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CCCC is seeking the next editor of College Composition and Communication. The term of current editor Malea Powell will end in December 2024. Interested persons should send a letter of application to be received no later than Monday, February 13, 2023 (the deadline has been extended).

Letters should be accompanied by (1) a CV, noting any editorial experience, (2) one published writing sample (article or chapter), and (3) a statement of vision, to include any suggestions for changing the journal as well as features of the journal to be continued. Applicants are urged to consult with administrators on the question of time, resources, and other services that may be required. NCTE staff members are available to provide advice and assistance to all potential applicants in approaching administrators about institutional support and in explaining NCTE’s support for editors.

Finalists will be interviewed virtually during the winter/spring of 2023. The applicant appointed by the CCCC Executive Committee in spring 2023 will effect a transition in 2023–24, preparing for their first issue in February 2025. The appointment term is five years.

Applications should be submitted via email in PDF form to jsitar@ncte.org; please include “CCC Editor Application” in the subject line by Monday, February 13, 2023. Direct queries to Jim Sitar, NCTE journals managing editor, at the email address above.

 

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Aim of the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series

The aim of the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series is to influence how we think about language in action and especially how writing gets taught at the college level. The methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition—including rhetoric, communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse—ranging from individual writers and teachers, to work on classrooms and communities and curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts of writing and its teaching. Still, all SWR volumes try in some way to inform the practice of writing teachers, students, or administrators. Their approach is synthetic, their style concise and pointed. Complete manuscripts run from 40,000–50,000 words, or about 150–200 pages. Authors should imagine their work in the hands of writing teachers and all who are interested in how we make our ways with language.

SWR was one of the first scholarly book series to focus primarily on the teaching of writing. It was established in 1980 by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in order to promote research in the emerging field of writing studies. As our field has grown, the research and scholarship sponsored by SWR has continued to articulate the commitment of CCCC to supporting the work of writing teachers as reflective practitioners and intellectuals. Click here for a list of current books in the SWR series.

New Editor and Publisher of SWR

On July 1, 2012, Professor Victor Villanueva (Auburn University) will become the next SWR series editor. He and the current series editor, Joseph Harris, are working closely together to ensure a seamless transition. The series will continue to seek out the very best work in writing studies.

Submissions

We are eager to identify influential work in writing and rhetoric as it emerges. We thus ask authors to send us project proposals that clearly situate their work in the field and show how they aim to redirect our ongoing conversations about writing and its teaching. Proposals should include an overview of the project, a brief annotated table of contents, and a sample chapter. They should not exceed 10,000 words.

To submit a proposal, please visit www.editorialmanager.com/nctebp.
Good luck!

 

Problems or questions? Please email Victor Villanueva, SWR Editor, at victorv [at] auburn [dot] edu

 

SWR Editorial Advisory BoardVictor Villanueva, SWR Editor, Auburn University
Robin Gosser, Associate Editor, Auburn University

Linda Adler-Kassner, University of California, Santa Barbara
Adam Banks, University of Kentucky
Anis Bawarshi, University of Washington
Patricia Bizzell, Holy Cross College
Ellen Cushman, Michigan State University
Eli Goldblatt, Temple University
Juan Guerra, University of Washington
Krista Ratcliffe, Marquette University
Raúl Sánchez, University of Florida
Mary Soliday, San Francisco State University
Lucille Schultz, University of Cincinnati
Betsy Verhoeven, Susquehanna University

What is CCCC?

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) supports and promotes the teaching and study of college composition and communication. CCCC is one of four conferences of the National Council of Teachers of English, which promotes access, power, agency, and affiliation for all invested in literacy, pre-K through graduate school.¹

Organizational Structure of CCCC

CCCC is governed by its Constitution and Bylaws. It is through the groups and roles specified in these documents that the work of the organization takes place. Leadership of the organization is charged to the CCCC Executive Committee (EC). The EC consists of 25 voting members (who are themselves elected by CCCC members) and five ex officio members who sit on the EC by virtue of their offices. These include, for instance, the editor of College Composition and Communication, CCCC’s journal, and the chair of the Two-Year College English Association (an NCTE association and close ally of CCCC). These ex officio members provide necessary information about the operations of the organization to the larger leadership body.

The CCCC EC is led by six officers (included in the count above): five elected and one who sits on the Officers’ Committee by virtue of their office. These officers include the Chair, Associate Chair, Assistant Chair, Past Chair, Secretary, and the Executive Secretary-Treasurer (non-elected), who form an Officers’ Committee as specified by the Constitution. Along with the EC, the officers have responsibility for policymaking, fiduciary matters, and organizational decision-making.

Also charged with undertaking projects is a series of Special Committees. These are appointed by the EC. They have a set of discrete tasks around a common interest defined by the Executive Committee to achieve purposes associated with the organization (for example, updating or revising a position statement). Organizationally, the other entities included in the structure of CCCC are membership-driven entities such as Special Interest Groups and Standing Groups, which emerge from the body of the organization. These groups are defined on this webpage and can request formal status within the organization in order to pursue goals, projects, or tasks around an area of common interest.

Organizational Structures within CCCC

Committees
Article IV of the CCCC Constitution names four kinds of committees within CCCC: the Executive Committee, Nominating Committee, Officers’ Committee, and Special Committees. The first three committees (Executive, Nominating, and Officers’) consist of elected and ex-officio members, so are necessarily limited in membership. The fourth, Special Committees, covers a range of topics and has more open membership.

• Executive Committee: comprised of 20 elected plus a number of ex-officio members, the EC is CCCC’s policymaking body.
• Nominating Committee: comprised of seven elected members, the NC identifies and encourages a diverse group of potential candidates to run for leadership positions within the organization.
• Officers’ Committee: the officers of the EC make up the OC, which is charged with carrying out the business of the EC.
• Special Committees: At any given time, CCCC will have a number of special committees, each appointed by the CCCC Chair.  While certain committees are ongoing because their charge renews itself each year (e.g., Newcomers’ Orientation Committee and Awards Committees), most are chartered for three years and have specific deliverables. (The EC may renew the charter if provided with evidence that the organization would benefit from doing so.) A list of current Special Committees, along with information on how to join a committee, can be found on the CCCC Committee webpage.

Task Forces
Task forces are convened, charged, and appointed by the CCCC Executive Committee with the Officers’ Committee taking responsibility for charging the group. A Task Force tends to have a short activity span (typically no more than one year) around a very focused goal or outcome.

Member Groups: Special Interest Groups and Standing Groups
Committee membership is relatively limited because committees have specific and focused charges that are defined by the Executive Committee via the Chair. CCCC members who seek to define more ongoing work that is driven by member interests can participate in Member Groups of two types: Special Interest Groups (SIGs) or Standing Groups (SGs).

Currently, the more than fifty Special Interest Groups (SIGs) meet at the CCCC Annual Convention in the spring. They are relatively informal and provide an opportunity for people with common professional interests to meet and talk. Longstanding SIGs can apply to become a Standing Group, resulting in a more formal relationship with CCCC. While SIGs are not accountable to the organization with specific deliverables, Standing Groups are required to submit an annual report of activities and membership.

Who Does What in the Groups?

• Committees are convened by the CCCC Executive Committee, with charges determined by the EC or Officers’ Committee. All committee members (including the chair) are named/appointed rather than elected. The exceptions to this description are the Nominating Committee, the Officers’ Committee, and the Executive Committee.
• Task Forces are convened by the Executive Committee, with charges determined by the EC or Officers’ Committee. The chair is named or appointed rather than elected, as is the membership.
• Standing Groups are membership-driven groups focused around a common interest. They may start as SIGs and apply for Standing Group status. Chairs or co-chairs are elected from the membership rather than appointed. They have organizational status as an ongoing group, presuming they provide necessary annual updates to the CCCC leadership and abide by their bylaws.
• Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are groups assembled by members with a common interest that meet annually at the Convention. SIGs can apply for Standing Group status–recognition by the organization for longstanding activity.

How do I get involved?

• Committees: Because committee membership is named by the Officers/EC, members interested in committee involvement should contact the CCCC liaison and/or respond to the biennial survey circulated to members, which seeks to solicit interest.
• Task Forces: If there is an area of special expertise that a member wants to contribute to the organization, s/he can contact the Officers’ Committee to indicate a willingness to serve on a committee or task force should a task/goal falling under that member’s area of specialization be necessary.
• Standing Groups: Standing Groups are open to all members. Any member is invited to attend the standing group meeting at the annual convention.
• Special Interest Groups: SIGs are open to all members. Any member is invited to attend the special interest group meeting at the annual convention. SIGs and Standing Groups determine their own leadership opportunities and can be great ways to connect to other leadership positions within CCCC.

Statements

• Position Statements: CCCC Position Statements—formal statements approved by the CCCC Executive Committee—have a long history in the organization, with Students’ Right to Their Own Language dating back to 1974. Position statements cover a range of ethical and professional issues. More detailed information can be found at the following sites:
  • /cccc/resources/positions/creation
  • /cccc/resources/positions/guidelines
• Resolutions: Members of CCCC are encouraged to propose and/or support resolutions in order to “facilitate our collective efforts” on issues “that bear on the teaching of writing and communication.” While some resolutions are intended to make a statement, others are meant to spur action. The Resolutions Committee compiles resolutions and then puts them to a vote by the membership at the business meeting on Saturday morning at CCCC.

¹The other three conferences are the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE), Conference on English Leadership (CEL), and Literacies and Languages for All (LLA). NCTE also has affiliates (NCTE regional affiliates and TYCA regional affiliates) and assemblies.

The CCCC Studies in Writing and Rhetoric Series (SWR), established in 1984, supports research that explores how writing, rhetoric, and literacy are currently and have been historically taught, learned practiced, and circulated within communities, whether in colleges, workplaces, or neighborhoods, local, national, digital, or international contexts. The series also focuses on supporting a broad range of projects that accurately represent the diverse identities of teachers, learners, administrators, and researchers involved in writing, rhetoric and literacy, addressing the cultural, social, political, and material realities that define their work. Work published in SWR seeks to identify and resist the inequities and forces of oppression that shape the teaching of writing, rhetoric, and literacy as well as to intervene in them. The series aspires to be global both in scope and reach, and is dedicated to the use of digital technologies that ensure its publications are accessible and available to a national and international audience.

All SWR volumes try in some way to inform the practice of writing teachers, students, or administrators. Their approach is synthetic, their style concise and pointed. Complete manuscripts run 50,000–60,000 words, or about 150–200 pages. Authors should imagine their work in the hands of writing teachers, including those at two- and four-year colleges and universities, in dual enrollment programs, and in a wide range of extra-institutional and/or non-US-centered pedagogical contexts. While writing teachers may be a primary audience, the series aims to be accessible and engaging to broad audiences of those who are interested in how we make our ways with language and literacy.

SWR was one of the first scholarly book series to focus on the teaching of writing. It was established in 1980 by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in order to promote research in the emerging field of writing studies. As our field has grown, the research sponsored by SWR has continued to articulate the commitment of CCCC to supporting the work of writing teachers as reflective practitioners and intellectuals.

Submissions

We are eager to identify influential work in writing and rhetoric as it emerges. Authors are encouraged to submit proposal queries to share questions and project concepts ahead of submitting a formal proposal. Project proposals should clearly situate the work in the field, showing how the research being developed and shared intervenes in and engages conversations hosted by the series and/or in writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies. Prospective authors are asked to indicate how the project extends, redirects, and/or reshapes ongoing conversations about writing, rhetoric, literacy and their teaching. Proposals should include an overview of the project and its stakes, a brief annotated table of contents, a market analysis of comparable/related work published in the last 5–7 years, and a sample chapter. They should convey the project’s conceptual and/or empirical archive/data set and how the text’s arguments emerge from the archive/data. If the project involves human subjects please indicate IRB approval. We welcome work that originates outside of the academy and collaborations among authors who experiment with form and knowledge-making practices.

NOTE: We do not accept unrevised dissertations.

To submit a proposal, please register as an author on the Editorial Manager site for the NCTE Books Program. Once registered, follow the steps to submit a proposal (be sure to choose SWR Book Proposal from the drop-down list of article submission types).

Questions?
Contact SWR Editor Stephanie Kerschbaum at kersch@uw.edu.

SWR Editorial Advisory Board

Stephanie Kerschbaum, SWR Editor, University of Washington
Taiko Aoki-Marcial, SWR Associate Editor, University of Washington

Jonathan Alexander, University of California, Irvine (2027)
Damián Baca, Arizona State University (2027)
Suresh Canagarajah, Penn State University (2027)
Charissa Che, Queensborough Community College (2027)
Jo Hsu, The University of Texas at Austin (2027)
Vivette Milson-Whyte, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica (2027)
Federico Navarro, Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile (2027)
Cassandra (Cassie) Phillips, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2027)
Patti Poblete, South Puget Sound Community College (2027)
Lauren Rosenberg, The University of Texas at El Paso (2027)
Emily Suh, Texas State University (2027)
Amy Wan, Queens College (2027)

SWR Editor Search Procedures

 

 

Series: Studies in Writing and Rhetoric
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press / CCCC & NCTE
xi, 171 p.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2924-3 (Paperback); ISBN-10: 0-8093-2924-7 (Paperback)

Listen to the Podcast with author Kelly Ritter and SWR Editor Joe Harris:

Author Information

Kelly Ritter is chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and professor of writing and communication in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. Her scholarship focuses on archival histories of US writing programs and pedagogies, and cultural-historical conceptions of social class and literacy education. Her books are Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960 (NCTE/SIU Press, 2009), Who Owns School? Authority, Students, and Online Discourse (Hampton Press, 2010), To Know Her Own History: Writing at the Woman’s College, 1943-1963 (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) and Reframing the Subject: Postwar Instructional Film and Class-Conscious Literacies (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). She is also the author of numerous articles and chapters, and editor or coeditor of four collections, including  Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Generation Writing and Literacy Education (Modern Language Association, 2023). She is past editor (2012-2017) of College English, a flagship journal of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Tags:

Basic writing; basic writers; history of composition; ability testing; first-year writing; archival research; placement; literacy; remediation; Mina Shaughnessy; Yale University; Harvard University; Ivy League institutions

Reviews:

Reviewed by Gregory R. Glau in WPA: Writing Program Administration 33.1/2 (Fall/Winter 2009) (PDF format)

Reviewed by Composition Forum 22 (2010) http://compositionforum.com/issue/22/before-shaughnessy-review.php

Purchasing Information

Purchase this book from Southern Illinois University Press.

Executive Summary

For the over 25 million students enrolled in America’s colleges and universities, postsecondary writing instruction is critical for success in college and beyond. In writing courses, students gain experience analyzing expectations for writing held by different audiences and practice meeting those expectations. This experience contributes significantly to the development of productive writing practices and habits of mind that are critical for success in different contexts, including academic, workplace, and community settings.

For the many stakeholders working to meet the challenges of this enterprise—among them faculty, program directors, deans, and college and university administrators—this statement presents a distillation of principles for sound instruction in postsecondary writing. These principles extend from empirical research in the fields of English Language Arts and Composition and Rhetoric and from existing statements developed by the field’s major organizations (including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Two Year College English Association, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and the National Writing Project). They presume that sound writing instruction is provided by professionals with degree-based credentials in Writing Studies, Composition and Rhetoric, or related fields, or that have been provided with and/or have sought out professional development in this area. This particular statement is endorsed by CCCC (the largest professional organization representing two- and four-year writing instruction) and offers guiding principles and enabling conditions for sound writing instruction.

Guiding Principles. Sound writing instruction:

1. emphasizes the rhetorical nature of writing;
2. considers the needs of real audiences;
3. recognizes writing as a social act;
4. enables students to analyze and practice with a variety of genres;
5. recognizes writing processes as iterative and complex;
6. depends upon frequent, timely, and context-specific feedback from an experienced postsecondary instructor;
7. emphasizes relationships between writing and technologies; and
8. supports learning, engagement, and critical thinking in courses across the curriculum.

Enabling Conditions. Sound writing instruction:

9. provides students with the support necessary to achieve their goals;
10. extends from a knowledge of theories of writing (including, but not limited to, those theories developed in the field of composition and rhetoric);
11. is provided by instructors with reasonable and equitable working conditions; and 
12. is assessed through a collaborative effort that focus on student learning within and beyond writing courses.

The remainder of this statement elaborates on each of these principles. Selected research-based resources providing additional information (including research studies and existing position statements) are located at the end of this document.

Read the full statement, Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (October 1989, Revised November 2013, Revised March 2015)

The Conference on College Composition and Communication invites applications for a five-year appointment as Editor of the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric (SWR) book series. SWR supports the mission of CCCC in its publication of monograph-length works from a variety of theoretical and research perspectives on current topics or concerns within composition studies.

Working with an editorial board appointed by the CCCC officers, the SWR editor solicits and reviews manuscripts, then works with authors to develop and prepare accepted projects into production-ready form for the publication staff. The current CCCC budget permits publishing three to four monographs a year. CCCC provides partial support for the office of editor; the amount of support will be negotiated with the finalist. In addition, the editor is a member of the CCCC Editors’ Team, which meets face-to-face at the CCCC Convention and, occasionally, online.

The CCCC officers request that a detailed application dossier be submitted as a PDF by April 18, 2022, to Kurt Austin, NCTE Senior Books Editor, at kaustin@ncte.org, including (1) a letter articulating the applicant’s vision for the SWR series, (2) a CV, (3) a statement of possible institutional support (including financial support, preferably), and (4) a sample of the applicant’s writing (article or chapter). Applicants must be CCCC members.

Based on those materials, the officers will interview a group of finalists via teleconference in May 2022.