I had been eager for the chance to immerse myself fully in the conversations among teachers and scholars in the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition for some time. Indeed, I read Comp. theory obsessively, even when I am not teaching, such is my obsession with both the work of my classroom and the work of scholars in the field. I traveled to New Orleans alone to listen to various panel presentations and talks by scholars and teachers familiar to those of us working in Composition: Peter Elbow, Mike Rose, Patricia Bizzell and many others. I was even more curious to explore some of my questions about technology and the emergent disciplines of New Media and Digital Rhetoric. I was not disappointed. I listened to papers on teaching practices which ran the gamut from peer review strategies to online publishing opportunities for students (USC has a terrific student-edited publication called AngeLingo). I also listened to presentations on diversity in the classroom, teaching globalization in a globalized world, video gamer theory and its potential impact on both cognitive science and writing instruction and many more too numerous to recount in the space of this brief report.
Finally, I had the chance to visit the city of New Orleans for the first time. If you have not ever traveled to New Orleans, I enthusiastically urge you to do so. The city was beautiful and the people were among the friendliest citizens I have ever met. I had been transfixed by the devastation as I witnessed the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and was further disturbed to hear stories recounted by writer friends of mine whose families lost their homes and possessions; a close friend of mine from graduate school was among the many who were trapped in the city until she could be evacuated to Houston, Texas. The devastation lingers. You could see streets broken and curbs chipped, skeletons of buildings, and more hints of the destruction which swept through the city on August 29, 2005. I had been thinking for a long time about how to incorporate film maker Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts into my Composition classes (after receiving a copy of “Teaching The Levees: A Curriculum for Democratic Dialogue and Civic Engagement” from Teachers College, Columbia University) and was disappointed to miss a panel presentation on the final day of the conference by the editors of the Teachers College curriculum. However, there were several, panels on ethnography and mapping in relation to student writing and thinking through of campus communities and their sometimes complex relationships to various global and local communities, in extremis. I have included a few photographs form my trip: one includes me, standing adjacent to Cafe du Monde; another includes the sting rays as they swam above me during the Bedford/St. Martin’s reception at the Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans on Thursday night.
It was a wonderful trip. I have many new ideas about how to structure my composition courses a bit differently as well as valuable insights regarding my own pedagogy. I gained a great deal of clarification about Rhetoric and Composition as a distinct and constantly changing discipline, a discipline which puts students and the work of teaching writing at its center. Thanks, CCA, for making this trip possible. Thanks, too, to my colleagues in the English Department for their support of part-time faculty. –Jane Sprague