On October 26 and 27, CWS hosted its Inaugural Symposium. This symposium brought Deborah Brandt and Jonathan Alexander to campus to share their current thoughts on literacy. The two-day Symposium consisted of a keynote by each speaker with a response by a faculty member and a graduate student, and two data workshops in which graduate students shared some of their research data and received feedback from Alexander and Brandt. In addition, the event gave graduate students an opportunity to have lunch with Brandt and Alexander, and it brought the CWS community together to discuss and think about literacy, broadly defined, not only during the keynotes and data workshops, but also at a happy hour at the end of the second day.
Inaugural Symposium Schedule of Events
Delete
Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.
While there’s much that can be said about the events of these two days, I think what was most significant for me was the sheer amount inspiration and support I felt over the course of the two days. I was fortunate enough to have a number of conversations with both Brandt and Alexander, and both of them were wonderful and critical, yet supportive. Both scholars showed me that the work we do matters, and they also demonstrated to me the power of mentorship. During lunch with Brandt, she discussed her own trajectory in the field of Writing Studies and how one of her favorite activities was mentoring students as they worked on dissertations. When I presented my data during the second data workshop, Alexander asked insightful questions about what theories I was thinking about using, and he encouraged me and all the graduate students who were present to continue our research and to complicate existing theories that inform our research and our praxis.
The inaugural symposium was a huge success not only because of Brandt and Alexander’s willingness to share their work and insights, but also because of the entire CWS community. Our faculty members introduced each of the keynotes and also insightfully responded to them. Graduate students also responded to the keynotes and shared data that was incredibly interesting and that gave our visiting scholars and other graduate students an idea of the wide-ranging types of research we’re currently conducting in the field of Writing Studies. Most importantly, the entire community came together during these two days to support and to learn from one another.
If you couldn’t make it to either of the keynotes, you can find audio of each of them here.
Look for other blog posts coming soon that discuss some of these events in more depth!