Author: ksuchor

Institute Date: October 23, 2024
Call for Roundtable Proposals
Proposal Deadline: August 9, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. ET

Registration and Institute Information

Institute Format

The one-day event will feature eight roundtable sessions on machine writing, two on each of the four larger areas of interest that machine learning challenges: theory, pedagogy, assessment, and administration. The day will include four participant-created roundtables and four chair-created roundtables with no special distinction made between them. Each panel, whether participant-created or chair-created, will have opportunities to collaborate with each other and the co-chairs before the event. Those submitting proposals for individual roles will be placed in a chair-created roundtable.

The roundtables will activate further ideation among participants. After each roundtable, participants will have thirty minutes to process what they’ve heard by writing notes or fully thought-out responses. Then everyone will return for small breakout conversations, each led by at least one roundtable participant. Each small group will be assigned one prompt: from your thirty-minute processing, create a shared list of concerns, values, resources and tools, and/or future projects that should be explored as teaching, research, or service activities, either collaborative or individual.

July Informational Meetings

Given the newness of the format for this institute, the co-chairs, Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Timothy Oleksiak, University of Massachusetts Boston, held two informational meetings in July to clarify any expectations and confusions members might have. Please visit the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page resulting from the informational meetings.

Email cccc@ncte.org with questions.

Need-Based Waivers for Accepted Presenters

CCCC will offer up to 20 need-based registration waivers (valued at $60 each) for accepted presenters to the 2024 CCCC Fall Virtual Institute. Priority will be given to graduate students and contingent faculty accepted to the Institute program.

Proposal submitters should complete the application form by the deadline for institute proposals, which is August 9, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. ET.

Background

In the fall of 2023, the Conference on College Composition and Communication asked members to pick a topic of broad significance to them and the field for a CCCC one-day institute. An overwhelming majority of members selected machine learning and writing, which should not come as a surprise, given that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) seems to represent a paradigm shift in composition and rhetoric. The discipline had generative AI on its radar before these tools came onto the scene of our social literacy histories (Burns; Hart-Davidson; McKee and Porter). However, the widespread availability of AI platforms to individual students and teachers, their adoption in the workplace and higher education, and their swift development in the last eighteen months, poses important questions about the impact these tools have on the teaching of writing, on writing research, and on the social activity of writing itself.

For example, how do we meet the expectations that we teach ethical use of AI (Flaherty), when we know that even one output activates environmental degradation (Luccioni et al; Crawford)? Or that the development of these tools relies on raw materials mined from the Earth by modern enslaved Black Congolese women and children (Noble; Sovacool)? When we move away from what’s behind the design of GenAI, we find our labor transformed as private industry sells affordable versions of GenAI to our universities under the auspices of “efficient” writing processes and grading (“Introducing ChatGPT Edu”; “HAI at Five”)? In that light, what responsibilities do humans and GenAI share in writing, research, and administration; what tasks might be off-loaded to GenAI; and what might that mean for teaching and learning AI? Finally, how might our commitment to rhetorical truth (Roberts-Miller; Mercieca; McComiskey) address bad actor’s deployment of GenAI for misinformation and troubling varieties of deepfakes, most recently middle school and high school students creating deepfake nudes of classmates (Singer).

However, recent scholarship on the latest GenAI tools have shown not hype, dismissing these technologies, or total disdain, but rather nuanced arguments on composing and GenAI using our existing research methods and rhetorical theories (Ranade and Eyman) and careful use case scenarios for our writing classrooms (Vee et al). Another unsurprise, then, is that we are equipped to interrogate utopian discourse about AI and how dominant groups may use these tools to perpetuate existing inequality to show up power and capital for themselves (Crawford; Preston).

Call for Roundtable Proposals

We wish to continue this dynamic conversation and state at the top that we discourage uncritical championing of machine-writing technologies or simple demonstrations of a particular technology. We’re excited to invite group (4–5 speakers) and individual roundtable proposals for the first-ever one-day CCCC Fall Virtual Institute, devoted to critical conversations on wicked problems challenging rhetoric and composition. This year, we seek roundtable discussions that build on current conversations about machine learning and writing.

We imagine this event differently than a virtual conference that replicates in-person CCCC. Rather, the CCCC Fall Virtual Institute is a space for provocative presentations of ideas, focused writing, and small-group interactions. Each roundtable session will work as a foundation of provocation that will inspire attendees to write, compose, reflect, and move new or existing projects forward. By the end of the conference, the results of the conversation will be distributed to CCCC members.

We consider this institute an opportunity to learn in the community. Thus, both roundtable participants and attendees will be listed in the final program. If you are included as a roundtable participant, you may place this item on your CV under national, peer-reviewed conference presentations as a roundtable speaker or discussant.

Form, Style, and Content of Roundtables

We imagine each roundtable as playing with creating a style and tone that is at once engaging, informative, and generous to the multiple values and member needs on the broad matter of machine writing. Roundtables might offer staged dialogues with archetypes such as European Medieval morality plays or Platonic dialogues. Perhaps participants are inspired by myths and stories from Indigenous peoples or shaped by their unique geo-cultural locations. A mock trial or curriculum meeting at a community college could offer structure. Participants might use these roles to provoke creative tensions that inspire those witnessing the roundtable discussions into new ideas.

Expectations for Roundtables

Each participant selected will be responsible for offering cohesive roundtable experience. Rather than seeking atomized presentations, we ask that each member collaborate with each other well in advance of the day’s events and consider taking one of the following roles:

• Listener/Synthesizer/Opener – In this role, you are processing information that is shared by others and contributing when you have a question, concern, or idea.
  • How will you bring ideas together during the roundtable? How will you prepare attendees for what they are about to experience with your roundtable?
• Empiricist/Researcher – You have come with a project in mind and are looking for development and refinement.
  • What kinds of empirical projects are important for the rhetoric and composition specialists to undertake in this larger area of interest? How might you use your individual empirical project as a way to broaden what can be possible for empirical, data-driven researchers?
• Curious Nonexpert – You are coming with an active interest in machine writing but have not had time to immerse yourself in the literature.
  • What curiosities do you bring to the area of interest that other, more knowing colleagues might respond to? What do you want to know? Why is learning important for you and your movement through the profession?
• Rhetorical Gadfly – You are incredulous and are eager to share your contrary and informed opinions.
  • What objections, frustrations, or killjoy experiences can you offer to productively engage the roundtable and create meaningful dissonances for attendees to consider?
• Knowing Scholar/Theorist – You have studied this stuff and have citations and scholarly conversations that you believe are important to share with our community. Rather than general gestures to the literature, you are able to recall the scholarly positions within the conversation.
  • What learned experience, critical conversations, or scholarly expertise can you offer during the roundtable discussion, either in support of colleagues’ ideas or as critical responses to what is being offered?
• Other, Named Role – If there is a role you imagine playing that is not included among the roles listed here, you are welcome to name it, describe its character, and list one or two questions this role is animated by in your proposal(s).

We encourage roundtable participants to identify speaking roles to encourage richer dialogues and to highlight the critical nature of these rhetorical dispositions in the creation of knowledge. We think the notion of taking a role rather than simply presenting your own research for others to listen to can bring us closer to collective learning experiences that have guided the format of this event.

Finally, feel free to use the questions associated with each role as a guide to developing your proposal.

Roundtable Participant Commitments

Should you be selected as a roundtable participant, we ask you to join the co-chairs, Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Timothy Oleksiak, University of Massachusetts Boston, for a short informational session on Zoom to ground expectations for roles, possible structure, and brief suggestions on leading breakout discussions so that “What do you think?” is not the first and only question used to generate discussion.

We strongly encourage invited roundtable speakers to attend one of two optional virtual sessions to share any issues or concerns about their roundtable with co-chairs before the CCCC Fall Virtual Institute.

These sessions will occur via Zoom on

• September 18, 2024, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET
• September 19, 2024, 10:00–11:00 a.m. ET

Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria for Proposals

For Group (4–5 speakers) Roundtable Proposals

• Proposals should be no more than one thousand (1,000) words long.
• Proposal speaks directly to the area of interest – theory, pedagogy, assessment, or administration.
• Your proposal is grounded in a concept or series of concepts related to machine writing and your area of interest.
• Your proposal includes representatives from more than two of the following categories: community colleges, HBCUs, tribal colleges, colleagues from institutions outside the United States, teaching colleges, HSIs, and/or institutions that are part of the AANAPISI program.
  • While this is not a deal breaker for program acceptance, those with two or more of the aforementioned representatives will take priority.
• Proposal identifies the role each speaker is interested in playing on the roundtable.
• If applicable, name and describe a role not listed in this call.

For Individual Roundtable Proposals

• Proposal should be no more than one thousand (1,000) words long.
• Proposal speaks directly to the area of interest – theory, pedagogy, assessment, or administration.
• Proposal is grounded in a concept or series of concepts related to machine writing and your area of interest.
• Proposal identifies the role you are interested in playing on the roundtable.
• If applicable, name and describe a role not listed in this call.

In order to ensure maximum participation in the roundtables, individuals will be limited to one speaking role.

Proposal Deadline (Please place the following dates and times on your calendar.)

Proposals must be submitted by August 9, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. ET. We selected 10:00 a.m. ET to ensure that there are support staff available to assist with any submission problems. Email cccc@ncte.org with questions.

Decisions to Proposers with Rationale

All proposers can expect brief feedback about our decisions by 5:00 p.m. ET on August 16, 2024. If you are not selected as a featured roundtable speaker that does not mean you are excluded from participating during the many institute open town hall sessions. Bring all of your ideas to share in our learning community.

Tentative Schedule at a Glance

10:45–11:00 a.m. ET – All Attendees: Brief opening remarks as people connect to Zoom
11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. ET – Two session choices: Administration Roundtable or Theory Roundtable
1:00–3:00 p.m. ET – Two session choices: Pedagogy Roundtable or Assessment Roundtable
3:00–5:00 p.m. ET – Two session choices: Theory Roundtable or Pedagogy Roundtable
5:00–7:00 p.m. ET – Two session choices: Assessment Roundtable or Administration Roundtable
7:00–8:00 p.m. ET – All Attendees: Open Townhall and Moving Forward for Our Members

Concurrent Session Breakdown

The roundtable dialogues will break down into the following schedule:

1. 45-minute roundtable dialogues relating to the area of interest
2. 30-minute individual writing or reflection period
3. 20-minute breakout session
   • Five or six different randomly assigned breakout rooms with a roundtable participant as leader
4. 10-minute report-back, speak-out session
5. 15-minute break between sessions

Rationale

We use four participant-created roundtables and four chair-created roundtables as an inclusive practice. In this model, we do not favor full group roundtable discussions over individual proposals. Some CCCC members may be better connected than others and more able to bring together colleagues to participate in a roundtable, while others may not. Not having access to networks, we believe, should not prevent individuals who wish to present as selected roundtable members. Thus, we encourage CCCC members across professional status and institutional type to submit a proposal: undergraduates with faculty mentors, graduate students, tenured and non-tenure-track faculty, adjunct instructors, independent scholars, writing program and writing center administrators, and writing center tutors.

Works Cited

Burns, Hugh. “A Note on Composition and Artificial Intelligence.” Computers and Composition, vol. 1, no.1, 1983, pp. 3-4.

Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven, Yale UP, 2021.

Flaherty, Colleen. “Survey: How AI Is Impacting Students’ Career Choices.” Inside Higher Ed, 10 Jan. 2024, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/life-after-college/2024/01/10/survey-college-students-thoughts-ai-and-careers. Accessed 9 June 2024.

“HAI at Five: Celebrating 5 Years of Impact.” YouTube, uploaded by Stanford HAI, 5 June 2024, https://www.youtube.com/live/wVqNLaN7cJQ?si=GjzRD6qTSmuAp-mQ&t=23124.

Hart-Davidson, William. “Writing with Robots and Other Curiosities of the Age of Machine Rhetorics.” The Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing and Rhetoric, edited by Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes, Routledge, 2018, pp. 248-55.

“Introducing ChatGPT Edu.” OpenAI, 30 May 2024, https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-edu/. Accessed 9 June 2024.

Luccioni, Sasha, et al. “Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?” FAccT ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Association for Computing Machinery, 2024.

McComiskey, Bruce. Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition. UP of Colorado, 2017.

Mercieca, Jennifer R. “Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized Communication.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 264-79.

McKee, Heidi A., and James E. Porter. Professional Communication and Network Interaction: A Rhetorical and Ethical Approach. Routledge, 2017.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. “A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies.” Transversing Technologies, special issue of S&F Online, vol. 13, no. 3, 2016. Barnard Center for Research on Women, https://sfonline.barnard.edu/safiya-umoja-noble-a-future-for-intersectional-black-feminist-technology-studies/.

Preston, John. Artificial Intelligence in the Capitalist University: Academic Labour, Commodification, and Value. Routledge, 2022.

Ranade, Nupoor, and Douglas Eyman. “ Introduction: Composing with Generative AI.” Computers and Composition, Vol. 71, 2024, 102834, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102834.

Roberts-Miller, Patricia. Rhetoric and Demagoguery. Southern Illinois UP, 2019.

Singer, Natasha. “Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools.” New York Times, 8 Apr. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/technology/deepfake-ai-nudes-westfield-high-school.html.

Sovacool, Benjamin K. “When Subterranean Slavery Supports Sustainability Transitions? Power, Patriarchy, and Child Labor in Artisanal Congolese Cobalt Mining.” The Extractive Industries and Society, vol. 8, no. 1, 2021, pp. 271-93.

Vee, Annetee, Laquintano, Timothy, and Schnitzler, C. (Eds.) (2023). TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies. WAC Clearinghouse, 2023. https://doi.org/10.37514/TWR-J.2023.1.1.02.

 

 

Healing from This Academic Life CCCC Reading Circle

Monday, July 8, 2024 | 3:00 p.m. ET

REGISTER TO ATTEND

This CCCC reading circle will delve into Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski and focus on our labor as teachers, especially what embodiment means for our profession and our worldview. The following questions will guide this reading circle:

• As college education becomes more transactional, how does this affect our attitudes, ambitions, confidence, and place within the landscape, and what can we learn or do to resist or prevent “burnout” or despair?
• What does this changing landscape do to our bodies, minds, and spirit?
• What can be gleaned from the book to affirm, embolden, or revive our desire to keep teaching, leading, and/or fighting for our students’ minds?

Reading Circle Structure 

• The reading circle will meet three times during July and early August, and attendees will read two to three chapters in advance of each meeting.
• The first 30 to 45 minutes of each meeting will be time to share about “our feels,” and the second 30 to 45 minutes will be a discussion about “what we do.”

Schedule and Readings 

• Meeting 1: Monday, July 8, 3:00 p.m. ET, read Part 1: What You Take with You
• Meeting 2: Week of July 22, read Part 2: The Real Enemy
• Meeting 3: Week of August 5, read Part 3: Wax On, Wax Off

 Note: The second and third meetings will be scheduled in their respective weeks based on the availability of attendees at the first meeting.

REGISTER TO ATTEND

Don’t forget to purchase your copy of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle in advance of the first meeting! (NCTE and independent bookstores receive a small commission from purchases made using the bookshop.org link provided.)

This event is available exclusively to CCCC members. Not a member? Join today!

Facilitators 

This reading circle will be facilitated by CCCC Executive Committee members:
Kofi J. Adisa, Howard Community College, Columbia, MD
Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Tiane Donahue, Dartmouth College, NH
Ashanka Kumari, Texas A&M University-Commerce
Bethany E. Sweeney, Des Moines Area Community College, IA 

The following resolutions were passed at the CCCC Annual Business Meeting held on Friday, April 5, in Spokane, WA.

Resolution 1

Whereas Jennifer Sano-Franchini gathered us to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first CCCC Convention, which has grown significantly to represent our field’s vast diversity in terms of cultural identities, interests, subfields, approaches, and intersections;

Whereas Jennifer Sano-Franchini called us to consider “Writing Abundance” as a critical lens for refusing, rejecting, and interrogating capitalist logics and rhetorics of scarcity, surplus, and competition, as well as for imagining more just futures in our discipline, in our communities, and in the world;

Whereas Jennifer Sano-Franchini invited us to gather in Spokane, Washington, with an understanding of the region’s very own local “writing abundance,” given the Spokane Tribe’s history of Indigenous inhabitance, relocation, survivance, and perseverance, and the presence of Black, Asian, and Latinx communities in the area, all of whose communal stories subvert a monolithic whitestream narrative;

Whereas Jennifer Sano-Franchini’s scholarly interventions helped shape our discipline’s approaches to vital issues regarding antiracism, pedagogy, feminist histories, and civic literacies in such fields as digital rhetorics, cultural rhetorics, technical and professional communication, user experience, multimodality, and writing program administration; and

Whereas Jennifer Sano-Franchini has demonstrated a consistent commitment to the discipline through leadership and service not only in CCCC but also in multiple professional organizations, by serving on boards and participating in other forms of national service, and coauthoring statements on fair professional practices despite the inequitable temporal burdens such obligations place on scholars who are Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, especially women;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication extends our many, many thanks to Jennifer Sano-Franchini for her dedication to our profession, our organization, and our discipline.

Resolution 2

Whereas Bradley Bleck and members of the Local Arrangements Committee have made significant contributions to support new attendees and returnees and to enhance the Convention experience;

Whereas Bradley Bleck and members of the Local Arrangements Committee created a comprehensive guide in the form of an inviting website that highlighted the various sections in the Spokane area and its local history; and

Whereas they worked diligently to provide attendees with detailed information about the city’s local cuisines and area bookstores as well as rich culture of visual and performing arts and outdoor recreations, and to generally welcome attendees from across the United States and around the world;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication expresses our deepest appreciation to Bradley Bleck and members of the Local Arrangements Committee by applauding their energy and efforts.

Resolution 3

Whereas Patty Wilde and Melissa Nicolas coordinated development of the Accessibility Guide for the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention, deepening the field’s commitment to a culture of access at all levels;

Whereas Patty Wilde and Melissa Nicolas, together with their Washington State University students (Sara Brock, Elizabeth Forsythe, Brigette Hinnant, Nazua Idris, Hayden Mochamad, Jessie Padilla, Prakash Paudel, Justine Trinh, and Genoveva Vega-Gastelum), drew on the wisdom of predecessors and experts in the field to create a guide that aims to simultaneously sponsor accessibility literacy for all participants and render the conference experience meaningfully accessible to attendees across differences;

Whereas they worked diligently to provide attendees with detailed accessibility information, including descriptions of conference spaces for visual and auditory access, access for people with mobility impairments, access for parents and lactation rooms, access for neurodivergent attendees and others who benefit from quiet spaces, access information for nonbinary and gender-nonconforming attendees; and crucial information on how to collectively co-create a loving culture of access; and

Whereas they fostered development and organized volunteer staffing of an Access Hub that, in line with best practices highlighted by disability studies scholars in the field, invited both those with identified access needs and those without into communal thinking and practice of access as a mode of loving commitment to shared possibility;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication expresses our deep gratitude to Patty Wilde and Melissa Nicolas, and to all who worked with them on growing and enacting a culture of access that we hope will continue to flower in conferences to come.

Resolution 4

Whereas the accumulating and interconnected crises, driven by rapid and deleterious changes in world affairs, amount to a polycrisis—a multi-headed hydra of harm and loss and damage rippling through every feature of our field’s shared work—such that the whole of polycrisis feels overwhelming and exceeds the particularity of our many sites of engagement;

Whereas we, as scholars of rhetoric, composition, writing studies, and technical communication, know that language and rhetoric contribute significantly to the dehumanization of individuals and groups and are weaponized toward such ends and toward obscuring the co-constitutive force of multiple harms;

Whereas it is everyone’s responsibility to educate themselves about the ways in which specific languages of dehumanization impact marginalized individuals and communities in a multitude of tangible and intangible ways that are tied to historical and contemporary structures, narratives, and legacies of oppression;

Whereas world affairs—from the climate crisis to the radical reorganization of work and literacy via developments in automation to military and human rights catastrophes on a staggering scale—strain the existing infrastructures of our shared world to the breaking point and intensify these dehumanizing rhetorics and social forces; and

Whereas our existing means of crisis management are inadequate to address the current polycrisis;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication enjoins attendees and organizational leadership at this and future conferences to pursue with the most heartful vigor frank and open discourse about the historicity, context, and unfolding harms associated with the polycrisis and to determine specific approaches to address these harms as they manifest in our organization and at our Annual Convention.

Resolution 5

Whereas numerous distinct but interrelated access challenges emerged at this year’s Convention that disproportionately impacted disabled and racialized members;

Whereas no virtual option was provided to ensure participation from disabled and other historically marginalized members unable to attend in person due to structural and Convention-specific conditions of inequality, including but not limited to funding disparities, geographic distance, passport and visa barriers, and scheduling incompatibilities;

Whereas the locations of the convention center and hotels posed multiple challenges of access, navigability, and safety for many members;

Whereas conditions of white supremacy, including the policing of racialized attendees’ movement through conference spaces, constitute a profound infringement of attendees’ right to equal access and demand timely institutional redress;

Whereas such conditions call for development of a culture of collective responsibility for immediate intervention as well as institutional remedies;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the organization shall develop clear plans to concretely address these distinct but related challenges of access and equity in advance of future conferences and communicate these steps transparently to members.

Important Dates

Proposal database opens: April 6, 2024

Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 31, 2024
Proposal notifications: Early September 2024
Session schedule notifications: December 2024
Convention dates: April 9–12, 2025, Baltimore, MD

Questions and requests for coaches can be sent to CCCCevents@ncte.org.

“Computer Love”: Extended Play, B-sides, Remix, Collaboration, and Creativity

2025 CCCC Program Chair: Kofi J. Adisa

Where do music and writing intersect for you, dear reader?

If you are like me, music holds a significant place in your life. Whether it’s rock, R & B, country, classical, pop, rap, jazz, techno, funk, reggae, or Afrobeat, my love for music is as eclectic as my reading lists. In fact, reading and listening to music underpin many of my creative and intellectual endeavors. When I compose fiction, assignment prompts, or student evaluations, I often have some kind of music playing in the background. There’s something neurological happening as Miles Davis plays or as Dave Grohl sings. I’m listening and listening as my mind focuses on and ponders the tasks at hand.

I don’t think I’m alone.

One of my favorite songs is “Computer Love” by the funk band Zapp. The song is from the band’s 1985 album The New Zapp IV U. My late mom played it often when I was a teen. She especially liked how Roger Troutman used the “talk box,” which was a device hooked up to a keyboard or guitar that made his voice sound, well, computerized. The synthesization of his voice and the instrument did not end with him or with the talk box. Teddy Riley, an experimentalist musician in his own right (Corbett; Miller), also used it, and many artists—including Cher, T-Pain, Kanye West, and others from the late 90s and early 2000s—used Auto-Tune, an even more computerized processor to mask and alter their singing voices (Reynolds).

Though the oversaturation of Auto-Tune turned me off, those earlier Zapp songs never failed me. As I am writing this call for proposals, Zapp’s song “More Bounce to the Ounce,” off the band’s 1980 self-titled debut album, plays—computerization and all. In fact, the version I am listening to is an extended play, meaning the original 5:11 version has a longer instrumental that extends the song to 9:27. This extended mix is not new or original to dance music. B-sides of songs and albums have a long history, too much for the purposes of this writing (see Eaton; Elkhwad; Paphides; Wald) and give listeners another level or version of the music.

If we think about the nature of music, with its the syncopation, blending, and sampling of sounds, and if we extend our thinking to writing, with its incorporation of visuals, graphics, and other designs, we can remix and play with them and create a sociocultural practice within the genre (Church; Jordan and Miller; Tinsley). For example, remix writing assignments with an attention to music or integrate music into the creation stage of composing; have students create a visual and musical autoethnography or a rhetorical soundtrack for their previous or current semester; collaborate with other disciplines to develop a curriculum that samples, remixes, or bridges reading, thinking, writing, music, and technology. Countless possibilities exist in the remix.

Likewise, the B-side or 33⅓ offers another sociocultural practices. B-sides are the songs not on the original albums and are themselves cultural phenomena (Elkhwad). Kind of like Solange being the B-side to Beyoncé, the 33⅓ reveals something hidden, unique, unexpected, novel—the type of music where you wonder why it wasn’t on the original or as popular. This isn’t to say that the B-side is better or worse than the A-side of an album or, in my example, of the sisters. (Of course, both sisters have their A- and B-sides.) My point is that the B-side plays, experiments, and distinguishes itself from the usual, the norm. If we think of our classrooms as spaces to play the B-side of teaching and learning, for instance, what could that look like? In what ways can the incorporation of technology distinguish student writing or its labor from traditional approaches to research, self-expression, or argumentation? B-sides to writing pedagogy might look completely different than A-sides or traditional writing education.

Because this technological writing collaboration exists in movies, animations, and, of course, writing, our position as teacher-scholars, theorists, writers, and lifelong learners should be as cautious practitioners of this creative moment. Technologies such as generative AI (GAI) offer possibilities but also ethical dilemmas. Remixing or sampling GAI in writing assignments might create opportunities to expand digital and AI literacies for all students. Finding the B-side to Information literacy skills may sharpen students’ understanding and transfer across disciplines. Still, students will need to learn how to distinguish disparate voices coming together to make a new song (think about “That’s What Friends Are For”) from artificial ones (think “Heart on My Sleeve” [Shanfeld]). Student voices should not be supplanted by GAI or other technologies. Instead, their voices, our voices, should blend in a rhythm and style of collaboration, like with a talk box, or a computer love.

Area Clusters to Remix

The following question clusters are examples that might help you organize your proposals and create a program. The full list of area clusters is available here. To ensure fairness and equal representation, proposals are generally accepted in proportion to numbers received in the clusters. Selecting a particular cluster neither advantages nor disadvantages your proposal. Sometimes, a single proposal might fit into two or three areas, or a proposal might not fit well into any area. However, if you do not choose a category, your proposal will not be reviewed and therefore will not be accepted for the program. Please consider these categories as a heuristic and understand that in making a selection, you emphasize the primary focus of and the best reviewing audience for your proposal.

First-Year Writing as a Space to Remix

• How might first-year writing (FYW) curricula be remade so that music, technology use, and play occur organically?
• How can peer review become another kind of collaborative remix?
• What would sampling other disciplines do for FYW?

College Writing and Reading as a B-side to Literacy

• How do we flip the script on corequisite and developmental writing and reading to engage the creative side of literacy?
• How do we collaborate with a technology that assures student readers and writers?
• How would this B-side be measured? Can it be measured?
• Where do our K–12 partners fit into this extended play of music, culture, and collaboration?

The Extended Play of Inclusion and Access

• What spaces can open for LGBTQIA+ students to compose and create a holistic dataset that may be absent from current models?
• What possibilities remain hidden on the B-side of technology that can support neurotypical and neurodiverse students?
• Where can prior knowledge and learning for nontraditional students be another kind of extended play of access and opportunities?

Remixing Writing Programs 

• How can generative AI, music, and assessment work together to inform creativity in writing?
• How might writing program administrators leverage technologies to remix their institutional contexts?
• What would distinguish an undergraduate’s remix of a research project from a graduate student’s project?
• How might Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines be better served as an extended play, a remix, or a B-side collaboration with other curricula or disciplines?

A Mixtape of Language, Literacy, and Culture

• Can remixing, extending the play, and collaborating present new opportunities for World Englishes speakers, non-English speakers, or L2 readers and writers?
• How might cultural music be a source of collaboration, analysis, or literacy practice?
• Where do community and cultural literacy intersect with the remix?

The following range of topics is not exhaustive, and I hope it inspires a kind of play between composition, remix, collaboration, and creativity:

• Autoethnographic Playlist: Historical, Cultural, and Political Meaning of the Personal Soundtrack
• The Rhetorical Nature of Vinyl, Turntables, Sound, and the Typewriter
• Reading with Machines: How Neurodiverse Students Learn with AI Assistant Tools
• Translating Words, Images, and Sound
• Fly Gods, Fly Girls, and African American Vernacular English in the Age of AI
• Remix, Collaborate Black Womanism/Feminism Technology, Vernacular
• For the Love of Reading, Writing, and Machine Learning
• Displacing Authentic Voices and the Subjectivity of Algorithms
• The Composition of House, Techno, Afrobeat, and the Computer: Creating New Ways of Feeling and Thinking about the Language of Music
• Literacies Needed: Posthuman, AI, and Digital Discourses
• Queer the Turntables: Sexuality, Identity, and Extended Play, Remix, and Creativity
• Turn It Up: Language Acquisition, MTV, and Cassette Tapes

General Information about Proposals

Members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and others who are interested in the goals and activities of CCCC, are invited to submit proposals for sessions, posters, and workshops at the 2025 CCCC Annual Convention. Nonmembers are welcome to submit proposals but are urged to join the organization. CCCC is a nonprofit organization and cannot reimburse program participants for travel or hotel expenses.

Competition for a place on the program remains intense. Because of limited space availability, many good proposals will be left unaccepted. The practice of peer-reviewing proposals without names attached will continue, as will the practice of using the number of proposals received in each area cluster to determine the percentage of the program devoted to that specific area. Reviewers with special expertise in each area will advise the program chair on proposal acceptance.

Proposals must be submitted by 9 a.m. ET, Friday, May 31, 2024.

Cool Baltimore Attractions

Baltimore is home to a variety of attractions, notably the Inner Harbor and the National Aquarium. One of the other must-sees is the Sound Garden, located at 1616 Thames Street; this independent record store sells, buys, and houses “an immense and eclectic selection of music, movies, and real cool stuff,” according to its website. The 6000-plus-square-foot warehouse has vinyl, CDs, stickers, books, and so much more. Voted In Rolling Stone as the second-best record store in the US, it might be one of the best spots to find rare or vintage albums in the country.

The Book Escape is another attraction, especially for those looking for rare or vintage books. Located at 925 South Charles Street, the bookstore holds more than forty thousand titles, and shipping within the US is free.

B-side References

Church, Scott Haden. Introduction. Turntables and Tropes: A Rhetoric of Remix, by Church, Michigan State UP, 2022, pp. 1–14.

Corbett, John. Microgroove: Forays into Other Music. Duke UP, 2015.

Eaton, George. “Ming Your B-side.” New Statesman, 30 Jan. 2012.

Elkhwad, Halla. “The Function of the B-side in Modern Music Production: How a Relic of the Physical Music Format Era Became a Site of Experimentation.” 34th Street Magazine, 5 Oct. 2022, https://www.34st.com/article/2022/10/b-sides-sufjan-stevens-cd-tame-impala-gorillaz-beach-house-remix.

Jordan, Ken, and Paul D. Miller. “Freeze Frame: Audio, Aesthetics, Sampling, and Contemporary Multimedia.” In Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture, edited by Paul D. Miller, pp. 97–108. MIT Press, 2008.

Miller, Paul D., editor. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. MIT Press, 2008.

Paphides, Pete. “An Ode to the Joy and Madness of the B-side.” Vinyl Factory, 17 May 2017, https://thevinylfactory.com/features/an-ode-to-the-joy-and-madness-of-the-b-side/.

Reynolds, Simon. “How Auto-Tune Revolutionized the Sound of Popular Music.” Pitchfork, 17 Sept. 2018, https://pitchfork.com/features/article/how-auto-tune-revolutionized-the-sound-of-popular-music/.

Shanfeld, Ethan. “Ghostwriter’s ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ the AI-Generated Song Mimicking Drake and the Weeknd, Submitted for Grammys.” Variety, 26 Sept. 2023, https://variety.com/2023/music/news/ai-generated-drake-the-weeknd-song-submitted-for-grammys-1235714805/.

Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism. U of Texas P, 2018.

Wald, Gayle. “‘Have a Little Talk’: Listening to the B-side of History.” Popular Music, vol. 24, no. 3, 2005, pp. 323–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143005000541.

Zapp. “Computer Love.” The New Zapp IV U, track 2, Spotify app, Warner Records, 1985.

—. “More Bounce to the Ounce.” Zapp, track 1, Spotify app, Warner Records, 1980.

Important Dates

Proposal database opens: April 6, 2024

Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 31, 2024
Proposal notifications: Early September 2024
Session schedule notifications: December 2024
Convention dates: April 9–12, 2025, Baltimore, MD

Questions and requests for coaches can be sent to CCCCevents@ncte.org.

The following materials are provided for attendees of the 2024 CCCC Annual Business Meeting on Friday, April 5, 2024, 4:45–6:00 p.m. PT.

• Rules and Procedures—See Page 217–219 of the Convention Program

• 2024 CCCC Annual Business Meeting Agenda

• 2024 Report from the Executive Secretary-Treasurer

• 2024 CCCC Resolutions

For attendees joining online:

Anyone wishing to speak, to make a motion, second a motion, or propose an amendment, please use the raise hand feature in Zoom. After being recognized by the CCCC Chair, unmute your microphone and verbally state your name and the state in which you reside for identification in the minutes. When voting online, we will also use the raise hand feature. Please use the raise hand feature rather than the Zoom chat.

Committee Members

Cindy Tekobbe, Chair
Christina Cedillo
Jeremy Carnes
Alanna Frost
David Grant
Lisa King
Lydia Wilkes

Committee Charges

The Working Group for Decolonizing Writing, Rhetoric, and Communication Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Organizational Culture will dedicate itself to studying Indigenous world views, lifeways, rhetorical traditions, and teaching and learning practices. The Group will develop resources and provide educational opportunities for CCCC’s members invested in and committed to the work of decolonization in their teaching and scholarly work and within CCCC. With an inclusive membership – open to peoples of all identities and histories – this Group will endeavor to build and sustain deep, affiliative, reciprocal relationships within its membership and with all the CCCC members it serves. The Group will focus on developing outreach and education through such forms as webinars, podcast lectures, panel presentations, publications, and teaching circles. Finally, the Group will document its work, ensuring the preservation of institutional memory regarding its labour and the longevity of its impact.

TERM: Three years, after which the group may apply for standing group status (Article 6, Section 1E, CCCC Constitution)

Committee Members

Adrienne Jones Daly, Co-chair
Ashanka Kumari, Co-chair
Cedric D. Burrows (2023–2025)
Tom Do (2023–2025)
Suban Nur Cooley (2023–2025)
Nora K. Rivera (2023–2025)

Committee Charge

Responsibilities and Duties

• To select one AEIC member to serve on the EC according to procedures articulated in the Committee’s bylaws
• To name one AEIC member to serve in the annual Stage 2 Convention Proposal Review Group who
  • Makes recommendations on ways to increase equity throughout the process;
  • Makes recommendations on ways to increase diversity within the pool of presenters, chairs, and discussants.
• To submit, by the Nomination deadline, a minimum of two nominees from historically marginalized groups to the Nominating Committee for the at-large EC positions
• To identify options and resources to resolve bias incidents, including harassment, discrimination, or any violation of the CCCC Code of Ethics or standards of conduct
• To present an annual report to the Executive Committee that
  • Recommends annual program offerings that are inclusive of all members’ areas of research and teaching
  • Recommends strategies for supporting engagement of members from underrepresented groups
  • Recommends amendments to the organizational and Convention budgets that outline ways to more equitably distribute organizational resources

Membership

• Nine members, elected from the ballot assembled by the Nominating Committee
• Two co-chairs, elected from the nine members of the committee

Terms of Office

• The terms of all chairs and members will commence thirty days after the NCTE Annual Convention next following the election, except that chairs appointed to fill a vacancy (Article IX, Sections 3 and 4) will take office upon their acceptance.
• All chairs and members will serve for a two-year term.
• Chairs cannot be appointed for consecutive terms. Members can serve no more than two consecutive terms.

Meetings

• The AEIC will meet in conjunction with annual program planning, Convention meetings, and elections. Other meetings may be called at the request of the co-chairs.
• Five members of the AEIC will constitute a quorum.

April 2023

CCCC has a long history of publishing statements on social and political issues related to the teaching of writing and rhetoric. The focus of these statements has often but not exclusively been US-centric. The organization has been silent on too many international issues of injustices; examples include the earthquake response in Haiti and Turkey, war in Syria and Afghanistan, organized terrorism in Nigeria, incarceration of Uyghurs in China, and the internal wars of many other nations. CCCC has also been silent on the US’s indifference toward issues that destroy the lives of international citizens such as the allowance of human trafficking and immigration policies that continue to break families apart and deny refugees safety in American cities. Given Vladimir Putin’s continued commitment to inflicting war upon Ukraine and its citizens, this changes.

CCCC stands in solidarity with our colleagues and students in Ukraine and those displaced from Ukraine for their safety. We also stand in solidarity with our Russian colleagues and students who oppose the war crimes inflicted on Ukrainian citizens and visitors. At the time of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported that 83 percent of young adults between 18 and 24 in Ukraine were enrolled in higher education. Today, many universities and academic institutions have been either destroyed, shut down, or transformed into temporary housing and resource centers. Access and opportunities related to higher education in Ukraine remain threatened. The bombing of Karazin University, home to a rare collection of books central to Ukrainian history, serves as evidence of the direct threats made by Russia on behalf of Vladimir Putin to not only erode education but destroy the presence and preservation of Ukrainian culture.

As scholars and teachers of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, we are keenly aware of the power of language through textual and other means both to disseminate harmful social and political ideologies as well as challenge such ideologies. As Russia wages war against Ukraine via military violence and pillage in Ukraine, the Russian government, through state-sponsored and state-censored media networks, wages a war of propaganda in Russia to justify its violent invasion of Ukraine and vilify Ukrainian people. We are deeply troubled by the dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at Ukrainian people, the usurpation of historical trauma in Vladimir Putin’s reframing of a military invasion as an attempt to “denazify” Ukraine, and propagandistic efforts to erase both the unique history and culture of Ukrainian people and the shared history and humanity among Ukrainian and Russian people. At the same time, we are also cognizant of the historicity of anti-Russia sentiment and propaganda in the United States. While we expressly condemn the violence and censorship perpetrated by the Russian government, we recognize and are cautious of the means by which condemnations by US-based media outlets, politicians, and individuals may themselves slip into or recycle historically situated tropes, and we resist the ethnocentric imperative to make sense of the war using only US frameworks. We can hold these truths simultaneously.

We denounce the targeted attacks on Ukrainian schools, universities, and libraries. These bombing and shelling assaults continue to devastate the educational progress, mental health, and social development of Ukrainian children and adolescents and ravage the well-being of educators across the region. We acknowledge and decry the Russian military assault on museums and cultural-historical preservation sites, an assault meant to eradicate Ukrainian history and culture. We stand in solidarity with the librarians, curators, archivists, researchers, and scholars who oppose this warfare and continue their vital work in the face of tactical terror. We stand with organizations, such as the American Historical Association, who refute the Russian president’s claims of historical precedence for military campaigns against Ukraine. Conscious of the intersectional oppression facing international students from Africa in Ukraine, we additionally detest the openly racist treatment of Black African students on the Ukrainian/Polish border evacuating the war-torn country in the same ways their white European classmates and colleagues were permitted to do. These racist actions forced Black Africans escaping Ukraine for their safety to seek alternatives to evacuation that most white Europeans did not face, such as walking for hours to find border authorities that would permit their evacuation only to be turned back several times or receiving rejection from accessing transportation by train out of the country. We stand in support of and seek requests for assistance from our members and their colleagues working in the region.

We affirm those working to support the safety and ensure the academic freedom of our fellow Ukrainian students and scholars as well as Russian students and scholars actively resisting the legitimacy of this war. We recognize the work of the International Institution of Education, which, in the wake of this ongoing violence, created the IIE Emergency Student Fund for Ukraine, ensuring the financial safety for Ukrainian students cut off from critical resources to students currently studying in the US. We encourage continued support of the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund offering assistance through funds and fellowships for threatened and displaced scholars in Ukraine and Russia. These efforts—along with countless others not listed here—underscore the necessity to ensure academic freedom and access to education in war-inflicted areas, including Ukraine. We view the tactics to silence scholarly voices and prohibit educational access as tools of warfare meant to annihilate cultural knowledge and histories. As such, we call upon our members who teach about the importance of cultural knowledge and its connections to rhetoric and literacy to commit to the following actions:

• demand/petition our institutions to provide financial, mental health, and food security support to Ukrainian students and faculty both in the country and displaced from their homes;
• hold book drives and online courses;
• teach media literacy on the war and propaganda;
• hire displaced and refugee Ukrainian and Russian faculty of composition studies and other fields;
• enact letter campaigns to our representatives; and
• sponsor events and lectures that support the anti-war work of Ukrainian and other scholars in the region.

We encourage those whose access to education has been disrupted by conflict and combat to continue educational progress by supporting organizations working to ensure educational access in Ukraine. The UN Refugee Agency is one organization that offers specific actions related to educational access in Ukraine.

While the actions outlined above largely address the threats to access to higher education in Ukraine, we would be remiss not to mention the multitude of coordinated attacks on the innocent. These threats are actions aimed to demoralize Ukraine’s future. We denounce strikes on medical and mental healthcare facilities throughout Ukraine. The missile strikes and other attacks on children’s hospitals, cancer centers, ambulances, healthcare workers, and patients have impeded the capabilities of these facilities and services to care for critically and fatally wounded individuals. We recognize that unjustified attacks on the children and other innocent Ukrainians are strategic tactics by the Russians to erode hope for a free Ukraine. We affirm the need for democracies and institutions committed to academic freedom to continue providing resources and refuge as the fight for Ukraine continues.

Acknowledgments

This statement was generously drafted by the following 2023 CCCC Executive Committee members:

Mara Lee Grayson
Jamila Kareem
Maria Novotny

Listen to introductions from CCCC Executive Committee members and why they have chosen to serve CCCC in this role!

Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Chen Chen, Utah State University, Logan

Darin Jensen, Des Moines Community College, IA (TETYC Editor)

Maria Novotny, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Timothy Oleksiak, University of Massachusetts Boston

Ruth Osorio, Old Dominion University, VA

Mudiwa Pettus, Medgar Evers College, New York City

Mya Poe, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Zhaozhe Wang, University of Toronto, Canada (Graduate Student Representative)

September 7, 2023

We, the officers of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), write this statement to express our deep concern about the proposed elimination of 32 programs and retrenchment of faculty across West Virginia University, including in English, Communication Studies, and World Languages and Literatures. As the officers of the largest professional organization of teachers and scholars of writing, rhetoric, and composition studies in the world, we are alarmed at how these proposed cuts resemble similar austerity measures that too often disproportionately impact the most vulnerable to the benefit of the ultra-wealthy. The pattern that emerges involves the weakening of tenure protections alongside the language of “financial exigence” and “efficiencies” and “cost savings” that do not affect the highest-paid employees at the institution. Often, these decisions are made in partnership with external for-profit consulting companies and without regard for principles of shared governance.

Academic austerity is not new. These measures have been impacting higher education—especially two-year colleges and regional colleges and universities—for some time now. What’s more, academic austerity has had disproportionate effects on members of our profession, who are frequent targets of labor abuses such as “intensified workloads and the casualization of labor (exploited adjunct labor)” (Kynard 134) in contingent and precarious positions that are stripped of resources (Kalish et al.). Not surprisingly, composition and rhetoric has had a long history of scholarship analyzing and resisting labor exploitation in higher education (Bousquet; Cox et al.; Kahn et al.; Kynard; Schell and Stock; Welch and Scott). In following this tradition, we call for a recommitment to shared governance, including meaningful faculty involvement and the consultation of scholars in the humanities before making decisions to eliminate academic programs. Furthermore, we stand for fair treatment and equitable working conditions for faculty, graduate instructors, and staff alike.

Given our mission to support “the agency, power, and potential of diverse communicators inside and outside of postsecondary classrooms”; “diverse language practices”; and “ethical scholarship and communication,” we find it imperative to advocate against measures that undermine the core values pivotal to promoting equity-oriented education and scholarly engagement. CCCC urges that WVU leadership follow AAUP guidelines on shared governance and consult widely with their on-campus experts before proceeding with either proposed or alternative plans for cost-saving predicated on efficiency-based models that neither reflect knowledge and best practice in affected disciplines nor serve the needs and interests of the University’s constituents.

— The Officers of the Conference on College Composition and Communication

Further Readings

CCCC Statement on Working Conditions for Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

CCCC Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing, Principle 11

Cole, Kirsti, et al. A Faculty Guidebook for Effective Shared Governance and Service in Higher Education. Routledge, 2023.

AAUP Shared Governance

AAUP Financial Crisis FAQs

References

Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. New York UP, 2008.

Cox, Anicca, et al. “The Indianapolis Resolution: Responding to Twenty-First-Century Exigencies/Political Economies of Composition Labor.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 68, no. 1, 2016, pp. 38–67.

Kahn, Seth, et al. Contingency, Exploitation, and Solidarity: Labor and Action in English Composition. WAC Clearinghouse / UP of Colorado, 2017.

Kalish, Katie, et al. “Inequitable Austerity: Pedagogies of Resilience and Resistance in Composition.” Pedagogy, vol. 19, no. 2, 2019, pp. 261–81.

Kynard, Carmen. Fakers and Takers: Disrespect, Crisis, and Inherited Whiteness in Rhetoric-Composition Studies. Composition Studies, vol. 50, no. 3, 2022, pp. 131–36.

Schell, Eileen E., and Patricia Lambert Stock, editors. Moving a Mountain: Transforming the Role of Contingent Faculty in Composition Studies and Higher Education. National Council of Teachers of English, 2001.

Strickland, Donna. The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies. Southern Illinois UP, 2011.

Welch, Nancy, and Tony Scott, editors. Composition in the Age of Austerity. UP of Colorado, 2016.