Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2016
DOI
10.7330/9781607324058.c002
Publication Title
Microhistories of Composition
Pages
58-89
Abstract
[First Paragraph] In May 1979, Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle hosted an international conference on "Learning to Write" at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, featuring a concentrated assemblage of eminent scholars as speakers and respondents. Those present sensed immediately that they were part of a momentous and historic event. Janet Emig, who delivered her famous "Tacit Tradition" speech at the conference, remembered it later as "the single most electric professional meeting I ever participated in" (Emig 1983, n.p.). Many delegates saw it as the rightful successor to the landmark Dartmouth Conference of 1966, and when Anthony Adams, the closing speaker, suggested it might even eclipse Dartmouth as the most important conference ever held on English education, "there was a general murmur of assent" (Oster 1979, 24).
Original Publication Citation
Phelps, L. W. (2016). The 1979 Ottawa conference and Its inscriptions: Recovering a Canadian moment in American rhetoric and composition. In B. McComiskey (Ed.), Microhistories of Composition (pp. 58-89). Chicago, Illinois: Utah State University Press.
Repository Citation
Phelps, Louise Wetherbee, "The 1979 Ottawa Conference and It's Inscriptions: Recovering a Canadian Moment in American Rhetoric and Composition" (2016). English Faculty Publications. 97.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/97
Included in
English Language and Literature Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Social History Commons
Comments
© Utah State University Press
Included with the kind written permission of the publisher and the author.