The Thomas R. Watson Conference in Rhetoric and Composition is an international conference held biennially on the University of Louisville campus since 1998. The conference is directed by a University of Louisville faculty member, with the help of two Assistant Directors. I served as Assistant Director for the 2012 Conference on Economies of Writing, under the direction of Min Zhan Lu. My fellow Assistant Director and I co-authored a book chapter reflecting on our efforts to facilitate multi-layered conversation among conference participants, “Informal Writing and the Design of Academic Conferences,” which is forthcoming in Economies of Writing: Revaluations in Rhetoric and Composition (Eds. Bruce Horner, Susan Ryan and Brice Nordquist).
2012 Watson Program Cover
Responsibilities included:
- Managing the submissions process, including entering proposals into database, circulating, and responding to applicants;
- Coordinating production of the conference program;
- Managing the conference website;
- Serving on and helping to coordinate the Watson Conference Committee for conference planning and proposal review;
- Organizing presentations into meaningful panels that compliment one another and contribute to a rich dialogue about Economies of Writing;
- Coordinating graduate student volunteers;
- Managing conference email, responding to requests and answering questions knowledgeably;
- Facilitating multidirectional dialogue between and among conference participants and invited scholars.