Colleagues and Community come Together

Prof. Paula Matthieu's visit on May 11 provided an opportunity for UWP faculty to meet with members of the community


On Tuesday, May 11th, Professor Paula Mathieu, Director of the First-Year Writing Program at Boston College, was on campus as part of the University Writing Program Faculty Lecture Series. Prof Mathieu “specializes in composition and rhetoric, focusing especially on rhetorical studies of public cultures, community-based writing as social action, writing pedagogy, and university-community partnerships.”1



In the morning, Professor Mathieu conducted a workshop entitled "Writing Place and Community" In connection with her work on community partnerships, Professor Mathieu invited Lawless Watson, a representative from Street Sense, to the workshop to speak with her. Street Sense, a bi-weekly newspaper produced by members of the homeless community of Washington D.C. UW Professor Phyllis Ryder’s students have worked with Street Sense in the past in her course titled “Writing for Social Change: Writing with DC Community Organizations” The event provided an opportunity for University Writing Program faculty to discuss attitudes toward writing, creation of community through a shared writing experience, and the dynamics of grassroots publications as a means to give voice to those who lack traditional, official outlets among other issues.

This was followed by an afternoon talk entitled "Mapping the Contents of First-Year Writing" that picked up and extended the morning's discussion and brought the conversation back to how we might use some of the issues raised in the morning workshop in our classrooms.



Notes:
1. "Paula Mathieu" - http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/english/faculty/facalpha/mathieu.html