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MIT Symposium – Academic Writing in the 21st Century: Looking Ahead

  • Aug 19, 2011

When: Saturday, October 29, 2011
Where: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cost: Free
Registration: http://www.planetreg.com/E716101125

In July, Les Perelman announced that MIT would host an all day symposium on academic writing in the 21st century. Given the list of speakers and respondents assembled for the symposium, this event promises to be a great day-long discussion of writing in the university.

Featured Speakers and Respondents

  • Robert Scholes, Brown University (Keynote)
  • Gerald Graff (University of Illinois, Chicago)
  • Cathy Birkenstein-Graff (University of Illinois, Chicago)
  • Chris Anson (North Carolina State University)
  • John Brereton (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
  • Nancy Sommers (Harvard University)
  • Joseph Bizup (Boston University)

According to the conference registration page, the featured speakers will address the following questions:

  1. What is the relationship of reading to academic writing? of one text to others?  How will these relationships change during the twenty-first century with the advent of new media, digital archives, open access publishing, and googlization of knowledge?
  2. How will the move toward interdisciplinarity in academic inquiry shape discourse conventions within specific discourse communities?
  3. How will the globalization of academic communities shape academic writing?
  4. How might the relationship among academic writing, civic discourse and literacy, and professional writing change with these other social, technological, and political changes?
  5. What will be the relationship of academic writing to rhetoric?