A Dialogue with Cindy Selfe and Doug Hesse
What does composition mean?
What does it mean to compose?
How do your definitions affect what you teach in first-year composition and how you teach it?
During the first Extended CCC Conversation, on March 4 at 4:00 pm EST, Cindy Selfe and Doug Hesse met in a virtual environment to continue a conversation they began in the Interchange section of the current issue of College Composition and Communication. Along with CCC journal editor, Kathi Yancey, hope you enjoyed the conversation!
If you were unable to attend the virtual event or if you would like to review the session or pass it along to your colleagues, a recording is now available for you to view. Note: In order to view the recording, you must have the most recent version of Java loaded on your computer. Please visit Elluminate support to run a system check.
The following mp3 file (of Rachel Sullivan speaking) was also played during the virtual event but did not come through on the recording.
In the February 2010 issue, Doug responds to Cindy’s June 2009 CCC article, where she uses the metaphor of voice to theorize a definition of composition that is richly multimodal. In response, Doug asks what the limits of our definition of composition might be and what a capacious answer might mean for our teaching. Cindy offers a reply.
Together, live and online, they considered two questions. First, how do we define composition? And second, what does this definition mean for our teaching of first-year composition?