Inkshed
Inkshed (later CASLL, the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning]) was a Canadian organization of teachers and scholars of writing and reading, predominantly in postsecondary institutions. It effectively began in 1982 with the publication of a newsletter, which continued in various forms until 2015.Archive of the newsletter: https://casdw-acr.ca/resources/casllinkshed-archives/ The first national "Inkshed Working Conference" was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in August 1984, and annual conferences were held in various Canadian cities until 2015.List of all Inkshed conferences: https://casdwacr.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/inkshed-conferences.pdf
The organization's aims, as codified when it was incorporated, in 1994, were "to provide a forum and common context for discussion, collaboration, and reflective inquiry in discourse and pedagogy in the areas of writing, reading (including the reading of literature), rhetoric, and language."The CASLL constitution: https://casdwacr.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/casll-constitution.pdf
The name "Inkshed" was proposed by co-founder James A. Reither, who found it in the Oxford English Dictionary as a "humorous" word, meaning "the shedding or spilling of ink; consumption or waste of ink in writing."Oxford English Dictionary" He and Russell A. Hunt, the other co-founder, explained that it was their intention to make "freewriting," a strategy popularized by composition theorist Peter Elbow, into "something dialogically transactional"Russell A. Hunt, “What is Inkshedding?” Conversations about Writing: Eavesdropping, Inkshedding, and Joining In, Ed. M. Elizabeth Sargent and Cornelia Paraskevas. Toronto: Nelson Thompson, 2005. 134-141. by embedding the writing into situations, usually in classrooms, where the freewritten texts were immediately read by others, in search of ideas or insights that impromptu writing might generate. The Inkshed conferences used this strategy in various ways over the years, the common thread being that written texts were created and read immediately, and stood in for—and underlay and promoted—some part of the oral discussion that usually characterizes academic gatherings.Mary-Louise Craven, "Inkshed Conferences: Transforming the Conference into a Conversation." Textual Studies in Canada 6 (1996), 82-87.
Context
Inkshed's origin has been characterized as in part a reaction among Canadian teachers of English to the widespread advent of the (often required) introductory composition course in US universities,"In contrast to the much documented rise of the 'Freshman Composition' course in English departments in the United States, the twentieth-century Canadian academy has never embraced the curricular concept of the 'Comp' class per se." -- Nan Johnson, "Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the Canadian Academy: An Historical Analysis," College English 50:8 (December 1988), 869. and the concomitant growth there of the "comp industry." As more courses were offered, more faculty was hired, more pressure exerted on young faculty to publish, more conferences in which to collaborate and present, more organizations to sponsor such conferences and more journals in which to publish. In Canada such an institution never did develop."Even though scholars working in Canada during the 1980s could rearticulate composition as humanistic study, they were unable to remove composition from the discursive field of practicality, popular culture, and Americanization." -- Kevin Brooks, "National Culture and the First-Year English Curriculum: A Historical Study of 'Composition' in Canadian Universities." The American Review of Canadian Studies (Winter 2002): 673-694. At the time of Inkshed's founding, the vast majority of first-year English courses in Canadian universities were identified as introductions to literature, and while it was often tacitly assumed that learning to write was something that such courses would afford, little attention was paid to issues at the forefront of theory and scholarship such as the cognitive processes of composition, and introductory composition courses were rare.Roger Graves, “Composition in Canadian Universities.” Written Communication 10:1 (January 1993): 72-105. Thus, for Inkshed, in contrast to the situation in the U.S., there was no pre-existing constituency of composition teachers and thus no supporting infrastructure."first-year composition in the United States has given composition and rhetoric an identity and institutional place," whereas in Canada scholars had to "find institutional places for themselves and their work by collaborating with or joining other disciplines." -- Andrea Williams, "Voicing Scholars' Networked Identities through Interviews," Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies, by Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon (Inkshed Publications / Parlor Press, 2017, p. 47. Canadian teachers and scholars who, for whatever reasons, were concerned with the teaching and learning of writing, typically found colleagues and collaborators by attending American conferences and reading American journals.
History
Inkshed began as an occasional newsletter, the W&R/T&P (Writing and Reading, Theory and Practice) Newsletter, circulated by mail to a group of a hundred or so subscribers. Within a year, circulation was over 250, and it was rechristened Inkshed. Eventually there were several hundred subscribers, and issues came out six times during the academic year. The associated online listserv discussion groupArchive of CASLL-L from 1995: https://listserv.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CASLL-L had accumulated a subscription list in the hundreds, and served as a venue for often intense and extended discussions of contentious issues, some of which were edited and published in the newsletter or online. One, for example, was an extended online conversation about the nature of inkshedding itself, which appeared in reformatted form in the February 1994 issue of the newsletter."What is 'Inkshedding'? CASLL E-Mail /Excerpts."
In 1994 the organization gave rise to a new initiative, [https://www.inkshedpress.ca/ Inkshed Publications], which was to become the only academic publisher of peer-reviewed books focused on Canadian writing and teaching studies,"Other than the Inkshed/CASLL Press, paid for by membership dues, Canada has no scholarly press devoted to the discipline, which stands in marked contrast to the variety of publishers that put out monographs and collections on American rhetoric and composition scholarship" -- Jennifer Clary-Lemon, "Shifting Tradition: Writing Research in Canada," American Review of Canadian Studies 39.2 (June 2009), 101. publishing eleven books over the next quarter century, the two most recent in 2017.Roger Graves and Teresa Hyland, Writing Assignments Across University Disciplines (Inkshed Press, 2017), and Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon, Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies (Inkshed and Parlor Press, 2017).
By the end of the 90s, however, the newsletter was reduced to two or three issues a year, and in 2009 it ceased publication altogether, with an issue featuring two reviews of a book detailing the life and lingering death of a bellwether writing program at a major Canadian university.Inkshed: Newsletter of the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning 25:2 (Winter 2009), 5-13.
Legacy
The influence of Inkshed is felt in the continuing, active presence of Inkshed Publications, and as well in the publications and documents of the scholars and teachers involved. The ideas are still regularly revived and explored in new contexts.Pat Thomson, “Patter.” Blog. April 23, 2015. “Collective Free Writing – Inkshedding” Online: