2008 NCTE Annual Convention
"Because Shift Happens: Teaching
in the Twenty-First Century"
November 20-25, 2008
The College Section is pleased to welcome you to NCTE's Annual Convention. This year's College Section program is diverse and exciting. All who will attend College Section programs will enjoy full spectrum of bold new works in poetry, literature, drama, composition, non-fiction and technology. With over 200 interactive sessions and activities, your greatest challenge will be to manage your excitement!
~Jude Okpala, Chair, College Section Steering Committee
Build your own schedule of College events by visiting the
The 2008 NCTE Annual Convention Searchable Program
Saturday, November 22, 2008 - 12:30pm
College/CCCC Section Luncheon
Simon J. Ortiz was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in the Acoma village of McCarty's in an Acoma-speaking family. Ortiz attended Fort Lewis College, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Iowa. His career includes teaching at San Diego State, the Institute of American Indian Arts, Navajo Community College, the College of Marin, the University of New Mexico, and the Sinte Gleska College. Ortiz also served as lieutenant governor of the Pueblo of Acoma and consulting editor of the Pueblo of Acoma Press. He is currently a faculty member at the University of Toronto. He is the recipient of the Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year (Anthology/Collection) Award, 2000 (for Speaking for Generations). Ortiz has written over ten books including the titles After and Before the Lightning, Blue and Red, and A Ceremony of Brotherhood.
Ortiz writes poetry and prose that is at once honest and unfettered, and yet challenging. Using the simplest of language, Ortiz evokes the most complex feelings, and often a longing for the experiences about which he writes. In much of his work he maintains a simple tone that belies the adversity of his life. What Ortiz writes is important because he is teaching the art of experience, and doing it through language. Not surprisingly, he believes language is an important vehicle for finding and knowing who we are and professes a strong belief in the power of the oral traditions of his people. Although his words often seem innocent, the observations he makes could only come from one who has known the harshness of reality. That he manages such a firm belief in the power of experience and spirituality in the face of difficulty, is something well worth learning, a lesson that Ortiz, as well as Native Americans have to teach.
To purchase tickets for this event, see the convention registration form.
Friday, November 21, 2008 - 7:30pm
College Celebration (Section Get-Together)
Deborah Brandt
Deborah currently teaches graduate courses in literacy, writing studies, and qualitative research methods as well as a number of undergraduate writing courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Deborah's research awards include the Thomas Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Award, Grawmeyer Award for Distinguished Researched in Education, MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Book Prize, CCCC Outstanding Book Award, National Research Council Visiting Scholar, Vilas Associate Award, NCTE David Russell Award for Distinguished Research, ACLS, and the NCTE Promising Researcher Award. Her teaching awards include the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, English Graduate Student Association Graduate Teaching Award, and the Madison Urban League Community Service Award for Outreach Teaching.
She is the author of Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts, and Literacy in American Lives and have published many articles including Who's the President? Ghostwriting and Shifting Values in Literacy, Writing for a Living: Literacy and the Knowledge Economy, Limits of the Local: Expanding Perspectives on Literacy as Social Practice to name a few.
Deborah is currently working on a new project: Writing Now: New Directions in Mass Literacy, a study that explore the ascendancy of writing as a second stage of mass literacy, focusing on the impact of writing as a means of production in the American economy since about 1960.
College Colloquium