Our next meeting is only 3+ weeks away. Maybe it will be warm and sunny and we can meet outdoors!
April 1 John Jay College of Criminal Justice
1:00-2:45 CCRC General Meeting (Room TBD)
TOPICS: Review of the CATW Exam, Teaching Materials and Outcomes; The Role of Adjunct Professors in CUNY Composition Programs; CCCC Preview (bring a teaser from your presentation to share).
3:00–5:00 Mina Shaughnessy Speaker Series (Room TBD)
John Trimbur, Professor of Writing, Literature & Publishing, Emerson College
John Brereton, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
5:00-6:00 Reception
Both have deep connections and high esteem for CUNY Composition Programs. They are still working out the final details of their presentation/discussion but here is a preview.
“I thought I’d like to say something about how Mina Shaughnessy especially but also Ken Bruffee, Don McQuade, and others in the early days of open admissions [and how they] used their literary training in New Critical close reading to read ordinary writing, thereby more or less inventing basic writing, paving way for Bartholomae, Bizzell, etc. I’ve mentioned this in other contexts as a matter of rearticulating professional knowledges to popular aspirations, joining the expertise of literary studies to a social movement based on civil rights/trade union pressures from below to democratize higher education. So I was thinking of unpacking this line of thought a bit.” John Trimbur
“My presentation will be on the remarkable constellation of people and
ideas present at CUNY during the 1970s, folks who essentially
“invented the university” as far as writing instruction was concerned.
I want to discuss the remarkable range of innovation that was
occasioned by Open Admissions, some of which was suitable for its time
but has since been passed over, and some of which has gone on to
influence the field dramatically: CAWS (the CUNY Association of
Writing Supervisors) leading to Harvey Wiener’s founding of WPA;
Richard Sterling taking over the National Writing Project; Mina influencing
everyone’s thinking about Basic Writing; Ken Bruffee emphasizing group work;
Sondra Perl employing psychology; Chuck Bazerman’s interest in
scientific writing, etc. So I want to talk about the connection between the people and the
intellectual exigences that produced such important work.” John Brereton
John C. Brereton (Ph.D., Rutgers University) has taught writing at the City University of New York, Wayne State University, Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts, Brandeis University, and Harvard University. Among his publications are The Norton Reader, Living Literature, The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, and many articles and reviews. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
John Trimbur (Ph.D. SUNY BUffalo) is a specialist in composition and writing studies, with interests in cultural studies of literacy and the politics of language in the United States and South Africa. He has published widely on writing theory and has won a number of awards, including the Richard Braddock Award for Outstanding Article (2003) for “English Only and U.S. College Composition,” the James L. Kinneavy Award (2001) for “Agency and the Death of the Author: A Partial Defense of Modernism,” and the College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award (1993) for The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary.
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