Conference Planning Committee
UC Davis's C&W 09 Planning Committee draws on the talents of faculty from multiple colleges, departments and programs; because cross campus collaboration is encouraged at UC Davis, the committee also includes members from UC Santa Barbara and CSU Sacramento. Along with our graduate students and our campus Event Planning and Visitors Services, the support of these faculty will contribute not only to the planning for the conference but also to its smooth operation.
Jonathan Alexander is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as Campus Writing Director.
Jonathan's work focuses primarily on the use of emerging communications technologies in the teaching of writing and in shifting conceptions of what writing, composing, and authoring mean. Jonathan also works at the intersection of the fields of writing studies and sexuality studies, where he explores what it means to "compose queerly" as well as what theories of sexuality, particularly queer theory, have to teach us about literacy and literate practice in pluralistic democracies. His books include Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy (Utah State UP), Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies on the World Wide Web (Hampton), the co-authored book Argument Now, a Brief Rhetoric (Longman), and the co-edited collection Role Play: Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing (Hampton).
Steven Athanases is an Associate Professor in the School of Education and the Chair for the Graduate Group in Education at UC Davis. His research areas include educational equity; English language arts education; gay and lesbian issues in education; minority/underrepresented students; multicultural literature and literacy; and secondary education. Steve started his career as a high school English teacher in the Chicago area, filling students’ minds with the tales of John Steinbeck, Harper Lee and Langston Hughes for over 10 years. His work continues to explore teaching diverse youth in urban, public schools, and "broadening English language arts curricula to better engage kids on the academic margins.”Jesse Drew is an Associate Professor and Director of Technocultural Studies at UC Davis. His work as a media artist and writer seeks to challenge the complacent relationship between the public and new technologies. His media work has been exhibited widely at such venues as the San Francisco Film Arts Festival, the ZKM in Germany, the World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), Incident (Brussels), Taos Talking Pictures, Dallas Film and Video Festival, the Mill Valley Film and Video Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the American Indian Film and Video Festival, as well as international broadcast and cablecast outlets. In his teaching, he explores the many new ways that documentary work has evolved, examining forms such as the personal essay film, found-footage/appropriation work, non-linear, multi-media forms, spoken word, storytelling, oral histories and other examples of documentary expression. He has been involved in independent film/video production for two decades.
Cynthia Carter Ching is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UC Davis. Her research focuses on learners' use of technology in educational settings to create powerful and personally meaningful applications, artifacts, and self-representations. She is currently editing a book in the Cambridge "Learning in Doing" series entitled Technology, Learning, and Identity: Research on the Development and Exploration of Selves in a Digital World. In 2007 she was awarded the American Educational Research Association's Jan Hawkins Memorial Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research with Learning Technologies. She has taken leadership roles in planning and organizing the 2004 International Conference on the Learning Sciences (ICLS), the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the 2007 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL).
Kory Lawson Ching is an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University. His research interests include response to student writing, sociocultural approaches to literacy, and qualitative methodology. In 2005, he coordinated the state-wide English Articulation Conference in Monticello, Illinois.
Cathy Gabor is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, San Jose. She served as a faculty fellow for the Teaching using Technology (TuT) Institute at CSU, Sacramento, and she is currently a Faculty Fellow for the Carnegie Foundation/California Campus Compact Program on Service-Learning for Political Engagement. Her teaching and research interests include writing processes in electronic environments, service-learning and K-12/college collaborative literacies.
Elizabeth (Liz) Gibson is IET's Director of Academic Technology Services at UC Davis.
Betsy Gilliland is a PhD student in the Language, Literacy, and Culture emphasis area of the School of Education. She holds an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and has taught English composition and language courses at universities in Uzbekistan and California. Her research interests include adolescent literacies and the linguistic preparation for higher education of English learners in California high schools. She has served on conference planning committees for California TESOL in 2004, 2006, and 2008. She also teaches for the University Extension.
Lynette Hunter is Professor of the History of Rhetoric and Performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Having been formative in the development of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric in the UK since the late 1970s, she has recently focused on the intersection of rhetoric and performance in new democratic rhetorics developed by communities new to liberal social contract democracy. She established the first humanities computing courses at university level in the UK in the mid-1980s, and created database structures and hypertexts based on feminist topics before writing 'Critiques of Knowing' in 1999. Her current research includes an interest in performance art and digital technology.
Karen J. Lunsford is an Assistant Professor in the Writing Program at the Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara. She has been actively involved in the Computers & Writing conference since 2001--presenting papers, judging contests, and reviewing conference proposals. Her research interests involve analyzing distributed publication systems and developing open-source course management systems.
Andy Jones is Director of the Faculty-Mentoring-Faculty Program in the Teaching Resources Center (TRC) and a Lecturer for the UC Davis University Writing Program at UC Davis. He has won university-wide awards for his outstanding teaching; he hosts a weekly radio program on WDVS on Technology and Poetry; and he has been a long-time champion of teaching writing in computer labs.
Leslie Madsen-Brooks is coordinator for faculty and TA programs within the Teaching Resources Center (TRC) on campus. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies and an M.A. in writing, and has taught writing, literature, American studies, and museum studies, as well as the UC Davis Seminar on College Teaching. In addition to helping faculty improve their teaching of undergraduates, she is interested in the ways that web 2.0 technologies can be used to forge more meaningful collaborations among the university, K-12 schools, museums, and other community and archival institutions. Prior to joining the TRC, she served the campus by consulting with faculty on how to best integrate pedagogy and technology.
Dan Melzer is the University Reading and Writing Coordinator and a Rhetoric and Composition faculty member in the English Department at California State University, Sacramento. He has published articles in Kairos, Currents in Electronic Literacy, Language and Learning across the Disciplines, and The WAC Journal. He was Co-chair of the 2007 Northern California Writing Centers Association Conference.
Colin Milburn joined the UC Davis English faculty in 2005. His research focuses on the cultural relations between literature, science, and technology. His interests include science fiction; Gothic horror; the history of biology; the history of physics; comic books, film and new media; critical theory; and posthumanism.
Praba Pilar is a PhD student at UC Davis in Performance Studies with an emphasis on Practice as Research. Her research focuses on aspects of technology that generate new forms of economic, environmental, and sexual exploitation and erasure that have explicit political, class, gender, and racial dimensions. She has raised these questions through performances, installations and artworks that present counternarratives to the overarching rhetoric about the beneficence of biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology. Her collaborative and solo work has been featured at multiple museums around the world, performance festivals, universities, conferences, galleries and public streets. She has been written about in numerous publications, and honored with multiple awards, including the Creative Capital and the Creative Work Fund.
John Stenzel is a Lecturer in the University Writing Program. His work includes studies of technical writing and authentic audiences; he frequently teaches Writing in Engineering and Business and Technical Writing. His first Computers and Writing Conference was C&W #3 at UCLA.Chris Thaiss is Clark Kerr Presidential Chair and Director of the University Writing Program at the University of California at Davis. Active in the development of cross-curricular writing in colleges and universities since 1978, Chris coordinates the International Network of WAC Programs (INWAC) and works with teachers in the elementary, middle, and high schools through sites of the National Writing Project. He has authored or co-authored eight books and edited three others; he serves on the editorial boards of Across the Disciplines, Inventio, and Writing on the Edge.
Carl Whithaus, Conference Chair, is an Associate Professor in the University Writing Program at the University of California at Davis. His research interests include the impact of IT on literacy practices, writing assessment, and professional writing in the sciences. His dissertation won the Hugh Burns award; his books include Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-stakes Testing (Erlbaum 2005) and Writing Across Distances and Disciplines (Erlbaum/Taylor&Francis 2007). A long-time attendee of Computers & Writing, Carl is delighted to have the opportunity to host C&W 09.