Fall Faculty & Staff Reading Groups

Fall Faculty & Staff Reading Groups

Writing Instruction Support at Western Libraries is sponsoring two informal reading groups in 2017-18, open to faculty, graduate students, and staff with an interest in teaching writing.

Newcomers are always welcome. Both groups will meet once quarterly for collegial discussion of short reading selections.

This quarter’s two offerings are:

Roots of Rhetoric - What purpose should the study of rhetoric and writing serve in a liberal arts curriculum? Is writing a practical skill? A philosophical discipline for the pursuit of wisdom? This group will discuss some of the oldest writing on rhetoric and education. In Spring 2017 we read Gorgias’s “The Encomium of Helen” and “On What is Not or On Nature,” and we’ll follow that up in Fall 2017 with Plato’s Gorgias.  

Research on Teaching Writing - What concerns are writing studies professionals researching today, and how can their work make us better teachers? This group examines contemporary concepts and scholarship in writing pedagogy. Fall 2017’s reading will be a selection from Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle’s Naming What We Know, winner of the 2016 Council of Writing Program Administrators’ award for Outstanding Scholarship. 

For readings and information about meeting times and places, please visit the Writing Instruction Support Events page (https://library.wwu.edu/use/wis/events) or contact Julie Dugger, Director of WIS (julie.dugger@wwu.edu).