Growth in Writing, Teaching, and Learning
Co-Chairs: Hilarie Ashton and Erin M. Andersen
In his classic composition text Writing Without Teachers, Peter Elbow asks us to consider the metaphor of growing as a way to encourage and teach fluid, flexible writing: “Instead of a two-step transaction of meaning-into-language, think of writing as an organic, developmental process in which you start writing at the very beginning — before you know your meaning at all — and encourage your words gradually to change and evolve.” The idea of growth applies to so many aspects of scholarship, as we approach the profession simultaneously as teachers, students, and researchers in our own rights. This roundtable session seeks to explore the idea of growth broadly conceived, thinking about the ways we develop our writing and teaching, as well as the ways our students’ writing develops.
The concept of growth can be expanded to include the ways that our research process in the archives progresses, the ways our work as coders and activists develops from thought to working projects, and our approaches to professionalization in higher education. The co-chairs of this panel will be soliciting papers that recognize the interconnected nature of our work in the classroom and outside of it. We seek out pieces that creatively use growth and/or Elbowian “growing” as a way of metacognitively looking at the work we do that speak to process and change. In revisiting a touchstone metaphor in the field of composition and rhetoric at a moment in time when our definitions of “the composition classroom” are shifting and through a lens that welcomes the diverse perspectives of a variety of subfields, this panel hopes to expand conversations about development, processes, change, and writing.
Possible paper topics may include:
WRITING PROCESS PEDAGOGY TODAY: new approaches to process pedagogy; Basic Writing and writing development; writing program administration and curricular development; Elbow in the new media classroom; Felt Sense; the embodied writing process; growth and accessibility in the first year composition classroom; Elbow and the writing center
TRANSFER STUDIES AND GROWTH: knowledge-making; development and genre in the classroom; the writing process and transfer; Writing about Writing (WaW) and Elbow’s idea of “growing”; transfer in the literature classroom
CREATIVE WRITING AND GROWTH: “growing” and creative writing courses; Elbow in our own creative ventures; growth and new media composing
DIGITAL HUMANITIES AND GROWTH: building and “growing”; Elbow and the new media classroom; project or grant development; re-visiting DH projects for growth and change; collaboration and “growing”
GROWTH AND THE PROFESSION: growth and Elbowian pedagogy as antidote to writer’s block and imposter syndrome; growth and collaborative research; growth and archival research; growth and activism in higher education.
Abstracts are due by September 30. To submit an abstract, click here.