Rhetoric and Composition @ WSU

Dr. Ranney has won a 2008-2009 Josephine Nevins Keal Faculty Fellowship for tenured faculty for her project The Spirit of Rhetoric.

Professor Marback has been chosen as a recipient of a 2008-2009 Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Award.

Two members of the WSU Rhetoric/Composition Program will be presenting talks at the Computers & Writing 2008 Conference (May 22-25 @ The University of Georgia, Athens). On May 23, as part of the panel Getting Lost in the Global Bazaar: Rethinking the Politics of User-Centeredness and Composition, Professor Jeff Pruchnic will present a talk entitled “Post-Critical Composition; or, the Technologic of Open Source Capitalism,” and PhD candidate Jennifer Neister will present a talk entitled “The Decolonized Interface: Ubuntu in Two Keys.”

The April, 2008 issue of The Journal of Aging Studies, edited by Professor Ray in memory of British cultural theorist Mike Hepworth, features critics from the United States and Great Britain writing what Margaret Gullette calls “critical age autobiography,” along with institutional histories of their own work in age studies.

The Writing Center will present the last technology workshop of the year - “Movie Making” - at 2 PM, Tuesday, April 22, in State Hall 337. The workshop will cover creating movies as part of composition, literature, and technical writing courses. “Movie Making” can be one of the most engaging projects students work on during a term. Software already exists on all of our classroom computers (Windows Movie Maker and iMovie) to allow easy editing of video taken on digital still cameras, camcorder, or even cell phones. Presenters will provide instruction in using Movie Maker, equipment instruction, and examples of student projects taken from classes here at WSU.

As part of the DeRoy Lecture Series, Dr. Beth Coleman will give a talk entitled “Hello Avatar!: Virtual Communities and Networked Subjects” on Friday, April 18, at noon, in the English Department Seminar Room (10302, 5057 Woodward). Dr. Coleman is a professor in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her research interests include virtual world design and use, networked subjectivity, global media emergence and practice in China, India and Africa, contemporary art and technology, and critical history of race and technology. For excerpts from her forthcoming book, Hello Avatar: A Virtual World Primer and other publications, see her website. She blogs on emergent media practices at projectgoodluck.com. This event is co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Working Group.

The Rhetoric and Composition Program and The Writing Center will present a workshop on grading on Monday, 4/14, at 1:00 in the English Department Lounge. This informal discussion is a follow-up to the January Grading Workshop.

The Writing Center will present a workshop on open source software on Friday, 4/11, at 2:00 in 337 State Hall. Presenter Mary Karcher will explain how Open Source software can best be used with students at Wayne State and how it can replace expensive proprietary software and programs. Items to be covered include:

• What is Open Source Software?
• What are the Most Popular Open Source Software Packages?
  
• Why Would You Want to Use Open Source Software?