Meetings

MEETINGS Thursday, October 22 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. CONJOINT:(Cinnabar) WESTERN STATES WOMEN'S STUDIES ASSOCIATION Presiding: Linda Hogan, Idledale, Colorado Marilyn Krysl, University of Colorado, Boulder. "Women's journals and autobiographies as 'inside' keys to what it means to be a working woman writer." Mary Crow. "The Domination of Red: Sylvia Plath's Bloodshot Vision." Wine and Cheese Reception, 4:15 — 5:15 Poetry Readings: Norma Wilson, Marilyn Krysl, Mary Crow; 5:15 — 7:00 Panel Discussion: Women's Literature from the Inside Out: The Conditions of Contemporary Women's Writing. Discussion and response from panel members. 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. RMMLA Board Meeting(Clearwater) 5:30 to 7:00 TEACHING: ENGLISH COMPOSITION(Liberty) LITERATURE IN FRESHMAN COMPOSITION COURSES Presiding: William J. Gracie, Jr., Miami University (Ohio) Secretary: Carolyn Logan, Gasper College Joseph Comprone, University of Louisville, "Literature and the Writing Process: A Pedagogical Reading of William Faulkner's 'Barn Burning.' " This paper reviews current literary and composition theory and summarizes the general implications this theory holds for the teaching of reading and writing. The theoretical posiROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW187 tions outlined are illustrated through analysis of three sequential writing exercises that are based on Faulkner's story. The general argument presented works toward a rapprochement between literature and composition teachers. H. Wayne Schow, Idaho State University, "Composition and the Arts." A composition course which invites students to analyze their own responses to varied kinds and qualities of art can be surprisingly effective. Common exposure to numerous campus and community artistic experiences provokes lively dialogue about forms and values and provides subject matter for thoughtful, honest writing. Principles of art can be used to reinforce important principles of composition. Such a course can be conducted without anyone forgetting that its primary business is developing thinking and writing skills. Robert Shenk, United States Air Force Academy, "The Self Enlarged: The Case for Good Literature in the Composition Class." Just as the liberal art of rhetoric has always recognized that the classic three means of persuasion — ethos, pathos, and logos — go beyond technique and involve the personality as a whole, so a sane and fully humane approach to the teaching of composition would aid and encourage our students to develop their whole personalities at the same time they exercise and perfect their technical skills. The most natural way for us to do this, that is, to encourage personal growth in all of its various aspects, is to consider centrally in the composition class works of good literature. SPECIAL TOPICS:(Delamar) AMERICAN HUMOR Presiding: Richard G. Morgan, East Tennessee State University Secretary: Karl Keller, San Diego State University James Caron, University of Oregon, "Bergsonian Laughter in McTeaoite." This essay seeks to establish a close connection between Henri Bergson's ideas on laughter and the world view projected by naturalism. Specifically, mechanistic behavior as laughter's source provides a link between the broad vaudeville humor of McTeaoue's early chapters and the dark, grotesque, naturalistic events of later chapters. Also the reader's response to charVOL . 35, No. 3 — CONVENTION ISSUE, 1981188 acterization is manipulated through the comic element: Trina becomes a two-dimensional comic figure while McTeague deepens beyond mere buffoon, eliciting sympathy and laughter by the story 's end. Robert C. Steensma, University of Utah, "Images of President Carter in American Newspaper Cartoons." The political fortunes and misfortunes of President Jimmy Carter and his administration are graphically detailed in American newspaper cartoons between 1976 and 1981. These cartoons by artists of widely varying political persuasions reflect the perceptions of the American public as measured by the Gallup and Harris polls, and they also illustrate the continuing functions of the editorial cartoonist as artist, social critic and political analyst. Bradley S. Hayden, Western Michigan University, "Ambrose Bierce and the Humor of Bitterness." What might we say of Ambrose Bierce and his writing? That he was one of thirteen children , all of whose names began with A, that he was raised in the Bible Belt by parents he later referred to as "unwashed savages," that he was a hero of sorts during the Civil War, that he became a carpetbagger and described shooting a shadow following him home...