Floating Foundations: Kairos, Community, and a Composition Program in Post-Katrina New Orleans

• Published in: College English Vol. 72; no. 1; pp. 29 - 47
• Main Authors: Johnson, T. R., Letter, Joe, Livingston, Judith Kemerait
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Urbana National Council of Teachers of English 01-09-2009
• Subjects: Adjustment (to Environment); Attitude Change; Authors; College English; College students; Communities; Community; Community Relations; Concept Formation; Construction (Process); Construction Needs; Constructivism (Learning); Doctoral Programs; Emotional Response; English Departments; Evacuations & rescues; Floating foundations; Floods; Foundations; Graduate students; Higher Education; Hurricanes; Louisiana; Mud; Natural Disasters; Neighborhood Schools; Neighborhoods; Organizational Change; Perspective Taking; Rhetoric; School buildings; School campuses; Sense of Community; Social Change; Space Utilization; Students; Therapeutic Environment; Time Perspective; Weather; Writing; Writing (Composition); Writing Instruction; Writing Teachers; Written composition; Louisiana
• ISSN: 0010-0994; 2161-8178
• DOI: 10.58680/ce20097951

The authors describe their individual and collective experiences reconstructing their New Orleans-based university composition program in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They emphasize how the concept of "floating foundations" helps account for changes in their students' interests, and they suggest that this idea is applicable to the work of writing instructors in general. (Contains 2 notes.)