Genre Pedagogy Workshop
Do you incorporate writing into your course, or teach an upper-level writing course in the majors? Do you wonder how to make students more aware of how writing choices vary depending on purpose, audience, genre, or discipline?
The Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program is excited to invite INSTRUCTORS and FACULTY to two workshops on the subject of genre pedagogy on Oct 10th! Brief descriptions of the workshops are given below.
Please RSVP to Raechel Crosby using the link provided here. *If you are attending lunch, please note any dietary restrictions or requests.
1. How to Choose the Genres You Use: Rush Rhees Library Welles-Brown Room 10:30AM-12:00 noon
All teachers (and students) use genres in their courses, whether they know it or not. This workshop explores why it matters which genres you choose and how to choose them well. Working from teachers’ current reading and writing assignments, this workshop invites teachers to examine the genres they currently use, decide the extent to which those genres are achieving their goals, and explore alternative genres and what they might offer. Participants should bring their current writing assignments and should leave with ideas for how to revise or expand those assignments.
2. Lunch & Discussion with Dr. Devitt: Rush Rhees Library Welles-Brown Room 12:00-1:00PM
3. How to Use the Genres You Choose: Rush Rhees Library Welles-Brown Room 1:00-2:30 PM
Using different teaching strategies, teachers can use genres to teach students different skills and perspectives, all of which can make them more successful writers and readers. You can use genres to help students learn how to write one particular genre or many future genres. You can use genres to give students access to a particular community—like the academy or a profession—or to any community they might encounter in the future. And you can teach students how to conform to the genres in their lives or how to reform or resist those genres. This workshop will ask teachers to explore their own goals and current practices and to consider how they might apply or adapt some of the suggested strategies and activities.
4. Reception
Light refreshments will be provided along with an additional chance to speak with Dr. Devitt.
More about Dr. Devitt: Dr. Amy Devitt, Professor and Chancellor’s Club Teaching Professor, is from the Department of English at the University of Kansas.
Dr. Devitt has written extensively on how writing instructors can incorporate the concept of genre into their teaching. Much of her work focuses on ways of teaching genre awareness, or ways that instructors can call students’ explicit attention to the genres they are using and help them explore the ways in which those genres serve real purposes for both writer and reader. She also offers many ways of thinking about teaching genres so that students can resist seeing them as “recipes,” see the multiple writing choices within the genre, and explore how they can adapt genres for their own purposes.