ECA Discourses of Citizenship Pre-conference Continues in Miami

ECA Discourses of Citizenship Pre-conference Continues in Miami

The 2003 ECA Convention Pre-conference on the Discourses of Citizenship will be continued at the NCA Convention in Miami. The Miami sessions will take place
on Thursday morning, November 20, 2003, from 9:30-12:30 in the Grande Promenade Ballroom at the Eden Roc Hotel. This special double-session meeting will be devoted to a Best Practices sharing format in answer to the question: What is a major obstacle to deepening civic engagement through citizen discourse, and how might our disciplinary practices overcome it? Informal work groups will discuss ideas to facilitate citizen involvement in both classroom and community settings.

Participation in the upcoming NCA meeting is open to ALL interested persons, whether or not they attended the sessions held at ECA last spring. Individuals wishing to attend should submit a one to two-page outline of a "best practices" concept for deepening civic engagement through enhanced citizen discourse to: Mary L. Kahl, ECA President, at kahl@ecasite.org by November 3, 2003. The outlines will be distributed electronically to all participants prior to the Miami meeting.

To view documents from the ECA Pre-conference, click here . These include remarks by Pre-conference Director Gerard Hauser, plenary speaker John Gastil, seminar leader Rosa Eberly, and position papers by several seminar participants. Position papers range from concern for an increased sense of orality to the promise and consequences of new media; developing student awareness of and competencies at all forms of discourse essential to deliberative processes; problems attending our conceptions of citizenship, virtuosity, and agency; and the need to reconceptualize citizenship with greater disciplinary attention to the local, the economic, the scientific, and the technical as sites of political problems requiring sustained citizen participation and action.