Keynote Speakers

"Learning to Live Together: Writing Across a Global Curriculum"
Richard Bates, School of Social and Cultural Studies in Education, Deakin University, Australia

Richard Bates is Professor of Social and Administrative Studies in the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, Australia. His scholarly work has been concerned with the Sociology of Education (where he contributed to the debate over the 'new sociology of education in Britain in the '70's) and Educational Administration (where he contributed to the emergence of an alternative 'critical' theory during the '80s). His work as Dean has drawn him into debates over teacher education during the 90’s and his Presidency of the Victorian and Australian Councils of Deans of Education has led him to contest official views regarding teacher supply and demand and to work towards a national agency for the accreditation of teacher education programs. He is a past President of the Australian Association for Researchers in Education and a Fellow of the Australian College of Education and the Australian Council for Educational Administration. He is President Elect of the Australian Teacher Education Association and a Board member of the International Council for the Education of Teachers.

Several of Bates' papers are accessible on his website; see http://www.deakin.edu.au/~rbates for the full text of "Administering the Global Trap: The Role of Educational Leaders, for example.

Bates’ keynote address at the WAC 2004 Conference is sponsored by a generous grant from Washington University in St. Louis.

Closing Keynote Participant/Observers:
"WAC in a Global Environment: What You Said, and What We're Thinking"
Gail Hawisher, English, University of Illinois, and Cynthia Selfe, English, Michigan Technological University

Gail E. Hawisher is Professor of English and founding Director of the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign. She has primarily published in literacy and technology studies, and, for the past 16 years, has co-edited the international journal Computers and Composition . Recent work includes Global Literacies and the World Wide Web (Routledge, 2000) and Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (Utah State University Press, 1999), which won the Distinguished Book Award at Computers and Writing 2000. She and her co-author, Cynthia Selfe, have recently published the book-length Literate Lives in the Information Age (Erlbaum, 2004), which uses life history interviews to look at how people have acquired, or not, the literacies of technology. In her everyday work through the Center for Writing Studies and its writing across the curriculum program, she likes to think she's worked to change, with lots of help from good colleagues, the culture of teaching at her large research university.

Cynthia L. Selfe is Professor of Humanities in the Humanities Department at Michigan Technological University, and co-editor, with Gail Hawisher, of Computers and Composition: An International Journal. In 1996, Selfe was recognized as an EDUCOM Medal award winner for innovative computer use in higher education-the first woman and the first English teacher ever to receive this award. In 2000, Selfe, along with long-time collaborator Gail Hawisher, was presented with the Outstanding Technology Innovator award by the CCCC Committee on Computers. Selfe has served as the Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Chair of the College Section of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Selfe is the author of numerous articles and books on computers including Literacy and Technology in the 21st Century, the Perils of Not Paying Attention (SIU Press, 1999), Creating a Computer-Supported Writing Facility (Computers and Composition Press, 1989); and she is a co-author of Technical Writing (with Mary Lay, Billie Wahlstrom, Stephen Doheny-Farina, Ann Hill Duin, Sherry Burgus Little, Carolyn D. Rude, and Jack Selzer, Irwin, 1995 and 2000). Selfe has also co-edited several collections of essays on computers, including Global Literacies and the World-Wide Web (with Gail Hawisher, Routledge, 2000), and Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (with Gail Hawisher, Utah State University Press and the National Council of Teachers of English, 1999).

The closing plenary with Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe is sponsored by a generous grant from the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell University.