Dr. Elif Guler, Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing, has been invited to facilitate a workshop and present a paper on transnational and transformative writing pedagogies at the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Kansas City, Missouri. Since 1949, CCCC has been the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media.
Dr. Guler’s workshop, “Cultivating a Transnational Praxis of Rhetoric in the U.S. Writing Classroom,” will focus on how a transnational praxis of writing can expand pedagogical resources that encourage students’ involvement in meaningful social action. Based on Dr. Guler’s scholarship of teaching and learning at Longwood University, workshop participants will explore the practical and actual processes of creating transnational and transcultural initiatives in the writing classroom. Her pedagogical application exposes students to rhetoric as it was historically practiced in her native Turkish context and prompts students to deploy the strategies drawn from non-Western texts at a local level. In addition, this workshop will provide the audience with other examples of international public rhetorics that can help students to critically explore and adopt alternative rhetorical models as new tools for participating in civic life.
Dr. Guler’s presentation, “Empowering Student Writing through the Rhetoric of Turkic Khans in the Orkhon Inscriptions,” will explore how the Orkhon Inscriptions (8th c.) erected for Turkic khans in the Orkhon Valley of Mongolia can be used to teach non-Western definitions and purposes of rhetoric (e.g., writing to achieve unity) in the composition classroom. Created in the old Turkic runic alphabet by the Göktürks, the Orkhon Inscriptions provide an account of the Göktürk Empire’s establishment, its social and political conflicts with the Chinese, and its military triumphs in securing its independence. The inscriptions are noted for their rhetorical qualities in using the word Türk for the first time and in describing the evolving unity among the Turkic tribes in central Asia. Dr. Guler will present how the inscriptions’ rhetoric can empower student writing for active citizen leadership.
Filed under: English & Modern Languages | Tagged: active citizenship, civic action, cultural rhetoric, Elif Guler, global rhetoric, leadership, professional writing, rhetoric, The Orkhon Inscriptions, transnational rhetoric, Turkish rhetoric, writing, writing praxis