Author: ksuchor

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.

In September 2023, the CCCC Officers announced that CCCC 2024 will be a reimagining of the Convention as we know it through what they referred to as a distributed, semi-synchronous hybrid model for CCCC 2024. In an effort to increase access and opportunity for CCCC members to participate in the Annual Convention and enjoy the professional rewards associated with presentation and publication in CCCC venues, we are calling for those intending to submit papers to be considered for the CCCC 2024 Convention Companion Publication to complete this form by the extended deadline of January 5, 2024. Following the Intent to Submit form’s completion, paper submissions are due by January 29, 2024. Papers may be up to 2,000 words in length (the equivalent of six pages, similar to that of a short roundtable paper).

The highest priority will be placed on publishing the papers of CCCC members whose proposals were accepted for presentation at the 2024 CCCC Annual Convention but who are unable to attend for one or a number of the following reasons:

• Health (disability, physical or mental illness, or caregiving responsibilities)
• Religious observances (Ramadan or other religious accommodations)
• Funding (graduate students, adjunct faculty, and international scholars)
• Employment precarity (graduate students, adjunct faculty and lecturers, those experiencing austerity cuts at their institutions)

The CCCC 2024 Convention Companion Publication will be made available for free to all CCCC members on the new NCTE publications platform, with print-on-demand copies of the volume available for purchase, expected in June 2024.

Who’s invited to submit a proposal?

We welcome proposal submissions from the following groups:

A. Those whose CCCC 2024 proposal was accepted, yet they are unable to attend the convention in person due to extenuating circumstances (e.g., health-related issues including immunocompromised individuals, need-based issues including funding inaccessibility and cost barriers, religious commitments, etc.).

B. Those who did not submit a CCCC 2024 proposal as a result of concerns related to being immunocompromised, funding inaccessibility or cost barriers, or having religious commitments that would make attendance difficult.

Again, please note that preference will be given to those who are unable to present at the 2024 CCCC Annual Convention because of accessibility, health related issues, or religious commitments.

How to submit

1. Complete the Intent to Submit form by the extended deadline of January 5, 2024. Submitters will be notified when the platform to submit papers is open for submissions. Note: If you did not submit a CCCC 2024 proposal as noted in item B under “Who’s invited to submit a proposal?” above, you will be asked to provide a brief abstract for your paper on the Intent to Submit form.
2. Submit your paper (no more than 2,000 words in length including any notes and references) by January 29, 2024. Additionally, papers should:
   • be in Times New Roman, 12-point font;
   • be double-spaced; and
   • saved as an MS Word file.

Please email cccc@ncte.org with questions.

Timeline

November, 2023
CFP and intent to submit form posted

Extended Deadline: January 5, 2024
Intent to submit form due

January 29, 2024
Papers due

January–February, 2024
Papers reviewed by Editorial Management Team: Antonio Byrd, Romeo Garcia, Jamila Kareem, Amy Lueck, Ligia Mihut, Timothy Oleksiak, Zhaozhe Wang, and Kim Wieser

February 26, 2024
Decisions sent

March–April, 2024
Editing and review of page proofs

June 2024
Proceedings published

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.

The CCCC Executive Committee is seeking a volunteer to serve in the role of Parliamentarian. The Parliamentarian is a nonvoting member of the Executive Committee who ensures that official CCCC meetings are run in accordance with Alice Sturgis’s The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure.

Application Deadline: October 4, 2023
Application Form

• Selection Process: The Parliamentarian is selected by the current members of the Officers’ Committee from a pool of volunteers. The Parliamentarian is selected using the following criteria:
  • Relevant experience with committee and governance leadership within a department, university, or at the national level
  • Engagement with the CCCC organization (committee service, presenting at the Annual Convention, etc.)
  • Demonstrated attention to detail
  • Preferably, familiarity with parliamentary procedure
• Responsibilities
  • Introduces incoming Executive Committee members to and advises them on meeting procedures.
  • Ensures business meetings are conducted in an orderly, transparent, and equitable fashion according to Alice Sturgis’s The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure.
  • Guides Officers and Executive Committee members through the rules of conduct.
  • Offers support to all Officers and Executive Committee members regarding proposed motions and amendments.
  • Identifies actions on the floor that are out of compliance with procedure and offers alternatives.
• Term of Office: The Parliamentarian serves a three-year term, staggered with previous and incoming Parliamentarians. The term for the Parliamentarian selected in 2023 begins Monday, December 18, 2023, and concludes in December 2026.
• Time Commitment: The CCCC Executive Committee meets in person twice annually, during the NCTE Annual Convention (November) and the CCCC Annual Convention (spring). The CCCC Executive Committee typically meets two to three times annually in virtual format. The CCCC Parliamentarian also serves in an advisory capacity to the CCCC Resolutions Committee (CCCC Annual Convention); advises and assists the CCCC Chair during the CCCC Annual Business Meeting (CCCC Annual Convention), including helping to prepare the script; and has a key role in the CCCC Executive Committee Orientation (typically held virtually in the fall).
• Funding: The CCCC Parliamentarian receives reimbursement for travel, as well as both a per diem and reimbursement for lodging on days when services are requested to participate in official CCCC business.
• All CCCC members are eligible to apply. Applicants must be members of CCCC at the time of application and maintain CCCC membership through the position term.

To nominate yourself for this role, please complete the application form by October 4, 2023. Email cccc@ncte.org with questions.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
April 2023

Exigence and Purpose

Editorial work—including every stage in the process by which scholarly work is reviewed and guided toward publication in academic journals and edited collections—is an important area of research, and CCCC recognizes that it is vital to maintain only the highest standards of ethical behavior, integrity, and professionalism in our academic publications. However, as others have noted, the process by which academic work enters the scholarly conversation through publication is often invisible (Ianetta; Sparks; Giberson, Schoen, and Weisser), and editorial work is, thus, both an understudied and undertheorized area of our field. This lack of intentional engagement with the behind-the-scenes work of scholarly publishing, and the occlusion of our editorial and peer review practices, may challenge our field’s work toward social justice and halt our best efforts to engage more diverse, inclusive, and equitable publication practices. As Blewett et al. write:

Just as equality in the classroom doesn’t manifest simply because well-intentioned people want it to, incorporation of diverse perspectives, bodies, and knowledge-making approaches in scholarly conversations requires what we are calling inclusion activism. To be inclusion activists, editors must be aware of how power relations operate in a field, be willing to challenge operations that exclude and diminish the experience and knowledge of some while propping up that of others, and be supportive of those who have not traditionally had access to or representation within field conversations (cf. Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life). Inclusion activism is an intentional effort to ensure participation and access as well as leadership opportunities to people of all backgrounds, at all career stages (274).

As Blewett et al. also note, “If we want equitable representation in our scholarship and in our field at large, we have to create the conditions to make it happen” (274). With this statement, our task force acknowledges the need for editorial transparency, ethical practices, and professional guidelines to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in our scholarly publication practices. We also believe that it is only through intentional measures to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion that our field may make space for new or underrepresented disciplinary perspectives, for transformative conversations, and for innovative research and practices.

The guidelines we offer below have been shaped the most by one resource in the field of writing studies that asserts the role editors, reviewers and authors can play in pushing back against institutional racism. That document, “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers and Authors,” was created by scholars in the field of technical communication and argues powerfully for the need to recognize and resist when academic review processes “reinscribe racism.” This CCCC statement was inspired and informed by that heuristic and aims to be an extension of that work, but with a broader emphasis on the various ethical dilemmas that may emerge in scholarly publication given disparities in power due to multiple and often intersecting positionalities, including ethnicity, gender, ability/disability, class and sexuality, but also related to access to resources, theoretical and scholarly orientation, institutional affiliation, and location on an academic career trajectory.

Our goals, therefore, are as follows:

1. To open up a conversation about the complicated ethical issues that often emerge in the process of soliciting work, reviewing contributions to journals and edited collections, providing feedback, and guiding authors toward publication.
2. To provide a set of guidelines or suggestions for ways to encourage generative, empathetic, and productive relationships among all participants in the process of academic publication in journals and edited collections. We hope these guidelines can be used by authors as they advocate for a better experience while navigating the publication process; by reviewers as they perform their vital service evaluating and responding to manuscripts; and by editors, as they seek to guide reviewers and develop their own journal-specific guidelines.

A Note about the Process of Developing Guidelines

The guidelines that follow draw upon our own experiences as authors, editors, and reviewers but are also informed by the generous contributions of members of the scholarly community. In an attempt to hear other voices and learn about situations outside our own experiences, the authors of this statement invited authors and editors to share stories about their experiences with publication, both positive and negative. We observed, in reviewing the stories our colleagues shared, that they coalesced around the following categories:

1. Transparency about time and timelines
2. Mentoring and revision
3. Publication decisions: gatekeeping and inclusivity
4. Conflicts of interest
5. Intellectual property and citation
6. Journal management
7. Naming and citation practices

We used these categories to organize our recommendations in order to highlight the different aspects of editorial work that need to be considered and to suggest that all participants in academic publishing have a role to play in fostering ethical editorial practices. Because individuals inhabit different roles at different times in their professional careers, sometimes simultaneously, it may be helpful to think of editorial ethics as a larger ecosystem with all participants contributing to the health and sustainability of that environment.

Guidelines and Recommendations

I. Transparency about time and timelines

• Editors should communicate publication time frames, letting authors know if a submission will be sent to reviewers and alerting authors to any delays in the process. Editors should give authors ample time to perform tasks, such as copyediting, and to address corrections speedily, letting authors know when they have done so.
• To the extent it is possible, editors should set and publish approximate timelines and turnaround times for each step in the review and publication process.
• Editors should make the decision over whether a piece can move on to the reviewer stage quickly and let the author(s) know whether the piece has moved to the next stage or whether it is not a good fit for the publication. If not a good fit for the publication, it is helpful whenever possible to suggest other publications that might be interested in the piece.
• Authors should recognize that editing requires considerable time spent in fielding questions from authors, identifying and securing reviewers for submissions, managing the peer review process, and bringing issues to press.
• Journals and editorial boards might choose to adopt policies to protect editors from harassment and excessive demands on their time, such as standardized language to communicate with authors who challenge editors’ judgments.

II. Mentoring and revision

• Editors should write memos to authors synthesizing reviewer feedback and clarifying which of the reviewers’ requests the editors would like to see implemented and which are optional. For instance, if a reviewer suggests a long list of secondary sources, editors might point to the most relevant ones. As the ones who know their publication most intimately, editors can explain how they would like to see the draft transformed, whether or not those issues were brought up by reviewers.
• Editors should invite authors to write a memo when they resubmit their piece and offer guidelines for authors to follow as they fulfill this request. These guidelines can ask authors to respond to the reviewers’ and editors’ suggestions, explaining which ones they took into account and how they did so. If authors decide not to make a suggested change, the rebuttal memo is the ideal place for them to explain why. Having the rebuttal memo as a guide allows editors and reviewers to have a clearer sense of the authors’ intentions and choices as they read the revision.
• Editors should consider offering face-to-face feedback to authors who may benefit from it. Through conversation, editors can help authors figure out what they want to say and how to say it. Although it may seem time consuming, this practice may end up saving time, as it prevents misunderstandings by allowing authors to ask questions (and editors to answer them) in real time instead of requiring back and forth emails.
• Journals should be transparent about their review processes—whether multiple “Revise and Resubmits” can be expected, whether formal mentoring is provided, whether the editors engage in developmental editing. When clearly stated in the submission guidelines, this allows authors to choose to send their work to the kinds of journals that engage in the practices that best suit their needs, timelines, and revision styles.

III. Publication decisions: gatekeeping and inclusivity

• Editors, editorial board members, reviewers, authors, and special issue editors should all agree to follow the “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices” heuristic. Review requests should include a link to this statement.
• Editors and reviewers should recognize the value of diverse language practices and linguistic choices within articles and other publications, as opposed to enacting linguistic racism by privileging “white linguistic and cultural norms” (Baker-Bell et al.).
• Editors and reviewers should recognize that these professional roles position them as gatekeepers who should be reflexive about what perspectives are included and excluded in our disciplinary publications. For example, if a submission initially seems jarring or too different from already established practices and ways of thinking, editors and reviewers should keep an open mind and consider what new directions such a submission might open for the field.
• Reviewers should make their comments in a respectful manner even if they strongly disagree with a submission, whether partially or in its entirety.
• Editors should create a brief training document to share with reviewers alongside the submission and the review questionnaire. Such a document can reflect explicit, conspicuous, and transformative editorial and review practices that support linguistic justice.
• Editors should provide feedback in a way that is generative for and generous to all scholars. Editors, in other words, should see themselves as not only nurturing their own journals/special issues/edited collections and the authors they publish, but also those whose work they choose not to publish. That nurturing should emerge through generative feedback that takes into account where authors are in their development even if that particular piece is not accepted for publication. Suggestions for further development and of other publications that might be interested in that piece are ways to help graduate students and emerging authors grow as scholars.
• Because publishing is a high-stakes activity as it is used to demonstrate progress on research for continued employment, job security, and promotion, editors should make every effort to reduce editorial review times for, and communicate about delays to potentially vulnerable colleagues.
• Editors should recognize that publishing only 6,000- to 10,000-word research or theoretical articles may be an impediment to authors with limited time and institutional resources. Alternative journal features like pedagogical articles, course descriptions, roundtables, responses, editorials, and symposia may provide more inclusive options, providing space for these colleagues to contribute to the field’s knowledge and practices.
• Editors and reviewers should accept work on the merit of its arguments, research, and insights, not on its perceived broad appeal. Editors and reviewers should question and transcend the belief that work by and about marginalized populations has a limited appeal.
• Editors should use the desk rejection feature when faced with submissions that are exclusionary, narrow-minded, poorly sourced, harmful, or otherwise problematic. If a work is not likely to be published for the reasons listed above, it should be rejected without sending the work out to reviewers.
• When authors are asked to engage with the work of diverse scholars as they revise their submissions, editors should insist that they fully engage with those scholars’ work—the questions, findings, and recommendations. Because “we give particular ideas power and visibility in how we cite,” editors should discourage the use of parenthetical citations as an inclusive strategy (“Anti-Racist” 7). For example, if an editor or reviewer recommends that an author address relevant works by antiracist scholars, that author should engage with those works, not simply provide a parenthetical reference to them, as follows: “(see Chavez, Inoue, Pough).”

IV. Conflicts of interest

• Editors should be mindful of reviewers’ motivations and egos as they engage with the work they are reviewing. If reviewers become defensive about the authors’ fair and valid questioning of the reviewers’ own work in the piece, editors should intervene by (1) dismissing that aspect of the review; (2) seeking a different reviewer; and/or (3) not using that reviewer again if it appears that they may be unable to keep some level of impartiality as they engage with the work of others.
• A situation may occur where a reviewer has accepted an invitation to review a manuscript and, upon reading the manuscript, does not believe they can provide a fair and ethical reader’s report. In such a situation, the reviewer should notify the editor, so that a replacement reviewer can be assigned.

 V. Intellectual property and citation practices

• Editors and reviewers should respect the intellectual property of authors. While a work may not yet be published, it is unethical for editors and/or reviewers to later make similar arguments in their own work. If authors see that their ideas have been exploited, they should turn to the journal’s editors for help. In response, editors should provide the needed proof in terms of dated communication in case the authors want to argue (through legal means or otherwise) for credit as the ideas’ originators.
• Editors should consider providing credit to reviewers in articles, chapters, journals, and edited collections. There are various ways of doing this. For instance, College English publishes the names of all their reviewers in the “Editors’ Introduction” every year, Kairos makes reviewers known to authors (and each other) from the beginning, and constellations gives reviewers a choice to de-anonymize themselves once the peer-reviewed process has been completed. If using the latter model, reviewers should know from the start that de-anonymizing will be a choice later on in the process.
• Editors can encourage authors to include an acknowledgment section where they thank those who helped them shape the publication in ways that may not be visible in the text or citations. Colleagues, friends, partners, relatives, teachers, mentors, and reviewers with whom they had conversations or who provided information, resources, or viewpoints that contributed to the manuscript could be recognized in this section.
• Editors should encourage authors to cite diverse scholars, referencing the “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices” heuristic and the new CCCC Position Statement on Citation Justice in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies.

VI. Journal management

• Professional organizations should work toward creating more inclusive journals by appointing and supporting diverse editorial teams and editorial boards who may promote the value of diverse content, foster connections with diverse reviewers and authors, and enrich editorial conversations. When recruiting editors, it is useful to think about how the position may benefit those editors. Diversity should be the norm, more than the exception, for an editorial team.
• When searching for new editorial teams, professional organizations should make transparent what material support editorial teams will require, and what support the organization is able to provide (financial, production, etc.). Editorial search committees should work with prospective editors to help them petition their department chairs, deans, and provosts for additional support, including travel expenses, course releases, student interns/workers, and dedicated office space for the journal at its new institutional home.
• Journal editors should provide special issue editors with clear and unambiguous guidelines explaining the review and publication processes for special issues, outlining the journal editors’ roles in reviewing and approving works (if any), and accounting for who will be responsible for citation checks, copy edits, proof reviews, etc. The journals’ editors should, at a minimum, read all special issue content to make sure it doesn’t conflict with the values, standards, and practices of the publication. Special issue editors should know in advance of circulating their CFP how hands-on the journal editors will be and whether final approval by the journal editors (or feedback) will be a required part of the process.
• To ensure the integrity of the work, journal editors should establish clear processes by which special issues are developed. For instance, a journal may require that proposals to edit special issues be reviewed by two or more experts in the topic/field when the editor does not have expertise in the subject matter of the special issue. Other journals may require that special issues go through the same review process as other submissions and/or that special issue articles be fact checked prior to publication.
• The relationship between journal editors and special issue editors is a complex one since they are sharing responsibilities in ways that aren’t always clear or easy to navigate. If a work published in a special issue is found to be inaccurate, problematic, or harmful, responsibility should be shared by both sets of editors and the response to these issues—whether it be a retraction, an apology, or whatever else is needed—should be determined and executed by both the journal and special issue editors. When necessary, editors of journals with editorial and/or advisory boards should seek guidance from these boards regarding appropriate responses and how those responses should be delivered.
• Journal editors should require that proposals for special issues include a distribution plan that explains how the special issue editor(s) will reach a diverse group of potential contributors. Special issue editors should include this information in their proposals even when it is not required.

VII. Naming and citation practices

• Journals should adopt citation formatting policies that allow for a diversity of sources and respect cultural differences. If an article cites works from languages, alphabets, or calendars that are not available in English, it is acceptable to use the original version of the citation. If a translation is available, the citation could appear in both the original language and in English.
• Editors need to be careful to portray authors’ information (name, place of work/school, contact information) exactly as it was provided. If mistakes appear in the published version of a manuscript, editors should make it a priority to address those errors as speedily as possible. Correctly spelling an author’s name, for example, has major consequences for that author in terms of the searchability of that publication and its inclusion in their publication profile on Google Scholar and other aggregators.
• Editors should allow trans authors to remove their deadnames from the electronic versions of prior publications, when possible. As journals work toward being supportive of their transitioning authors, they should make this work a priority and professional organizations should set aside any funds necessary to make these changes to the electronic record.
• Just as it is important for authors’ names to be properly spelled, it is vital for those cited to be accurately represented. Authors, editors, and copy editors should pay attention to double-compounds and hyphenated last names, accents, capitalization, punctuation, and so on as they cite others throughout a work.
• Editors can request that authors provide their pronouns in their author bios (if they’re comfortable doing so), and incorporate positionality statements into their work wherever it may be appropriate for them to reflect on aspects of their identity that shape their perceptions/experiences and analysis/findings. This suggestion should be limited to aspects of their identity that the authors are comfortable sharing.

This statement was created by the 2022 Task Force to Develop a “Position Statement: Principles for Equitable and Ethical Scholarship in Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies.” The members of the Task Force include:

Alexandra Hidalgo, University of Pittsburgh
Rachel Ihara, Kingsborough Community College
Lori Ostergaard, Oakland University
Leigh Gruwell, Auburn University
Sheila Carter-Tod, Co-Chair, Denver University
Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Co-Chair, West Virginia University

WORKS CITED

Cagle, Lauren E., et al. “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors.” 2021–, https://tinyurl.com/reviewheuristic.

Baker-Bell, April, et al. This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! Conference on College Composition and Communication, 2020, https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/demand-for-black-linguistic-justice.

Blewett, Kelly, et al. “Editing as Inclusion Activism.” College English, vol. 81, no. 4, 2019, pp. 273–296.

Giberson, Greg, Megan Schoen, and Christian Weisser. Behind the Curtain of Scholarly Publishing: Editors in Writing Studies. Utah State UP, 2022.

Ianetta, Melissa. “From the Editor.” Scholarly Editing: History, Performance, Future special issue of College English, vol. 81, no. 4, 2019, pp. 267–272.

Position Statement on Citation Justice in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies. Conference on College Composition and Communication, 2022, https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/citation-justice.

Sparks, Summar C. “From Gatekeepers to Facilitators: Understanding the Role of the Journal Editor.” Jenna Pack Sheffield, Summar C. Sparks, and Melissa Ianetta, “Symposium: Revaluing the Work of the Editor,” College English, vol. 77, no. 2, 2014, pp. 153–157.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Cagle, Lauren E., et al. “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors.” 2021–, https://tinyurl.com/reviewheuristic.

Committee on Publication Ethics, Directory of Open Access Journals, Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association, and the World Association of Medical Editors. “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.” 2022, https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.12.

Committee on Publication Ethics. “Core practices.” 2017–, https://publicationethics.org/core-practices.

Committee on Publication Ethics, Directory of Open Access Journals, Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association, and The World Association of Medical Editors. “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.” https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.12

Council of Science Editors. “2.7 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Publishing.” 2022–, https://cse.memberclicks.net/2-7-diversity–equity–and-inclusion-in-scholarly-publishing.

Council of Science Editors. “Recommendations for Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications.” 2006–, https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/recommendations-for-promoting-integrity-in-scientific-journal-publications-.

Rockwell, Sara, Ph.D. “Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers.” Yale University, “Peer Review Resources,” Office of Research Integrity, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, https://ori.hhs.gov/peer-review-resources.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
February 2023

In response to the recent legislative onslaught targeting LGBTQIA+ communities, and to federal inaction, the CCCC Executive Council convened an LGBTQIA+ Task Force focusing on methods for supporting LGBTQIA+ people in our professional spaces. Given the climate of hostility targeting trans and queer people, we remind our colleagues that there is no neutral stance. Passivity in the face of violence is still violence.

As CCCC works to combat white supremacy, create accessible spaces, demand Black linguistic justice, and commit to “the work of antiracist change-making,” this work is incomplete without addressing the transphobia and queerphobia inherent to white supremacy. Queer of color, trans of color, and crip scholars have proven that dominant conceptions of gender and sexuality were built on and built for white supremacy and have been used to exclude, dehumanize, and persecute Black, Indigenous, and other people of color regardless of gender identity and/or sexual orientation (Leonardo and Porter; Pritchard, “For Colored Kids”; Chavez; Martin and Battles; Kearl; Patterson and Hsu; Driskill).

We do not want to provide another superficial statement about the “values” of our discipline that falls short of substantive action. Instead, following the lead of the Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force, we have created a resource-rich document with a portfolio of ongoing commitments with the express goal of creating campuses that support LGBTQIA+ students’, staff members’, and teachers’ access to the full range of their human experiences.

This statement serves as a model for reframing LGBTQIA+ issues and undertaking specific actions that create supportive institutions and learning environments for students, staff, and faculty working on campuses.

We have composed the statement in three sections, each of which addresses a different audience with its own particular levels of power and institutional constraints and affordances. The first section offers specific action for writing teachers within their individual classrooms. The second offers commitments to hold department and college administrators accountable. The third section articulates actions to hold our own organization accountable for supporting gender diverse/trans and nonbinary students, staff, and faculty. These commitments were approved during the CCCC Executive Committee’s fall 2022 meeting.

Given that most spaces and institutional policies were designed to be hostile to trans and queer people, creating genuinely LGBTQIA+-inclusive settings requires deliberate and ongoing engagement with the many extant and novel attacks on LGBTQIA+ lives. While it is impossible to provide exhaustive recommendations, we offer a set of actionable commitments that make the lives of LGBTQIA+ people richer and more possible. We hope these actions help protect queer and trans people and encourage our campuses to evolve into more just communities.

Section 1: Collaborative Teaching Practice

Gender and sexuality are embedded throughout our rhetorical practices; they are not just the purview of LGBTQIA+ folks. But certain forms of gender, kinship, and intimacy are so normalized that they can go unnoticed, while others are marked as aberrant. At the level of teaching, faculty should create space to reflect on and to enact practices that are affirming of trans and genderqueer students.

Commitment 1: Allow students to introduce themselves rather than calling roll from official rosters, which may not have students’ correct names.

Commitment 2: Intentionally use inclusive/gender-neutral language when referring to groups of students (folks, friends, class, team, y’all, everyone, etc.).

Commitment 3: Correct those who misgender students and move on. Model and provide support for interventions that respect LGBTQIA+ community members.

Commitment 4: Include content by LGBTQIA+ authors and about LGBTQIA+ experiences. This includes LGBTQIA+ theorists as well as practitioners. Further, writing instructors should include these authors, texts, and experiences throughout the learning experience rather than as “special topics” weeks or “niche” subjects.

Commitment 5: Study and practice an intersectional approach to LGBTQIA+ readings that illustrate the ways gender, sex, and sexuality are always already part of the ways we think about other identities, known and emerging.

Commitment 6: Be well versed in your institution’s current policies and guidelines regarding name change, gender-inclusive bathrooms, and insurance, and be able to offer current and relevant resources and information to students.

Section 2: Departments, Colleges, and Institutions

Although departments and institutions exist in unique contexts with particular constraints, the following list begins the work for assessing the support and care of the environment in which students, staff, and faculty learn and work. Administrators can ensure there are clear policies and procedures regarding these actionable items and work toward support and articulation of guidelines and policies that do not yet exist, or need additional clarity, communication, and support that moves beyond current formats. Faculty and staff can work within existing committee structures (e.g., department committees, school committees, etc.) to make sure that these items are addressed and part of ongoing and developing institutional cultures.

Commitment 1: Provide clearly communicated, easily navigable pathways for name changes.

For faculty and staff, these processes ought to be communicated during the onboarding process and on a regular basis through departmental communications. Additionally, your institution could provide support for those members of the community seeking a legal name change. Laws surrounding name change differ by state and can be involved and costly. Working to make these processes—both institutional and governmental—more hospitable and less burdensome is the overall goal.

Commitment 2: Advocate for gender-inclusive bathrooms.

Though there are multiple examples of campuses that have de-centered gendered facilities, conversations and strategies around creating gender-inclusive restrooms on campus are often framed by concerns that reflect budgetary constraints and heteronormative values. Some institutions are governed by local laws and ordinances that require separate facilities for legal gender assignment and funding for such projects. However, departments can support faculty, staff, and students by communicating whether/where these facilities currently exist on campus. Administrators can further support gender inclusivity through efforts to make sure your campus provides fully accessible, nonmarginalizing bathroom facilities for all.

Commitment 3: Use correct names and pronouns.

Using a person’s stated name and pronouns is a matter of respect and validation that clearly communicates to another person their right to be and belong. In support of a person’s self-determination, your institution ought to have

1. a community-wide expectation that faculty, students, and staff honor the stated names and pronouns of every individual, and allow for faculty, students, and staff to update their names/pronouns in institutional capacities;
2. clearly articulated and communicated pedagogical practices regarding stated name and pronoun usage in the classroom; and,
3. resources at the department and institutional levels to assist those who require instruction and support in practicing inclusivity in the classroom, meetings, and all workspaces.

Resource for Learning and Action

Commitment 4: Advocate for insurance coverage for all employees.

Since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, all those legally married are assured the same institutional rights associated with insurance coverage. That said, it is important to make sure that your institution also continues to offer domestic partnership benefits to those who may not want to legally marry. With perceived challenges to same-sex marriage coming in the future, it is important for institutions to advocate for insurance coverage for all employees to ensure equity and inclusivity—even, and perhaps especially, in organizations with a nondiscrimination policy that includes LGBTQIA+ protections.

Likewise, policies that exclude gender-affirming care can effectively exclude trans people from employment at an institution. Research whether the healthcare policy of your employer excludes coverage for transgender health care and if possible provide the information on job listings.

Resource for Learning and Action

Commitment 5: Include rich resources and training programs on LGBTQIA+ needs during onboarding procedures for all faculty and staff.

Research suggests that a lack of knowledge is an obstacle for many employees trying to overcome and challenge prejudice. Providing faculty and staff with clear information about LGBTQIA+ experiences and the barriers that trans and queer people encounter in social and institutional spaces enables better-informed engagement and clears the path for open discussion. Sessions should include individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+ so that employees are able to hear own-voices stories and cultivate cross-cultural understandings.

Resource for Learning and Action: “Creating a Trans-Inclusive Workplace”

Commitment 6: Actively research and seek out policies relating to the issue above and also acknowledge that additional issues and needs may arise over time.

Anticipate coordinated campaigns against LGBTQIA+ faculty and understand what resources are available to protect faculty who are attacked for working with (or identifying as a member of) LGBTQIA+ communities. Advocate for better protections as needed.

Section 3: Professional Organization*

CCCC is the largest scholarly society for the study of rhetoric, composition, and literacy. The organization must lead by example. CCCC needs to be asking better questions than who is or is not present. The organization’s thinking must be based in trans and queer praxis, praxis that has grown in dynamism and complexity thanks to BIPOC scholars who have pushed trans and queer thought beyond its historic roots in Whiteness (Pritchard Fashioning Lives; Davis; Presley; Peterman and Spencer). At the organizational and institutional level, CCCC will commit to rethinking the way it conducts its business.

Commitment 1: Rethink the way CCCC honors writing programs.

The CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence currently does not require evidence of safety or care work for trans and queer students, staff, and faculty. Programs of Excellence must now demonstrate how they protect trans and queer students, staff, and faculty and engage with trans/queer praxis.

Cultural and political contexts can complicate and set limits to such work. WPAs seeking this certification, therefore, may offer a range of evidence demonstrating their commitments to trans and queer safety.

• Describe the legal, institutional, ideological, and cultural barriers facing WPAs working toward safety and care work for trans and queer students, staff, and faculty and offer responses to these barriers.
  • Possible data to be included:
    • Formal policies within and beyond the department that deny or work against trans and queer safety
    • Municipal or state laws that make this work illegal or precarious
    • A narrative of the WPA’s sense of the campus climate

• Create inclusive language that allows students, staff, and faculty the right to identify how they wish to be addressed.
  • Possible data to be included:
    • Online or in-person registration/sign-in forms
    • Signage or other materials about names, pronouns, and queer/trans inclusivity that are easily available to those who enter the space
• Articulate action steps that WPAs have taken to transform or ease the burden of name change policies in their programs and/or local institutions.
  • Possible data to be included:
    • Official policies for name changes

• Demonstrate trans- and queer-inclusive training of students, staff, and faculty that allows students, staff, and faculty working in writing programs to enact trans and queer care work.
  • Possible data to be included:
    • Resource guides for trans and queer care work
    • Clear flow charts guiding consultants and informing students of conflict resolution regarding trans and queer issues (i.e., where they can go to resolve and to negotiate challenges)

Commitment 2: Change the Position Statement review process to be more trans- and queer-inclusive.

Position Statements are reviewed every five years for revision, affirmation, or sunsetting. Review of Position Statements should

• Include trans and queer colleagues in all Statement reviews by appointment or in consultation with Queer Caucus co-chairs.
• Work queer- and trans-inclusive language into all Statements in addition to the commonplace citation strings.
• Revise and update Students’ Right to Their Own Language to include the language we use to self-identify, clarifying that LGBTQIA+ belonging is integral to racial justice.

Commitment 3: Transform our approaches to conference location and presence.

CCCC cannot anticipate every policy of consequence in our host cities and states, but it can take steps to use its resources to bring greater awareness to EC members prior to the selection of host cities. CCCC can also use its considerable resources to support queer and trans literacy programs in our host cities in the following ways:

Prior to Conference Host Selection

1. Applications for host cities must now request a list of local queer and trans literacy organizations (this helps prepare for future community collaborations).

2. The CCCC EC should investigate the political climate of potential host cities and states that could be a concern to our queer and trans members as part of its selection criteria.

On-the-Ground Action at Conference

3. CCCC Assistant Chair (Conference Program Chair), the Local Arrangements Committee, and, as needed, the Social Justice at the Convention Committee collaborate on supporting local queer and trans literacy programs in host cities and states during its yearly conference, following best ethical practices in reciprocity with and solidarity for community engagement.

Actions include:

a. Establish community partnerships at least one year prior to the convention.

b. Free badges to local queer and trans literacy leaders and a space on the program should these leaders wish to present.

c. Active queer and trans conference members pair with these communities to help develop panels or consider how best to use CCCC resources. These members should, whenever possible, work in or near the host city.

Commitment 4: Reconceptualize civic and legal actions as community engagement.

Colleagues across the country often use CCCC Statements as part of their rationale for tenure and promotion and other institutional actions. Review committees also can use CCCC Statements to assess the scholarly contributions of our colleagues. As such, we call on CCCC to reconceptualize civic and legal action as community engagement and develop a statement that treats it as professional service and engaged scholarship. CCCC should look to the Coalition on Community Writing and the National Writing Project as resources for entering this conversation and refining this commitment.

Commitment 5: Establish a trans-/gender-expansive editorial policy that CCCC publications will follow.

CCCC is responsible for the publication of College Composition and Communication, FORUM, and the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric book series. There is currently no unified, trans-/gender-expansive editorial policy available to scholars or future editors. To support accountability regarding editorial practices with respect to trans and genderqueer scholars, CCCC Executive Committee should require editorial boards to revise/update their own policies and practices, which may include:

• Defining the work of and expectations for editorial board membership on publications’ webspaces.
• Including trans and queer scholars (across institutional types and professional rank) on editorial boards and consulting these editorial board members for their replacement when their term ends.
• Guiding reviewers toward a more just and empathetic review of MSS. Examples of this include actions such as:
  • Insisting that correct pronouns are used in MS and reviewer comments
  • Rejecting as baseless and false a grammar-based rationale for the continued misuse of pronouns
  • Rejecting comments that dismiss the personal outright as a location of knowledge and information. Historically, such attitudes have served to disguise whitestream, patriarchal perspectives as “universal objectivity,” and to invalidate experiences that prove otherwise
  • Examining comments that question the veracity or viability of queer and trans methods. There are of course inappropriate applications of queer and trans methods that may not serve queer and trans communities, but too often resistance echoes the blanket disregard of queer/trans perspectives as “aberrant” or “niche,” and passing such remarks on to LGBTQIA+ authors can compound the discrimination they’ve already experienced throughout their careers
• Expanding reviewers and editorial board members to include experts outside the academy.
• Considering practices and processes that would update and correct files and documents in response to name and pronoun changes.

*These commitments were approved by the CCCC Executive Committee during their November 2022 meeting.

Selected Resources

Conference on College Composition and Communication. CCCC Black Technical and Professional Communication Position Statement with Resource Guide (2020).

Conference on College Composition and Communication. This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! (2020).

Conference on College Composition and Communication. Disability Studies in Composition: Position Statement on Policy and Best Practices (2020).

Conference on College Composition and Communication. CCCC Statement on White Language Supremacy (2021).

Conference on College Composition and Communication. CCCC Statement on Recent Violent Crimes against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders.

Patterson, GPat. “Loving Students in the Time of Covid: a Dispatch from LGBT Studies.” Journal of Liberal Arts, vol. 22, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1–16.

Waite, Stacey. Teaching Queer: Radical Possibilities for Writing and Knowing. U of Pittsburgh P, 2017.

Additionally, the Queer Caucus curates a working bibliography of queer/trans rhetoric and writing studies scholarship.

Works Cited

Chávez, Karma R. Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities. U of Illinois P, 2013.

Davis, Seth E. “Trade: Sexual Identity, Ambiguity, and Literacy Normativity.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2022, licsjournal.org/index.php/LiCS/article/view/2192.

Delgado, Richard. “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 87, no. 8, 1989, pp. 2411–41, https://doi.org/10.2307/1289308.

Driskill, Qwo-Li. Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory. U of Arizona P, 2016.

hooks, bell. “Theory as Liberatory Practice.” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, vol. 4, no. 1, 1991, pp. 1–12.

Hsu, V. Jo. Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics. The Ohio State UP, 2022.

Kearl, Michelle Kelsey. “‘Is Gay the New Black?’: An Intersectional Perspective on Social Movement Rhetoric in California’s Proposition 8 Debate.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2015, pp. 63–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.995684.

Leonardo, Zeus, and Ronald K. Porter. “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue.” Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 13, no. 2, 2010, pp. 139–57.

Martin, Alfred L. Jr., and Kathleen Battles. “The Straight Labor of Playing Gay.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 127–140, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2021.1876899.

Martinez, Aja Y. Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory. National Council of Teachers of English, 2020. CCCC Studies in Writing and Rhetoric.

Patterson, GPat, and V. Jo Hsu. “Exposing the Seams: Professional Dress & the Disciplining of Nonbinary Trans Bodies.” The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, vol. 3, no. 2, 2020, journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/3-2-issue-patterson-and-hsu.

Petermon, Jade D., and Leland G. Spencer. “Black Queer Womanhood Matters: Searching for the Queer Herstory of Black Lives Matter in Television Dramas.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 36, no. 4, 2019, pp. 339–356, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1607518.

Powell, Malea, et al. “Our Story Begins Here: Constellating Cultural Rhetorics.” Enculturation, no. 18, 25 October 2014, enculturation.net/our-story-begins-here.

Presley, Rachel. “Toward a Trans Sovereignty: Why We Need Indigenous Rhetorics to Decolonize Gender and Sexuality.” Transgender Rhetorics, special issue of Peitho, vol. 22, no. 4, 2020.

Pritchard, Eric Darnell. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Southern Illinois UP, 2016.

—. “For Colored Kids Who Committed Suicide, Our Outrage Isn’t Enough: Queer Youth of Color, Bullying, and the Discursive Limits of Identity and Safety.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 83, no. 2, 2013, pp. 320–345.

Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Harvard UP, 1991.

Acknowledgments

This statement was generously created by the CCCC Task Force on Support for Gender Diversity/Trans and Nonbinary Students and Faculty. The members of this task force included:

Chuck Baker
Antonio Byrd
Ames Hawkins
Ada Hubrig
V. Jo Hsu
Timothy Oleksiak
GPat Patterson
Donnie Johnson Sackey