This post on the topic To Read or Not To Read at College Composition and Communications Conference is part of an electronic conversation that is taking place on PRE/TEXT Lists and other sites. For the list of posts in the discussion, go to CCCC.

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Subject: mr: to read or not to read at CCCC
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Let me first admit my lack of experiential authority: I've never attended one of these "crammed" sessions, nor have I wandered a gallery of posters at a convention. I do however, have some responses to this conversation.

I tend to agree with Cynthia that sessions that use the position paper as their medium inhibit what could be called "reflective listening." Having offered position papers and watched discusssion resulting from them, I tend to wonder what it is that participants really gather from them. peple offer responses and rebutals (sp) to very small parts of larger ideas and arguments. I think they're a fabulous memdium for generating qustions and fast-paced debate and therefore work wonders in classrooms. I feel that a conference, however, its format, is aimed more at a detailed exchange of ideas and of a more substantive discussion of those ideas than from teh hip responses to position statements tend to be. Perhaps it's becuase I don't have a microsecond of attention span, but delivered papers offer me time to listen to a speaker, to write down questions for them, or problems I want to address, and then to listen to see whether and how those issues get addressed as their paper unfolds. By the time a whole panel of this is over and question sessions begin, I actually have a coherent response to what I've heard, something of offer beyond a quick-draw response. Seeing as refelctive listening is an important part of rational (*rational*) debate, or exchanges of knowledge, it is also part of being responsible about being critical. Let congresspersons respond without thinking; they're not in the business of thinkinng.

About the practical concern over poster presentations, it seems to me that posters just aren't the medium for disseminating complex ideas, or interesting arguments. Their very brevity, the visual shorthand, the lack of response I hear lamented in reagard to them, makes me suspicious of their efficacy in an exchange of ideas. Illustrations of method, flow charts of class dynamics and their politics, something that lends itself to visual representation I could see being well presented in the poster format. But arguments concerning the role of the topoi in contemporary Rhetoric, or the prosa and cons of teh Aristotelian model, how well addressed are such topics by posters. Do people try to present such topics on posters??

A general concern of mine with these soundbytes and shorthands is that I'm not sure how much information actually gets retained and digested in these formats. Richard Long seems eager to be exposed to hundreds of methods, but of them, what quantity get considered, incorporated into teaching?

I realize that the big academic conference are rediculously overscheduled, that too many of us out here need the line on the vitae, that just going to a conference to learn and to stimulate thinking is an unimaginable luxury for most (especially graduate students with sincere ambitions). Troubled times. But it also seems to me that as rhetors, or critics, or teachers of writing, or as writers who proclaim the necessity of suiting writing both to audience and format (forum) we should be practicing our writing and our presentation accordingly. Or trying to. Again I am agreeing with Cynthia. Try performing a poem, the sensitivity one's voice needs to get the nuances of tone in a poem across might be a good "object lesson" for those who want to begin working on delivery. Or read poetry that's written to be heard (not all of it is) and hear that. There are, after all, few things as crashingly boring as poorly delivered poetry. I think that practice at delivering something other than papers helps with delivering papers, and could be instructive and help avoid the complaints about boring presentations read in monotone and writen with no concern for the oral and auditory forum -- even if you only read to two cats.

Thanks all for the stimulation,

Meaghan Roberts
UT-Dallas

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