Dr. Elif Guler, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Longwood’s Professional Writing Program, recently facilitated a pedagogical workshop, presented a paper, and co-chaired a special interest group at the 2019 Conference on College Composition Communication (CCCC) which took place from March 13-16 in Pittsburgh, PA. Since 1949, CCCC has been the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media.
Dr. Guler facilitated a workshop entitled, “(Un)veiling Mediated Texts for an Intercultural/International Performance of Rhetoric,” which modeled the use of cross-national mediated texts (e.g., translated television debates and social movement sites), in order to expand students’ perception of non-Western cultures. The unit introduced an instructional unit which aimed to help students explore non-Western women’s dress styles (often stigmatized in Western contexts) and the surrounding discourses as rhetorical artifacts. The unit aims to hone students’ critical thinking skills through a cross-cultural understanding of rhetorical action.
Dr. Guler’s paper entitled, “Recovering Turkish Principles of ‘How to Perform Rhetoric’ from Yusuf’s Wisdom of Royal Glory,” examined non-Western principles of rhetoric evident in the aforementioned text (1069) and how the text aims to educate an ideal agent who has to study language so s/he can effectively communicate with and utilize authority and power. By sharing the writing assignments developed for her rhetoric/writing courses at Longwood, Dr. Guler also discussed how Yusuf’s text can help contemporary writing students explore different national cultures and a moral understanding of rhetorical agency. Dr. Guler presented her paper as part of a panel entitled, “Defying the Rhetorical Tradition: A Multinational Performance of Rhetoric-Composition,” which she organized with a diverse group of scholars focusing on Ethiopian, Indian, and Chinese rhetorical traditions. The panel was chaired by Cheryl Glenn, the 2019 CCCC Exemplar Awardee and Distinguished Professor of English (Writing and Rhetoric) at the Penn State University.
Finally, Dr. Guler also co-chaired the Special Interest Group on Non-Western/Global Rhetorics – a standing group which seeks to increase rhetorical knowledge globally, to create new kinds of collaborations, and to welcome “Other” rhetorical traditions (Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Asian, African, and indigenous American, and so on) to the disciplinary conversations at CCCC.
Filed under: English & Modern Languages, Faculty News Notes | Tagged: Elif Guler, professional writing, rhetoric, Turkish rhetoric, Turkish rhetorical tradition, writing