THE 1999 YOUNG RHETORICIANS’ CONFERENCE

MEETS June 24-26, 1999, AT THE MONTEREY BEACH HOTEL

(Overheard: "This is Not a Boring Conference.")

Regenerating Discourse: Situating the Self
Amid the (Un)Situated Audience

Need a break from the existing world order? Join us at the Young Rhetoricians' Conference in Monterey and roll with the tides of shifting discourse. Gather with other instructors, authors, publishing folk, and lovers of language from two- and four-year colleges and universities to explore problems and possibilities as we move into the new millenium. This year (among other conversations) we consider our discourse and that of our students as situations of audience slip-slide out of authorial control into various and unsituated realms: oral, written, cyber, and trickster.

Where the Monterey Bay warmly greets general sessions, workshops, panels, and luncheons ~~ teachers, writers, and publishers will converge as colleagues to ponder the workings of discourse. Bring your concerns--both ideological and intuitive--to the beach as we gather to revitalize ourselves and what we are about. Come help us look to issues and ideas that enable us to enable our students.

THE CONFERENCE

Rhetorician of the Year

With this century's final Rhetorician of the Year, the YRConference hopes to launch us beyond (or before) a sense of rhetoric as Manifest Destiny gone cerebral. We are pleased to announce Dr. Victor Villanueva as this year's honoree. Dr. Villanueva has won two national awards for his Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color and daily practices, teaching rhetoric and composition studies at Washington State University. He has also edited Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader and has helped direct the field as chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. We congratulate Victor and look to him for further guidance and inspiration.

Luncheon Speaker

We welcome poet Diem Jones, director of the St. Mary's College Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. With his poetry collection, Sufi Warrior, says Ishmael Reed, "Diem Jones has successfully transmitted the sounds of Rap to the printed page." In addition to his own writing, Jones heads a large consortium of writers and works tirelessly with two- and four-year colleges, publicizing their literary events. With Arab/American poet-performer, Elmaz Abinader (Mills College), Jones recently coordinated the first annual "Hurston/Wright Week"--an intensive six-day writing workshop in creative nonfiction, playwriting, short story, poetry, and the novel. Jones founded the Bay Area Literary Coalition (BALC) and coordinates "Grand Slam," providing an occasion for emerging graduate program writers to read from their poetry, fiction, and plays.

General Session Featured Speaker

Interactive Panels, Roundtables, & General Sessions

Cutting Edge Session ~~ Native American Rhetorics and "Classrooms"

A Tribute to 1989 Forever Young Rhetorician of the Year, Ed Corbett

Getting On with the Process of Writing: Writing Centers as "Places to Go"

Chaos Among the Clusters: Writing the Natural Way in Unnatural Sites

Service Learning: Offering the Missing Link

TYCA Roundtable: The Un-Situated Images of Two-Year Colleges ~~ Another Look

Chumming the Internet: Invention Gone Cybernetic

Alternative Rhetorics: Challenges to the Rhetorical Tradition

"Conflicts of Interest" Or "Partnerships" ~~ College/Business Liaisons

Making Contributions: Writing & Publishing in College Composition Journals

The Popular Culture Panel ~~ Regenerating Discourse Among Icons and Images

The Grad Student Panel ~~ Facing New Life Forms in a Liquid Job Market

The Publishers' Panel ~~ Negotiating Classroom and On-Line Students: Composition and Rhetoric 2000

Book Fair

No basement, this fair. Publishers vie with the view of the Monterey Bay to intrigue you with their best and latest wares. Meet casually with editors to voice your ideas for new texts as you inform them of your needs.

We're booked for June 24-26 at the Monterey Beach Hotel. Thursday once again finds us on the hotel beach, settling back for the luncheon barbecue spread. Later, as evening falls on minds astir from afternoon seminars, jazz-based sounds resonate from the balcony above the waves. For those who enjoy dialectics as the voice of blues, we've timed the conference to lead into the famed Monterey Blues Festival that begins shortly after the YRC's last session on Saturday. For information about the fourteenth annual Monterey Bay Blues Festival that follows the sixteenth annual YRC (or to request a ticket order form) call the Blues Festival Office at (831) 394-2652. Connect-click to this year's Blues Festival Program:

Afterwards, take a sunset yacht cruise across the Monterey Bay, or drive the (ever re-situating) road to Big Sur. Come regenerate your self for the coming year.

PREREGISTRATION
The conference fee now includes both Thursday's barbecue on the beach and Friday's luncheon with speaker. Preregister with the attached form and a check payable to: “The Young Rhetoricians’ Conference."
Please send form and check to
Sterling Warner, Co-Chair YRC, Evergreen Valley College, 3095 Yerba Buena Road, San Jose, CA 95135
Full-time Faculty: $90. Adjunct Faculty/Students: $70.

WALK-IN REGISTRATION
will begin around 8:00 AM on Thursday, June 24, 1999, on the fourth floor of the Monterey Beach Hotel.
Full-time Faculty: $100. Adjunct Faculty/Students: $80.