Investigations for Public Project

As we discussed in class this morning, our collaborative public project will, in some way, target graduate students (and possibly faculty?) in the English department, with a possible focus on TAs. Though we are still narrowing the exact focus and nature of the project, some ideas we discussed include creating teaching materials for incorporating service learning and/or civic engagement into courses, hosting a lecture series to inform interested teachers in the core values of service learning, composing a (likely internal) grant to obtain funding for a service learning scholars kind of series, creating a list of potential partners, hosting a luncheon-type event to bring partners and teachers together, and a series of “how to” documents for being a grad student activist, among other ideas.

Part of your “homework” this week is to do a bit of online investigating to see what kinds of programs are already in existence and how we might move forward with the kind of work we might do for this project. Folks in class today signed up for perusing one of the following websites. If you weren’t with us, choose one of these to investigate and be ready to report back in class. I’ve also created a D2L discussion board on which we can post information related to our public project, if you’d like. Feel free to add other websites to our preliminary investigation list by suggesting them as a comment to this posting or during class discussion.

• GSU’s Office of Civic Engagement (Lauri and Laura)
• GSU’s Lower Divison Studies (Ann Marie)
• Other GSU outreach projects/programs (from diverse departments/programs on campus) (Siobahn)
• GSU’s Center for Instructional Innovation(Ellie, Yunye, and Meng)
• Freshman Learning Communities (FLCs) and Atlanta Studies programming (Ashley)

Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Lecture

One of my professors from graduate school at the U of Arizona, Dr. Adela C. Licona, will be giving a lecture at GSU entitled “Stories and Bodies-So-Far: Queer/ed Relational Re/Mixings as Coalitional Gestures” next Tuesday, October 1st, from 4:30 – 6:00 p.m. in Troy Moore Library. Dr. Licona’s scholarship enacts many of the theories of public rhetoric we’ve been reading about this semester, and I encourage you to attend her talk if you’re able. I hope to be there.

For more information about her talk:  http://www.gsu.edu/ai1ec_event/institute-for-womens-gender-sexuality-studies-lecture/?instance_id=

For more information about Dr. Licona: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aclicona/

Two CFPs to Consider

Lauri Goodling shared the CFP for a local conference for the Georgia-Carolinas College English Association that will be held on the GPC Clarkston campus. Proposals are due at the end of November and the conference is in early February. This could be a great opportunity to give a conference presentation (if you haven’t ever given one and/or if you’re on a tight travel budget). Plus, you’d be welcome to use our class assignments (the proposal and final paper) to help you make progress toward your paper for this conference. You can access the CFP here.

Also, there is a special issue of Literacy in Composition Studies that will focus on activism. A 250-word proposal is due by October 31st. You can access the CFP here.

Let me know if I can give you feedback on proposals for either of these great opportunities!

Welcome!

Welcome to the course website for English 8900: Public Rhetorics for Social Change, a graduate course in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Georgia State University. You can access important course policies, assignment descriptions, and the reading schedule on this site. Because I have decided (in the best interest of the environment) to not print individual copies of the (11-page!) syllabus, you can access the complete, PDF-version of the syllabus here, which you are free to download or print.