Sheridan Blau and Peter Elbow: Featured Speakers

Featured Speakers’ Biographical Information

PETER ELBOW’s ideas about freewriting and responding to writing have shaped the way writing has been taught for the past few decades, both in the United States and in an increasing number of international settings. His perspectives on issues like academic discourse, evaluation, the nature of binaries, voice, dialect, and standard English have helped to define the theoretical concerns of the profession of Composition Studies. Elbow is the author of many books, including Writing Without Teachers, Writing With Power, Embracing Contraries: Essays in Learning and Teaching, Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, and others, and he is co-author of a textbook, A Community of Writers. He has also published many essays in composition and English journals, and given countless presentations and workshops all over the world. He has taught at various colleges and universities, and directed the writing programs at SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is now a Professor Emeritus.

SHERIDAN BLAU teaches in the Education and English departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also directs the South Coast Writing Project. A past President of the National Council of Teachers of English, he has served as the senior consultant for the development of California’s statewide language arts assessment, and on the panel that developed the assessment instruments and scoring procedures for certifying teachers applying for National Board Certification in the English Language Arts. He is the author of The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and their Readers.