On Friday, August 16th, Roxanne Mountford lead a workshop on stasis theory and writing students’ civic engagement in the morning, and a discussion of work/life balance based on her book Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition later that afternoon. Both events were open to all faculty, though also part of the Composition program orientation. Roxanne is the director of FYC at the University of Oklahoma (OU), where she also serves as Interim Chair of the English department and teaches courses in writing and rhetoric.
Mountford’s workshop built on her work at OU and the “Mt. Oread Manifesto” she co-wrote in 2014, which calls for revisions to speech and communication pedagogy. Her workshop focused on stasis theory and how to help students slow down as they deliberate with others about public issues, especially those that can be controversial or difficult to talk about. Students in GMU Composition courses are frequently called upon to address public audiences, e.g. the advocacy letter in 101 and Discipline Project in 302.
In her workshop, Mountford quoted I.A. Richards: “Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies.” In stasis theory, people work to figure out on what grounds people are debating and how disconnects in these grounds (for example, if I’m talking about definitions of tariffs and someone else is talking about policies around tariffs) can create problems in moving conversations forward.
The afternoon discussion centered on Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition, Mountford’s co-authored book, in which she looked at a national survey and interviews she conducted about approaches to work/life balance, a frequent concern for all Composition faculty.
Roxanne’s visit was a wonderful, enriching addition to the Composition orientation. Plans are underway for a similar speaker at the Fall Composition program orientation—stay tuned for details.
To read more about Mountford, visit http://www.ou.edu/cas/english/about/faculty/r-mountford
August 30, 2019
