As an example, he discusses why he chose a mix of musical scores to recreate the sounds of music emanating from bars and restaurants for his long opening scene – where the camera, suspended on a crane, takes the viewer through the streets of the Mexican border town. The shot ends at the border where a car explodes just as the Mexican cop Vargas, (played by Charlton Heston), and his American wife Susan (played by Janet Leigh) enter into this highly contested geographical space.

Welles is very aware of the politics of representation, especially as a director working within the machinery of Hollywood and its emphasis on “big” productions. Likewise, he very knowingly engages the visual rhetorics that constitute the social construction of the border town and offers a complex look at the disparate groups of people competing for political and economic power in the border economy. Vargas, the Mexican cop, is actually there on his honeymoon with his wife Susan, and gets caught in the web of intrigue that surrounds the American detective Quinlan's search for supposed justice. The film twists and turns as Vargas tries to ascertain truth from fiction as well as justice and injustice. By comparing Welles film Touch of Evil with dominant visual discourses of power, I will interrogate the complex ways myths of white female beauty get reproduced. Can Welles actually offer a valid critique of these stereotypes or does the reproduction of them as rhetorical tropes merely reinscribe the dominant heirarchy of “whiteness” in the border economy?

My presentation will analyze Welle's film within the “networks of historical and social productions of meaning” (Pollock 305) of 1950's Hollywood. In particular, I am interested in discussing how Touch of Evil is problematic because of the way he chooses to image both Mexicans and women. Although his film does not correspond to the mainstream Hollywood industry of his day – his story's deeper mythic structures situate sexuality “where ethnicity and racial, cultural and geographical othering [provide] the necessary conditions for the representation of European male heterosexual fantasies about female sexuality” (Pollock 286). In my twenty minute presentation I will show brief excerpts of Touch of Evil to see how he engages the discourse of whiteness and female sexuality in a border town through his unique filmic techniques.

Hadjistassou, Stella K.--Second Language Literacy, Technology and the Sociopolitical Forces Influencing their Development
British colonialism, linguistic imperialism and the establishment of the US as the global power turned English into the global lingua franca with approximately 341 million native speakers of English and over 1 billion nonnative speakers of English (World Almanac 2004; Crystal 1997). These sociopolitical and economic conditions along with the explosive technological development fueled the need for second language literacy, as English is perceived to be the driving vehicle for social and economic empowerment. Developing second language literacy, however, is not free of controversy or political agendas, thus leading scholars and academic institutions to often debate what constitutes second language literacy, which frameworks need to be adopted to develop functional literacy, and what skills and knowledge should the learners acquire to be able to navigate through society. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: (1) What is second language literacy/illiteracy? (2) What are the theoretical frameworks proposed for the development of functional literacy in English as a Second Language (ESL)? (3) What role can technology and technological literacy play in enhancing ESL cultural awareness in ESL?

By incorporating the theoretical framework proposed by Venezky (1990), Gee (1990), Ferdman and Weber (1994), Sandra McKay (1993), Street (2001) and Joann Sullivan (2002), this paper first challenges the oversimplified literacy/illiteracy binary, and then acknowledge the need for second language literacy to expand beyond the traditional approach which states that literacy is the ability to deal with the written word. Second language literacy should no longer be confined to functional literary: the development of reading, writing, and arithmetic skills that allow an individual function in his/her community, but it should also consider the social, cultural, historical, political, and economic configurations of the target language, English. Second language literacy in English should not be limited to the hierarchical oral and written modalities imposed by the different theoretical frameworks for developing functional literacy. The aim of this paper is to advocate that there is a need to adopt a critical pedagogical approach by embracing the diversity of World Englishes and by avoiding filtering English through the lens of inner-circle language that reinforces hegemonic practices and creates power inequities.

Hamling, Josh--Multilingual Citizenship: Considering Ideological Models of Literacy in Educational Policy
I will discuss the historical and current impact of nationalism and assessment in arguments concerning bilingual education in the United States. I question how an autonomous model of literacy influenced by nationalistic goals has informed debates concerning bilingual education and consider the effectiveness of current models of bilingual education in addressing the various components of “citizenship” as expressed by Cope and Kalantzis (2000). Finally, I suggest that dual-language immersion possesses the greatest potential for fostering such citizenship.

Hawk, Byron-- Three Discourses on Power: Institutional, Affective, and Vital
Most histories of vitalism begin with Aristotle. Richard Hughes, for example, argues in "The Contemporaneity of Classical Rhetoric" that the modern, understood Aristotle is based on contemporary criticism and misses the historical Aristotle's basis in vitalism: the assumption that all of the arts, including rhetoric, are generative and essentially creative. Aristotle posits the concept of entelechy as the driving force of this creative power, one that he links to his theory of causes. Kenneth Burke picks up this notion of entelechy and builds his theory of motive out of it. Aristotle saw the natural world as operating from the principle of entelechy, but Burke, making the distinction between motion and action, restricts his interest in motive to language as symbolic action. In these articulations of vitalism, the configuration of the situation and the constructs of language create their own conditions of possibility that strive to be played out to completion. This re-conceptualization of classical and rhetorical theory, as I will argue here, provides an important way to look at power and its relationship to pedagogy. The material and textual compositions we create in the classroom compel students to move toward particular ends. Teachers need to recognize the conditions of possibility they are setting up in their classrooms as one of the primary points of power that affects students.

Hinojosa, Matt--Marginalizing Identity
I will use Kenneth Burke's concept of identification to examine how the characters Cordelia Chase and Faith seek to create their own identity through the influence of major characters. Cordelia and Faith attempt to shape their identities by associating with a marginalized group of students led by Buffy Sommers. In many ways, Cordelia and Faith's process of identification mirrors the process of identification in contemporary society. This process of identification is not always visual behind the curtain of the fantastic. Once revealed, viewers/students can enjoy a richer and deeper understanding of how rhetoric operates within popular culture.

Ho, Mei-ching--Cyber Literacy in ESL: Reexamining hypertexts in language learning websites
In the Effect of Hypertext on Processes of Reading and Writing , Charney points out that the appearance of hypertext is “a new and exciting development” which provides English teachers with crucial pedagogical implications and therefore needs to be critically examined. (2001, p. 86). In response to Charney's powerful call for examining the role of hypertexts in education, I suggest that professionals in the field of teaching English as second/foreign language (TESL/TEFL) consider what the influences of computer technology are and what the impacts on second/foreign language (L2/FL) learners and their instruction may be.

Although a number of studies have explored the role of cyber or online literacy in learners' reading and writing developments (Barnes, 1994; Gabor, 2002; Kupper, 1997; Olson, 1996; Snyder, 1995; Thomas, 1997), many of these studies look at educational contexts in which the majority of the students are native speakers of English. Few examine the relationship between ESL/EFL student's cyber literacy and their second language acquisition (SLA) and the effects of computer-based instructional materials such as language learning websites. The purpose of this paper is to explore the definitions of cyber literacy in both L1 and L2 contexts and to review relevant educational research on computer-assisted language learning and the relationship between cyber literacy and SLA.

Hoyt, Heather M.--Food Literacies in the Diaspora of Arab Women
Brian Street's theory of social literacies invites us to consider how conventions and contexts impact our definitions of literacy. If we take into consideration cultural contexts and ideologies when we speak of social literacies, then discourses about food have significant meaning. Talking and writing about food involves the social practices, taboos, and meanings that surround the preparation, serving, and sharing of food in a community. "Food literacies," as I call them, become a media for conveying social ideology and preserving heritage. For those living away from their communities, food literacies can help retain and perpetuate cultural memories and practices. In order to illustrate how food literacies function, I will examine oral and written accounts by women of Arab descent, who have immigrated or are the daughters of immigrants from Arab countries. One way these women have learned about and maintained connections to their Arab heritage in the US and Canada is through oral and written stories about Arabic food.

These food stories may be passed on through family members, religious organizations, or even commercial enterprises like restaurants and mainstream cookbooks. Interviews with several women of Arab descent will highlight the role of oral food literacies, or the familial and mythic stories in which food figures prominently. The interviewees also reference written texts, particularly cookbooks, as resources for food literacies. Visual representations of food also play an important role in these resources, since some readers may not be familiar with the ingredients and dishes. These cookbooks and informal family notebooks not only tell how to prepare the food, but also provide commentary on cultural conventions and history, as well as personal accounts. Janet Theophano, in her book, Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote , examines how earlier communities of American and British women shared their culinary knowledge and their personal experiences through written narratives in the form of cookbooks. She discusses literacy in terms of written accounts, but I think the term "literacy" should be stretched to include oral and visual literacies, as well. In the case of Arabic cuisines, food theorists like Sami Zubaida and Bert Fragner, point out that cultural literacies are integral to understanding how community members interact with one another and outsiders. Food literacies incorporate knowledge of cultural histories, their contexts, and ways to maintain cultural memories and practices through oral, written, and visual texts. The paper will be framed within Brian Street's theory of social literacies with support from various food, folklore, and ethnographic theorists.

Jackson, Brian--Rhetorical Literacy as Civic Literacy: Reimagining Civic Humanism
The history of rhetoric is marked by ambivalence toward civic, pragmatic discourse. In this era of diminishing civic engagement, rhetoricians have a duty to provide leadership for a new rhetorical literacy based on civic principles. Of all disciplines, rhetoric offers the most powerful models for collaborative inquiry, deliberative reflection, and communally engaged teaching concerned with fostering civic engagement. To describe this civic understanding, I offer the term rhetorical literacy (in contrast to recent scholarship's use of the term civic literacy ). Based on pragmatic principles of Dewey and others, rhetorical literacy would include those practices that give democratic citizens real power through critical reading, arguing through controversies and deliberative inquiry concerned with collective action. This model would necessarily be multidisciplinary and oriented to service learning and community literacy. The limitations of this ideal will be examined against those of the humanist tradition to present rhetorical literacy as a powerful way to situate and articulate effective communication in a democracy.

Juergensmeyer, Erik--The Consequences of “Community”: Contesting the Future of Higher Education
According to Dewey, “intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium.” Taken in the context of Dewey's progressive philosophies, such a claim resonates with significance. Yet, before it can be accurately applied to contemporary issues of education and literacy, the concept of community must be critiqued, and redefined to develop a more productive sense of differences as resources for collaborative inquiry. Using such local issues as “Focused Excellence” and “Learner-Centered Education,” as introduced by U of A President Peter Likins and the Arizona Board of Regents respectively, this presenter examines how current higher education policies market the connection between the university and community. Such a framework highlights the potential conflicts in value and power and identifies how a contested concept of community is essential to achieving more successful educational and social policies.

Kendall, Connie--Pragmatism's Compass: (re)Thinking the Consequences of Belief in the Great Divide
Despite the abundance of compelling critiques aimed at disrupting the foundational assumptions of the Great Divide theory of literacy during the past several decades, it remains a powerful discourse for shaping institutional policies, especially those policies that pertain to the public educational system's current use of legislatively mandated “high-stakes” literacy testing practices. My paper addresses the possible meaning(s) and consequence(s) of the US educational institution's continuing belief in the “truth” of the Great Divide, by bringing a decidedly pragmatist perspective to the issue of large-scale literacy testing.

Kim, Loel--The Power of Politics in Program Building
A university's own vision statements, the recent CCC statement advocating strong standards for teaching in first-year writing programs, and other influential reports like those issued by college accreditation boards or external reviewers, typically compel individual writing program developers to self-examine and then ask themselves how they might best use, value, and meet the guidelines of these strong statements. Should we ignore these statements, some of which are both physically and ideologically removed from the work of writing programs? Should we try to incorporate these statements? If so, how much? All? Some? Which statements are more politically charged for writing programs? Should we writing faculty simply keep our noses to the grindstone, so to speak, and keep on about the daily work of teaching first-year students how to write in their academic careers?

This presentation begins by describing these rhetorically charged statements as the impetus for conducting a university-wide survey of faculty's requirements and attitudes about undergraduate literacy. We assessed our writing program at the University of Memphis, a mid-sized, urban, public university with one of the highest African-American student enrollments in the nation. As an institution with strong social imperatives, the writing program teaches virtually all incoming first-year students, or approximately 6,000 students per year. As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the program and to meet the needs of both our student population and the literacy needs for multiple disciplines, we sought a way of understanding how well our program met the multiple literacy needs of the university and the surrounding community. But first we needed to establish what the nature of those needs were. Thus, in the survey, we specifically probed faculty for their understanding of our program across the campus, the role of writing in academic pursuits, the uses and types of writing in other disciplines' undergraduate courses, and the faculty's perception of their students' writing abilities.

We argue that such a realistic view of the place of literacy within the larger university results in increased communication across disciplines, a raised awareness of the benefits of literacy in a university setting, better literacy teaching, and gives a clearer direction for writing programs that attempt to listen and heed the rhetorically charged statements of reviewers, administrators, and national councils.

Kirsch, Sharon J.-- Within Big Traditions: Nineteenth-Century Feminist Reappraisals of the New Rhetoric
Throughout its history, rhetoric has been the bastion of men. Feminist historians of rhetoric have recently begun to examine how the history of rhetoric has canonized a master narrative, "Big Rhetoric," leading from one great male rhetorician to the next.  In this paper, I explore how women writers elaborate the gender implications of the introduction of faculty psychology into rhetorical theory in the nineteenth century in the United States.  I analyze the rhetoric of right feeling as prescribed by the "New Rhetoric's" major architects who introduced faculty psychology and theories of the human mind into the study of rhetoric.  Through an examination of the rhetoric of right feeling, often call sentimental in the hand of women writers, I show how feminist abolitionsts reconfigure the "New Rhetoric's" reliance on right feeling.

Lee, Meredith J.--Reading Alternative Literacies, Learning Cultural Contexts
One of the strongest arguments made against the acceptance of alternative literacies in student texts is teachers' relative inability to read—that is, construct meaningful interpretations that can be evaluated—within these alternative literacies. Using a class on the Literature of Oceania as a model for teaching others to read alternative forms of literacy, this paper examines the kinds of contextual, ideological and cultural backgrounds required to successfully build connections between mainstream readers and alternative texts. Through these connections, an “appropriate” reading of alternative literacies can be made and constructively evaluated.

Loskot, Lydia--National Literacy: Ideological Implications for Educators and Policy Makers in Belize
I will discuss the government sponsored push for “functional literacy” in Belize. As a former British colony (British Honduras), Belize has inherited “Standard English” as the official language. The required usage of English and the standardized testing that measures its prevalence fail to acknowledge Belize's multicultural and multilingual contexts. I assert that Belizean educators and literacy policymakers will benefit from an examination of the broader ideological frameworks, lived experiences, and literacy events which inform varied yet real language use and experience.

Malesh, Patricia--Rhetorics of Consumption: Vegetarianism as Social Movement
In her 1997 literature review, “Fifty Years of Social Movement Theory,” Roberta Garner hails research into the formation and nature of contemporary social movements for its unique intellectual investigation into cultures of resistance in advanced capitalist societies. She argues that Social movement theory promises to be one of the most active areas of the social sciences in the opening years of the twenty-first century . . .[and a] prime site for bringing mainstream academic sociology and Marxist theory together with each other. . .[and] with new developments in cultural studies, feminism, and postmodern thought. (42)

She also recognizes that the boundaries between such disciplines as English, sociology, and political science are becoming blurred as newly defined categories of scholarship, such as women's studies and cultural studies, emerge. However, intellectual trends within sociology that concern research into contemporary social movements are fragmented and flawed. While European scholarship theorizes on why individuals participate in social movements based on forming and transforming perceptions of identity and as resistance to an increasingly global cultural hegemony (Touraine, Melucci, Habermas, Castells, Gramsci), social movement researchers in the U.S. focus on how movements organize and acquire resources in order to evoke political as well as cultural transformation (McCarthy/Zald). In this paper, I attempt to theorize a new approach to social movement scholarship which integrates these approaches and grounds such work in rhetorical investigations into discourse and perceptions of identity.

In the 1970s, as contemporary social movement theory was emerging, rhetoricians joined the conversation (Cathcart). However, their presence has been sporadic and peripheral in recent years, with the exception of Gerald Hauser and Susan Whalen's 1997 article “New Rhetoric and New Social Movements”. The organic union between rhetorical studies and social movement research must be re-established if social movement theory hopes to transcend description and establish a more informative approach to the study of social movements. As American sociologists work to incorporate psychological considerations about identity formation and theory that suggests that the battleground for social movements in moving away from the political realm and into cultural ones, the study of discourse is gaining momentum. As an answer to the call for more scholarship, this paper attempts to fuse contemporary European theories about “New Social Movements” with the resource mobilization paradigms that dominate American scholarship, by examining how constituents in a particular culturally grounded social movement, in this case Vegetarianism or “Food Activism” 1) articulate perceptions of identity, in relation to how their identity is socially constructed, 2) mobilize to effect social transformation and, 3) counter hegemonic American discourse and cultural codes. This investigation uses a specific example to illustrate movements as “action systems” (Melucci) that present alternatives to the dominant cultural codes and hegemonic sub- and supernational discourse.

Mandes, Holly--‘Do you love my insides? The parts you can't see?': Reading ‘Madness' in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I will argue that while Buffy the Vampire Slayer has made strides to better represent traditionally marginalized issues (e.g. sexuality and gender roles), it is disheartening that its portrayal of mental illness reinforces dominant cultural ideologies. Through a critique of Drusilla (a vampire with visions) and the repercussions of Glory (a hell-god who feeds on the sanity of her victims), I will argue that the series portrays the mentally ill as unproductive, unwelcome, and disruptive outsiders who have been tainted by evil.

McDonald, Catherine--But I Don't Want to Think Like You': Students Who Resist the Academic Project
Students outside the academy inhabit ways of thinking and being that may seem as foreign to academics as the project of intellectual inquiry seems to those students. In order to engage in critical dialogue with thinkers from different lifeworlds, as Cope and Kalantzis call for, those of us who teach rhetoric/composition have to take an inner look at our own presuppositions. We have to question not only the power that circulates in academic literacy but the imposed subjectivity that traditional habits of analysis presume. Drawing on Jacqueline Jones Royster, who says that academic discourse is a small boat on a big sea of possible discourses, Speaker One will examine the resistance of students who refuse to take the position of critical pluralism in their thinking and writing (and the resistance of instructors who refuse to hear them).

McKinnon, Sara--Where Do We Belong: A Rhetorical Examination of Labels for Arab Americans
In tracing the use of labels for Arab Americans throughout American history, this presentation will elucidate the discourses of power maintaining the view of Arab Americans as the white other in political discourse and thus mainstream America. In doing so, the presentation first provides a definition of what is meant in using the term Arab American. Next, it interrogates the historical first and second shifts in discourse and finally, examines the contemporary standing of labels to understand how Arab Americans have been shaped through discourse.

Meitzen, Rose--The Politics of Error: Dialect, Error, and Nonstandard English in Student Work
I will use Patrick Hartwell's criticism of dialect interference to address how our assumptions regarding language learning in spoken and written mediums influence how we respond to student writing that differs from Standard English. I will examine the political and social realities that surround “error,” especially those highly stigmatized nonstandard forms, and will address how representation greatly affects how texts that use nonstandard English are perceived in the academy and in the corporate sector. Furthermore, I will discuss how these realities complicate, but further emphasize the importance of “students' rights to their own language,” the resolution of the 1974 Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Mendoza, Margaret--Close Encounters with Academic Discourse: Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers
What happens when low income, first generation, and minority college students who are conducting undergraduate research begin to write at advanced levels? While research methods courses may be required in various majors, few classes focus on research writing within the discipline, leaving writing instruction at that level up to individual faculty mentors of undergraduate researchers. Using discourse analysis and data gathered by audio taping student/faculty mentor consultations, I examine how close faculty-input affects the ways these emergent scholars read, write and speak within the disciplines. I attempt to gain insight into the ways in which emergent scholars and their faculty mentors impact each other's use of academic discourse. At the same time, I explore the skills used by faculty in facilitating acquisition of the discourse of the discipline.

Early results validate the expectation that encouragement and tacit instruction are provided by mentors across disciplines. There is also evidence of the use of teaching strategies that seem to come straight from writing centers and composition conferences.

Mentoring conversation are by no mean s one-sided. Even the most taciturn student begins and exchange, sets topics, adds new information, steers the course of the discussion, and sometimes, completes the professor's sentence. While the students' registers are more informal, they are able to address complex topic. In fact they may be serving as models of this skill for their mentors.

The study has roots in composition and rhetoric but has strong implications across the disciplines because it seeks to describe the learning and teaching that takes place within what is essentially an apprenticeship in what James Gee (1999) calls a powerful “secondary discourse”. Result reinforce Lisa Delpit's (1995) contention that secondary discourses can be both taught and acquired and thus can be made more fully accessible to historically marginalized students.

Miller, Georgianna O.--Transformation as Violence: Spike's Integration into the Scooby Gang
I will use Kenneth Burke's concept of transformation to examine how the character Spike, a vampire, internalizes the ideology of his enemies and becomes a member of their social group. According to Burke, transformation is a violent act, and Spike's is no exception; his integration process is fraught with physical, mental, and emotional frustrations. However, despite his original marginalization from the Gang, his successful transformation (demonstrated by his decision to seek the return of his soul) also serves as a useful metaphor for composition students, who are being asked to internalize and value a new set of ideologies as college students and academics.

Ottens, Dayna--Compiling Compile: An Activity Theory Analysis
Postmodern rhetoric has focused on discourse as the primary material of literacy. Russian activity theory in the tradition of A.N. Leont'ev and Yrjö Engeström expands this notion of literacy by looking at action though a cultural-historical lens of ongoing interactions called “activity systems,” which David Russell refers to as the “fundamental unit of analysis of social practices” (Russell 506). Activity analysis examines these social practices by mapping connections between, objects, tools, motives, rules, community, and the division of labor to propose a pragmatic theory of how society transforms materiality to achieve varying outcomes.

My paper brings this kind of analysis to bear on the continuing creation of CompPile, a free, academic database specializing in rhetoric and composition. CompPile is an effort spearheaded by Rich Haswell at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi; however, through the lens of activity theory a network of ramifications and extensions that affect higher education immediately appear. CompPile then, is more accurately the work of a field, which in turn shapes knowledge and is shaped by the discourse, tools, and exigencies that surround its production.

Unraveling the thread of information modeling in academic databases engages scholars in a critical connection with the tribulations their students regularly encounter when doing traditional research by exhuming the process by which our scholarship remains ”out there” in bibliographic databases. By examining CompPile and the CCCC bibliography I hope to illuminate how the constructs of academic bibliographic databases serve to promote community-based literacies and mediate professional and student research.

Perry, Michael--Valuing Popular Connections and Context: Towards a Critical-Popular Cultural Literacy
In “Reading Between the Lines,” Alina Tugend asserts media literacy should give students “sharpened analytical skills” in order to jar them “out of a passive viewing mode and into a more active citizenship role” (1). Donna E. Alvermann, Jennifer S. Moon, and Margaret C. Hagood, in Teaching Popular Culture in the Classroom, see critical media literacy as “creating communities of active readers and writers who can be expected to exercise some degree of agency in deciding what textual positions they will assume or resist as they interact in complex social and cultural contexts” (2). By giving the students agency, they hope to counter the reductive manner in which media literacy is often approached: either media as evil, media as something purely to be analyzed, or media as a form of pleasure.

Bringing popular cultural texts into college level literature and composition classrooms brings heated debate. J. Mitchell Morse, in “Trash, Correct and Incorrect,” argues that we cannot analyze popular cultural forms (comics, sit-coms, airport paperbacks) as literature while adhering to “purely literary judgment” (73). In contrast, Richard Keller Simon, in Trash Culture: Popular Culture and the Great Tradition , proposes to do that very thing, as he links Rambo: First Blood Part II with The Illiad and Star Trek with Gulliver's Travels, careful to note, however, that they are not “equal to each other in terms of language, characterization, and plot” (5). In both instances, the writers take popular culture out of its context and set it within the parameters of literary academia, failing to consider the context of the various media through which popular culture is produced and received.

Popham, Susan “How Different Are We, Really?” Survey Findings
This presentation follows and builds upon the prior speaker's talk, reporting the results of the university-wide survey administered at The University of Memphis. Over 1200 surveys were sent to all teachers of all undergraduate courses (tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, full- and part-time), and approximately 20% returned responses. To develop a baseline understanding of the university community's perceptions of the composition program, surveys asked teachers their impressions of the program's responsibilities and general quality of work. Then, to identify the writing activities taking place in their classes, the survey asked respondents to identify the kinds of written assignments in their courses, the numbers of pages students were required to write. Finally, faculty were asked to select the top three writing qualities students needed to succeed in their courses, and then to estimate the writing quality demonstrated by their students, overall, along eleven writing dimensions we defined. In case they valued characteristics we did not cover, we gave a space for them to add their own dimensions:

Organization--Ideas arranged in a logical and rhetorically effective order.
Critical thinking--Writing exhibits rigorous analytical: Multiple perspectives, weighs evidence, questions prior ideas, gives counterarguments.
Coherence--Ideas smoothly and meaningfully connected.
Mechanics / grammar--Correctly punctuated and grammatically sound sentences. Correct spelling, word choices.
Paragraph development--Forms consistent and meaningful paragraphs.
Clarity--Ideas expressed simply and understandably.
Audience appropriateness--Can write as needed to communicate to different readers.
Citing sources--Makes clear who said what, formats appropriately.
Collaboration--Can work and write effectively with others. Effective interpersonal and project management skills
Research skills--Uses credible sources; exhibits resourceful, thorough searching skills.

Collectively, the responses were used to develop a profile of literacy requirements in multiple disciplines and to gather their impressions of student abilities in their classes. This information would help writing program designers to revise and improve the first-year sequence of writing classes in an ongoing effort to increase student literacy skills at the university.

The findings indicate that the first-year writing program needs to develop a stronger presence and reputation across campus. Typically our work is done with little fanfare and fewer resources; yet it is a program serving more undergraduate students than any other program in the university. Interesting correlations between the amount of writing incorporated, the course enrollment, and the course description, argue for increased resources for writing intensive courses. Such a survey reinforces faculty support for the teaching of writing, even as they recognize differences in definitions of and purposes for literacy across different disciplines. Finally, the presentation points to the value of input from multiple disciplines to inform the revision and continual development of the university's writing program and literacy development.

Quandahl, Ellen--On the Separation of Assessment from Pedagogy: The Rhetoric of Competence at San Diego State University
San Diego State University, as part of its review by the Western Association of States and Colleges, is currently engaged in wide-ranging discussion about the assessment of student learning outcomes. At the same time, faculty look to the institution's Writing Proficiency Assessment, which satisfies the state-mandated requirement that students demonstrate writing proficiency at the upper-division level, as evidence of its capacity to assess student learning. This paper examines the disjunction between the exam, for which learning outcomes have not been articulated, and preparation for the exam in coursework in order to theorize an alternative assessment.

Rickert, Thomas--"Push th' Little Daisies": Some Thoughts on Marc Bousquet, WPAs, and Power
A series of recent articles and responses between Marc Bousquet and his interlocutors has led to controversy surrounding the Writing Program Administrator in the contemporary, corporate university, which Bousquet has termed an Educational Management Organization. Specifically, Bousquet has charged that the WPA is the central figure of power for initiating and managing exploitive labor practices; in hopes of dissipating that power and reclaiming superior labor conditions, Bousquet calls for the abolishment of the WPA. My paper will examine this claim tying the WPA to power, suggesting that a) locating the power Bousquet claims for the WPA is questionable given recent theories of power dispersion, and b) Bousquet's theory of power is itself shaky at best. My conclusion will address what we *can* learn from Bousquet, while offering countercharges against the privileged position from which Bousquet argues.

Rieder, David--Freire, Sandoval, and Barthes: Love in a Postmodern World
Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed is an important contribution to radical pedagogy. Although Sandoval never cites Freire, her book can be read as a postmodernized version of the Brazilian's theories about writing, literacy, and power. In particular, both Freire and both cite the affective power of love to engender social movement and change. In my presentation, I will explain how Sandoval's theories of love are developed from her interests in Roland Barthes' work. Moreover, I will explain how Sandoval's "kinetic" theories of language and affect can be understood as a contribution to contemporary writing studies. Specifically, Sandoval's theories of language echo Craig Saper's study of sociopoetic art in Saper's Networked Art. Related to the theme, "big rhetorics, big literacies," Saper studies the ways in which some artists use global, bureaucratic systems of circulation (like the mail art movement's use of the postal system) as a social canvas. As I see it, the kinds of artists about which Saper writes are an important set of figures for understanding what Sandoval is theorizing. After developing the connections from Sandoval's work to Barthes and Saper, I will return with a final study of the ways in which Sandoval offers Freireistas a fascinating example of writing practice and radical pedagogy in postmodernized spaces.

Said, Sally--Embodying Theory: Literacy in War-Torn Sudan
The Sudan has experienced civil war for 37 of the last 48 years, a North-South conflict involving attempts at hegemonic control by the North of Southern culture, religion, and resources, answered by separatist guerilla opposition in the South. It now seems that another opportunity for peace is at hand. The last time the country was truly at peace included the time of my stay in the country 1976-78, when I taught English and linguistics at the University of Khartoum. The Sudan was then, as it shall soon be again, concerned with language planning, education, and specifically Arabic and English language literacy. In the interim, the theoretical development of literacy as a broader concept involving self-definition, access to information and the means of creation, and liberation of the marginalized from neo-colonialist educational agendas, has far outpaced the understanding that still informs most educational efforts in the Sudan.

Literacy rates (ability to read basic materials in either Arabic or English) are currently estimated by international and church-based NGO's variously, at from 27 to 68 percent overall, with female literacy lagging well behind that of males. Educational efforts tend to focus on mechanics and not content, so that the wider discussion of literacies (now always plural) rarely affects the work of dedicated instructors, some literally in the trenches. Many openly declare their own concerns, such as Bible translation and the promotion of Christianity or Islam. Others are human rights workers, and still others see literacy as a necessary precursor to better health education.

At least one organization, Womankind Worldwide, promotes four literacies for women in East Africa: body literacy (including confronting taboos and challenging harmful practices), money literacy (numeracy and entrepreneurship), word literacy (reading, writing, and access to information), and civil literacy (knowing and using legal rights, participating in decision making). While broadening the list of topics included as literacies, the approach to word literacy is still largely restricted to its narrow sense of ability to comprehend and produce written text.

I will first focus on creating an operational definition of word literacy appropriate to the multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual Sudanese context, based on the writings of liberatory educators such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks. I will then review a project in writing for children that I directed when in Khartoum, and the book that resulted from it, which embodied some of these concerns.

Schuck, Ray--Harry Potter and the Anti-Racist-White-Hero Premise: Whiteness and the Harry Potter Series
The Harry Potter books, along with the subsequent film versions of the first two books, have been both enormously popular and critically lauded for the lessons that they teach. Some reviewers have even characterized the world that series author J. K. Rowling has created as downright “progressive.” However, while the stories do offer a vision of racial inclusion within Rowling's fictional world, the dynamics of that inclusion reinforce the privilege and power of the fictional world's dominant racial group. If the stories do teach lessons about race relations through the fictional saga of a debate between “pure” wizards and individuals who are not “pure” wizards, then those lessons need to be critically examined for the politics of their vision of inclusion. In this work, I read the fictional racial feud that forms the basis of the Harry Potter stories through the lens of Madison's (1999) anti-racist-white-hero premise to show how that basis reproduces a vision of inclusion that reproduces white privilege and white power.

Shinabarger, Amy D. R.--In Search of Balance: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Power and Accommodation in the University ESL Writing Classroom
“Power” is a word with myriad definitions and has been studied by linguists and other scholars in as many contexts. Fairclough (1992) indicates that power can be both overt and covert, and Foucault (1972, 1973) indicates that power comes from below as well as above. Jones, Gallois, Callan, and Barker (1994, 1995) examine accommodation not in opposition to power but as a differently-derived variety of power, more closely resembling Fairclough's covert power. This project is an examination of the displays of power and accommodation in the classroom discourse of university ESL first-year writing instructors and their students through the framework of critical classroom discourse analysis, as proposed by Kumaravadivelu (1999). The data are compared in search of differences based upon the instructor's rank (Ph.D. or graduate student), whether or not the instructor is a native English speaker or a speaker of English as a Second Language, the instructor's sex, and whether the class is held in a computer-mediated or traditional classroom environment. The four participating instructors are two Ph.D.s and two graduate students, two native English speakers and two non-native speakers, two males and two females, and two instructors teaching in a computer-mediated classroom and two teaching in a traditional classroom environment. The 60 student participants speak 19 native languages, with the most frequent being Arabic, Chinese, and English. Of the student participants, 45 are male and 15 are female. The data are analyzed for characteristics of power and accommodation, with specific 17 specific areas of focus, including the use of titles and honorifics, face threatening acts, wait time, the use of humor and the target of the humor, inclusive and exclusive pronoun use, directness and other politeness features, and the instructors' role as a leader or as a facilitator. Results suggest differences in demonstrations of power and accommodation based upon the instructors' sex, first language, and rank but are inconclusive with regards to differences based upon the presence or absence of computer mediation.

Stancliff, Michael--Big (Rhetorical) Hopes: A Friendly Critique of Cultural Studies Pedagogies
This paper takes a critical look at the theories of political subjectivity, which in the cultural studies composition classroom can reduce “rhetorical agency,” a highly valued if ambiguously defined disciplinary outcome, to a quasi-public performances of voice, of agonistic prowess, of democratic presence or of academic expertise. I argue that many current rationales of “empowering” and of “centering”(as in the student-centered classroom) obscure the actual power and complexity of writing, and more importantly, ignore student experience and the eccentric and brilliant range of literacy practices students bring to first-year writing instruction. These operations occur under the auspices of a tacit pedagogy I refer to as the “public classroom,” which I discuss as part of the ideological constellation of neo-liberal definitions of agency and discourse Construal of the public classroom can ironically repeat the marginalization of student experience against which student-centered pedagogies have always defined themselves. One might say that in many configurations, the student as what Susan Miller has called the ‘subject of composition”( Textual 84-87) is trapped in pedagogical limbo, put through the rigors of freedom and yet caught away from the commitments where the agency she most values is actually at stake. The center, as it turns out, can be a lonely and alienating space for student writers, that is if we take the premise that our students are writers before they are ever enrolled in our courses.

The rhetorical performance of this article and of the curriculum here submitted seeks distance from the abiding metaphors of the center and the dualistic loops of public classroom lore. It will be clear throughout these comments that my own pedagogy remains grounded in FYC's many and various possibilities as a site of student rhetorical agency. Wandering from the public classroom is not a rejection of social embeddedness, service or social justice as pedagogical values. Rather, letting go of the epistemic authority of the “big public” will allow for a much richer engagement with writing as a social process. For this to happen, composition per se must become a question and not a prescription. Pressed with the mission to teach students to “write well” many have approached the question of “good writing” as itself the primary inquiry of FYC. It is a very old idea in rhetorical traditions that such inquiry is itself the practice of rhetorical agency. The “search” for good writing is as well an engagement with the cultural situations of rhetoric, which is to say, situations of the social, of ethics, power and difference, the landscape where agency itself happens in all its inter-subjective complexity.

Thatcher, Barry--Intercultural Rhetorical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This presentation explores issues of intercultural rhetorical theory as exemplified in the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Written in 1948, more than 20 U.N. members from 18 nations participated in the Declaration's primary composing processes, and an additional 30 nations offered substantial input into its form and content. This extraordinary intercultural process was specifically designed to transcend cultural norms and create a “universal” declaration of humanity that would combat abuses of human rights that were witnessed during World War II. By most accounts, the document has been enormously successful, providing a powerful mechanism for human rights discussion. Much of this discussion has focused on the question of universality and culture, the conception of the subject and political effectiveness, and the declaration's rhetoric.

This highly intercultural scenario makes the Universal Declaration an ideal vehicle for exploring issues of intercultural rhetorical theory. First, in this “age of difference” where the idea of a cultural universal is severely criticized or not even a viable question, is there anything useful in thinking about cultural universals? Since we live in an age of difference and internationalization, many human rights scholars and activists argue that an essentialized universal conception of humanity, which is apparent in the Universal Declaration , might be the most effective means for improving human rights. This is because difference-based discourse does not provide viable mechanisms for human rights discussions. Likewise, rhetoric scholars might consider developing essentialized “universal” rhetorics to facilitate intercultural interactions in academic, governmental, and business situations.

Developing this type of “universal” rhetoric first requires unmasking the rhetorical influences of five critical variables: languages, legal traditions, political/social organization, leadership/authority, and conceptions and uses of technology. For example, what is significant about the Universal Declaration being composed primarily in English and how might the rhetoric of that declaration be different if Chinese had been the composing medium? In addition, how did the rhetorical features of the composers' common and civil law legal traditions influence the document and what other rhetorical features might have been encouraged with Chthonic, Islamic or Asian legal traditions? Further, what assumptions about leadership, organizational behavior, or politics (mostly Western) are implicit in the Universal Declaration and how might other traditions be affected by these assumptions? Finally, how did western assumptions about the rhetoric of science and technology influence the ways the Universal Declaration has been and will be implemented and monitored worldwide?

After this unmasking, rhetoricians can then develop more “universal” rhetorics for intercultural situations. Following the highly collaborative Universal Declaration model, this approach requires creating agreed-upon rhetorical strategies that are sensitive and effective for the cultural and rhetorical patterns of all those involved.

This type of inquiry not only exemplifies issues of intercultural rhetorical theory, it also shows how U.S. rhetorical theories are generally based on the English language, common law legal traditions, U.S. political, social and organizational norms, and U.S. assumptions about technology. Thus U.S. rhetoricians need to appropriately unmask and then universalize their rhetoric for intercultural situations.

Valentine, Kathryn--(Re)designing Educational Policy: Drawing on Multiliteracies Frameworks to Inform General Education Literacy Practices
I will discuss the design of general education policy at a Southwest Border University with attention to opportunities for redesigning such policy. In particular, I will address how “redesigns” can better inform understandings of literacy as multiliteracies within the context of university general education classes. I will consider actual and possible responses to the general education writing goals related to writing instruction as moments of assent: “When we participate in the language of an institution, whether as speakers, listeners, writers, or readers, we become positioned by that language; in that moment of assent, myriad relationships of power, authority, status are implied and reaffirmed” (Street, 1995, p127).

Van Horn, Jessica--Addressing the Phantom in the Room: Audience Awareness in Student Composition
Drawing on Douglas Park's analysis of the writing situations faced by students, I will investigate the ways audience shapes not only the content but also the form of student writing. This presentation explores the ramifications of encouraging students toward their unique voice—potentially resulting in “non-academic” language and therefore leading to the dismissal of the student's argument—as opposed to providing the conventions for writing in academic discourse—possibly leading to constricted, stilted language, limiting the student's ability to articulate their point of view. If audience is always a fiction, as Walter Ong argues, then teachers of composition must negotiate helping students imagine an audience that will be a constructive force, influencing subject matter as well as syntactical and stylistic choices that will allow them a voice that will be heard within the academy.

Waggoner, Zachary--(Re)Turning the Gaze: Locating the Body in Feminism and Composition
Patriarchy's subjugation of women through sexual control of their bodies has been well articulated by feminist rhetors in American culture. What is less clear is whether or not composition studies adequately acknowledges and explores the tensions between power and bodily sexuality in the writing classroom. This presentation attempts to answer this question, by first examining rhetoric from each of the first three waves of American feminism to demonstrate the importance of this topic in the past and present of feminist theory, and by then examining the past thirty years of College Composition and Communication to ascertain how this important issue is being discussed and theorized in one of the leading journals in the field. Although studies do exist that highlight some of the tensions in writing classrooms, this presentation hopes to highlight how and why I believe the body of work produced in composition studies is missing exactly that: the gendered, sexualized body. This important feminist issue remains largely under-theorized and under-discussed in composition theory.

Walker, Paul--Baseball Statistics: Power over the Individual through Quantified History and Technology
The proliferation of television in the United States changed the way many Americans participated as spectators of American sports. Radio audiences and stadium audiences decreased as more and more people were able to view sporting events on television, often tape delayed for prime time viewing. But many critics, including McLuhan (1964), felt that televised coverage of baseball severely diminished its engagement and suspense because of the non-participatory nature of the medium. The media response (directly responding to critics like McLuhan and/or because of decreased viewing ratings) was to create engagement through an increase of statistical analysis on the air. By filling in non-action time during the game with statistics and historical facts, audiences remain attentive to the game as a whole, and the only way this could happen was through an increase in technology (around the mid 1980s) that allowed instantaneous statistical information at the hands of the broadcasters. However, in the process, the increasing reliance on the past to situate the present diminishes the power and agency of the player and television audience member.

This broadcasting trend, extremely evident in 2003 playoff and World Series games, is not harmless, for it unintentionally calls up Hegel's “world spirit” and Marx's historicism, wherein individuals have no control over current events because non-individual historical forces drive world and national history. While this lack of historical agency is often rejected today, the perceived inevitability of historical events is continued through the power of the broadcaster, reducing the power of the individual who is performing in a game that consists of not one statistical moment, but several factors that may not be documented. Quantified history becomes a tool of power, wielded not by team owners, but by baseball broadcasters and their sponsors, and becomes a means of reintegration of the game's (false) suspense for the TV audience in order to increase interest. Furthermore, the artificial suspense of individual or team statistics leads to contrived news and manipulation; for, no matter if a player or team fulfills or debunks the statistic, the mention of the statistic will create interest tangential to the actual game, and the result, either way, will be newsworthy and depending the perceived value, headlines the evening sports news and appears on the front page of the next day's sports section.

My discussion, a 20-minute presentation, will further illustrate the connection between modern baseball broadcasting trends and Marx and Hegel's historical theories, and using actual examples from recent baseball games, show how quantified history is directly influencing game moments that are supposed to have unknowable outcomes and be determined by the individual, not by past trends and events.

Wastal, Carrie--The Demise of the University of California's Master Plan: Implications for Assessment, Admissions, and Academic Needs
As a longstanding approach to public higher education in California, the Master Plan for Higher Education is now in danger of elimination by current strains on state budgets. The demise of the Master Plan carries implications for the ability of public higher education to meet the educational needs of students with diverse writing abilities. This paper examines such implications, in particular the role of student essays in admissions and how the needs of students, once admitted, will be met.

Xochime, Citlalin--Rhetorical Heritages: Contrastive Expressions in Response to the Kennewick Man Case
In this analysis, I examine the activities of intercultural communication variables in the rhetorical heritages expressed by constituencies in response to the developing Kennewick Man case. Constituencies include U.S. scientists, a Native American tribal coalition, and agents on behalf of a government program for the protection of Native American patrimony. The Kennewick case gained national prominence in 1996 when the well preserved human skeletal remains of an ancient man were found alongside the Columbia River on federal land in Kennewick, Washington. The Kennewick remains were radiocarbon dated between 8,340 to 9,200 calendar years before present (BP) (Taylor, Kirner, and Southon 1171). Initially, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claimed the remains for local indigenous tribes. The Corps cited the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and awarded the remains to the Colville, Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce, and Wanapum tribes. Subsequently, controversy over claims to Kennewick Man was stirred by a group of eight, renowned European-American scientists seeking custody.

In this study, the intercultural communication activities of the constituencies indicate that the argument for custody of the Kennewick remains is partially founded on a Western view premise. That premise is the European American scientists involved in the Kennewick case have no collective knowledge of their ancestral history or that of the Native Americans, and therefore they must conduct individualistic scientific inquiries for the purpose of defining these heritages. In contrast, the Native Americans claim knowledge of their ancestral history, yet they do not receive recognition from the scientists for such indigenous knowledge or past established heritage.

Zingsheim, Jason--Raceless in Seattle: A Critical Rhetorical Analysis of Frasier
A gap in the cartography of whiteness lies in the virtual lack of examination of whiteness as depicted on television. This essay ventures into this unexplored region endeavoring to subvert the oppressive power of whiteness by performing a critical rhetorical analysis of the popular NBC television sitcom Frasier. A close reading of this show reveals the use of rhetorical strategies that work to normalize the white experience through the strategic rhetoric of the body, the unchallenged depiction of white privilege, and the portrayal of white as civilized. Concurrently, a critique of freedom identifies rhetorical tactics that create possibilities for the renegotiation of current power structures through the rhetoric of presence, an emasculation of predominant stereotypes, and a validation of alternative methods of sense making. By identifying the strategic and tactical rhetoric at work in television , the oppressive power of whiteness is subverted as white ideology itself is noticed, questioned, and challenged.