Author: ksuchor

Evaluation Criteria for Proposals

Regardless of role or session type, reviewers for the 2025 Convention will use the following criteria to evaluate proposals:

• Engages with the conference theme, “‘Computer Love’: Extended Play, B-Sides, Remix, Collaboration, and Creativity,” in postsecondary writing research, teaching, and/or administration, whether explicitly or implicitly. In other words, proposal writers are not required to use the conference theme in their panel titles. Given the conference theme, writers are welcome to pose questions they may not yet be able to answer, that speak to a recognition of existing abundances, in their proposal.
• Reflects an awareness of diverse audience needs relevant to the topic.
• Practices citation justice. The proposal is situated in relation to existing scholarship and research in the field, and uplifts and amplifies Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and other multiply marginalized perspectives. The proposal may also describe how the presenters will learn from other minoritized communities to further their thinking about the topic.
• Demonstrates a concrete and specific plan that aligns with the criteria for the selected session type.

General Guidelines for Authors of Proposals

• The proposal submission database opened April 6, 2024.
• By Monday, April 22, email CCCCevents@ncte.org to request a coach to assist you with your proposal. Submit a draft of your proposal so the coach has something to review.
• Follow the proposal format.
• Be as specific and clear as possible about the focus and purpose of your proposal, and provide only the information requested. The volume of proposals to review makes supplemental material difficult to manage.
• Meet the May 31 deadline and submit electronically through the online program proposal system.
• Notify NCTE immediately (1-800-369-6283 or CCCCevents@ncte.org) of address changes.
• Expect official invitations to be sent in early September 2024 to those whose proposals have been accepted.
• Names appearing in the 2025 Convention Program will include those whose peer-reviewed proposals have been accepted and/or those who will be serving in a Documentarian role (and who have completed the required support module) and who have paid registrations.

Special Note for Proposal Submitters:

• Please note that when you submit a proposal draft, a confirmation email will be sent to the 1st person listed on the proposal submission. Please make sure you, the submitter, is listed first so you receive the email as it will include information on re-entering the proposal system so you can edit the proposal, if needed.

The Pitch Practicing station in the Action Hub is an opportunity for you to practice your pitch to a range of (role-played) audiences. Colleagues from the field will be there, ready to listen to what you have to say and to provide feedback on your pitches in real time, helping you to make the best case that you can for what you’d like to achieve.

There’s no need to schedule a pitch practicing slot; just go to the Pitch Practicing Station in the Action Hub, and they’ll be waiting!

A schedule of colleagues and the roles they’re ready to play:

 

A Sessions Thursday 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Rita Malenczyk – parent, union member, WPA Deb Holdstein – dean, department chair Anne Ruggles Gere – WPA, dean, student, donor Shirley Wilson Logan – English department colleague, faculty member from another discipline, non tenure track faculty member, high school teacher, parent Barbara Cambridge – provost, legislator, policymaker, lobbyist, administrators, disciplinary association officer (CCCC, NCTE…)

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B Sessions Thursday 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

David Jolliffe – community arts advocate Dominic Delli Carpini – faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, dean, parent of incoming first year student, disciplinary association officer, administrator Iris Ruiz – graduate student, lecturer, union member, activist Peter Mortensen – WPA, dean, provost’s senior staff, donor, parent, state higher ed authority Jeff Grabill – department chair, community member, university administrator, parent Becca Hayes – graduate student, parent, foundation/nonprofit employee, community member/activist/advocate

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C Sessions Thursday 1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Bud Weiser – dean, department chair, WPA Eva Payne – two-year college department chair colleague, faculty member, dual credit advocate or opponent Andrea Lunsford – faculty member, parent, journalist, chair, dean, donor Jeff Andelora – department chair, parent, colleague, WPA, student, high school teacher Shirley Rose – WPA, parent, faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, parent of incoming first year student, community member, administrator, director of external group with interest in higher ed Kathleen Blake Yancey – department chair, faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, high school teacher, parent, community member Howard Tinberg – faculty member, parent, high school teacher, department chair, journalist

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D Sessions Thursday 3:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

John Schilb – faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, dean, high school teacher/principal, parent of incoming student, community member, private donor Lil Brannon – faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, dean, high school teacher/principal, parent, community member, private donor Joyce Kinkead – journalist, dean, provost, PR/media representative from campus

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E Sessions Thursday 4:45 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Bill Hart-Davidson – dean, ed tech company representative Raul Sanchez – WPA, union member, union president

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F Sessions Friday 8:00 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.

Not Available.

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G Sessions Friday 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.

Eva Payne – two-year college department chair colleague, faculty member, dual credit advocate or opponent Shirley Wilson Logan – English department colleague, faculty member from another discipline, non tenure track faculty member, high school teacher, parent Jeff Andelora – department chair, parent, colleague, WPA, student, high school teacher Shirley Rose – WPA, parent, faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, parent of incoming first year student, community member, administrator, director of external group with interest in higher ed Elyse Eidman-Aadahl – foundation officer, education policy maker, government official Les Perelman – reporter, university/college news officer, administrator, STEM faculty member

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H Sessions Friday 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

David Jolliffe – community arts advocate Chris Thaiss – faculty colleague, colleague from another discipline, dean, high school teacher/principal, parent, community member, administrator, student, pro or anti-public education legislator, union member, donor, journalist Andrea Lunsford – faculty member, parent, journalist, chair, dean, donor Bill Hart-Davidson – dean, ed tech company representative Donnie Sackey – faculty colleague, colleague from another department, activist, graduate student Jeff Grabill – department chair, community member, university administrator, parent

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I Sessions Friday 12:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.

Bud Weiser – dean, department chair, WPA Anne Ruggles Gere – WPA, dean, student, donor Dominic Delli Carpini – faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, dean, parent of incoming first year student, disciplinary association officer, administrator Peter Mortensen – WPA, dean, provost’s senior staff, donor, parent, state higher ed authority Barbara Cambridge – provost, legislator, policymaker, lobbyist, administrators, disciplinary association officer (CCCC, NCTE…)

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J Sessions Friday 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.

Duane Roen – dean, provost, department chair, parent, WPA, high school teacher, community member, disciplinary association officer Jeff Klausman – community college WPA, department chair, union leader Malea Powell – department chair, graduate director, journal/book series editor, community member Becca Hayes – graduate student, parent, foundation/nonprofit employee, community member/activist/advocate

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K Sessions Friday 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Michael Pemberton – writing center director, WAC director, parent, faculty member from another department politician (pro or anti public education) donor Ryan Skinnell – parent, WPA, community member

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L Sessions Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.

Michael Pemberton – writing center director, WAC director, parent, faculty member from another department politician (pro or anti public education) donor John Schilb – faculty colleague, faculty member from another discipline, dean, high school teacher/principal, parent of incoming student, community member, private donor Chuck Schuster – dean, legislator, faculty colleague, colleague from another department, irate parent, student Elyse Eidman-Aadahl – foundation officer, education policy maker, government official Joyce Kinkead – journalist, dean, provost, PR/media representative from campus

Assistance Fund for Contingent Faculty

Supports awards in the amount of $500 each for contingent faculty at two-year colleges and four-year colleges and universities to travel to the CCCC Annual Convention. Applicants must reside more than 300 miles from the convention site. The number of available awards each year will be dependent on the donations raised each year from the CCCC membership. Please click here for application information.

Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship

To remember and honor the Chairs of CCCC who have passed away, the CCCC Executive Committee has created scholarships of $750 each to help cover the costs of four graduate students who are presenting at the annual conference.  Full-time graduate students whose presentations were selected through the regular peer review process are eligible to apply.  Please click here for submission information.

Disability in College Composition Travel Awards

Six travel awards of $750 each (3 for graduate students and 3 for faculty and staff) designed to support scholarship dedicated to improving knowledge about the intersections of disability with composition and rhetoric, the value of disability as a source of diversity, inclusive practices and the promotion of access, and the value of disability as a critical lens. The awards will go to the eligible scholars whose CCCC Annual Convention accepted program proposals are determined to have the greatest potential to further the goals laid out in the CCCC Policy on Disability. Please click here for submission information.

Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award

Supports up to three travel awards in the amount of $750 each for graduate students or first-time presenters at the CCCC Convention whose whose work participates in the making of meaning out of sexual and gender minority experiences. Please click here for submission information.

The Luiz Antonio Marcuschi Travel Awards

Two $1,000 travel reimbursement awards are available to scholars living and working/studying in Mexico, Central, or South America who have papers accepted for presentation at the CCCC Annual Convention. Please click here for submission information.

Scholars for the Dream Travel Award

CCCC sponsors the Scholars for the Dream Award to encourage scholarship by historically underrepresented groups. These groups include Black, Latinx, Asian, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander scholars—persons whose presence and whose contributions are central to the full realization of our professional goals. CCCC offers to emerging scholars up to twenty travel awards of $1,000 each in two categories, sponsors a breakfast for all award winners, and gives a one-year membership in NCTE and CCCC.  Please click here for submission information.

Professional Equity Project (PEP)

CCCC invites you to participate in the Professional Equity Project (PEP). CCCC will offer a grant valued at $330 to teachers of writing with part-time or adjunct status at two-year colleges, four-year colleges, and universities to attend the CCCC annual convention. The $330 grant includes a check for $150 to help cover expenses, a paid registration for the conference, and a complimentary membership in CCCC.  Please click here for nomination information.

Tribal College Faculty Fellowship

The Tribal College Faculty Fellowship offers financial aid to selected faculty members currently working at tribally controlled colleges to attend the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). We are offering two Tribal College Faculty Fellowships in the amount of $1,250 each.  Please click here for submission information.

1. How is the convention site chosen?
About 5 years prior to a convention, NCTE/CCCC convention staff begin to look for convention locations using the criteria outlined below. From those possibilities, a list of sites is presented to the membership, who provide feedback on the locations. A final list of 2-3 sites is then presented to the executive committee for discussion no later than three years prior to the year in which the convention is to be held.

The list of possible sites is determined by a number of logistical considerations (e.g., size) and principles passed by past Executive Committees. For instance, the convention site must:

• Be aligned with CCCC’s mission and vision
• Not have any existing or pending legislation that is unjust or perpetuates inequality against one or more groups of people
• Accommodate at least 3,500 presenters in concurrent presentations (approximately 45 presentation rooms)
• Be accessible for participants with disabilities
• Provide adequate A/V and wireless bandwidth within the budget allocated for technology by the CCCC Executive Committee
• Be located within walking or public transportation distance from hotels

Meanwhile, the convention location must:

• Have a number of hotels (including the main conference hotel) with rooms at reasonable rates for the locale
• Be located near a major airport
• Be aligned with the principles and values articulated in the CCCC mission

Convention sites are chosen on a rotation: East, Midwest, West, Midwest, East, Midwest, etc., whenever possible.

To select possible convention locations, the NCTE convention staff (who also coordinate the CCCC convention siting process) visit a number of possible locations. They put together a proposal outlining the possibilities, pros, and cons of each location. A list of 2-4 possible sites is then put to the CCCC membership for feedback. The sites are then voted on by the CCCC Executive Committee for a final decision. At the time of the decision, the convention staff present the EC with a more thorough dossier that includes the budgets and contracts for the site (including convention facilities and hotels), a summary of the political situation in the convention location, and member feedback.

Currently, the CCCC Convention is sited through 2025. That conference will be held in Baltimore, MD.

2. Where is it going next?

3. Where has it been?

4. Are there any cities or states where we can’t go, in protest to some laws?
Not precisely. In November, 2013, the CCCC Executive Committee passed the CCCC Convention and Hostile Legislation Guiding Principles. This forms a foundation for site selection.

5. Has the convention ever been moved or cancelled?
The convention was moved from the San Francisco Hilton to the Moscone Center in 2005 because the hotel workers in San Francisco went on strike. However, CCCC pledged to return to SF for the 2009 convention, thus avoiding millions of dollars in contract cancellation fees. The 2020 convention in Milwaukee was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This required many months of negotiation to minimize financial penalties to the organization. The 2021 and 2022 convention were moved to virtual events, again due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which also required many months of renegotiation and a re-booking of the convention sites for 2023 and 2024.

6. Why is it so complicated to move or cancel the convention?
Several reasons. The CCCC convention is largely a volunteer effort. It is coordinated by the officer elected as assistant chair approximately 16 months before the convention takes place (in other words, the officer elected in August will run the convention not the next spring, but the spring afterward). That officer begins work on the convention, drafting their convention call, about 30 days after they step into the position as assistant chair (in December following their election).

From that moment forward, and especially after the convention that occurs a few months later, they are working in earnest on planning their convention. This includes visiting the site, recruiting a volunteer local committee (consisting of colleagues in the area), and planning local events and activities. In June/July, the convention chair works with NCTE staff on proposal review. At that point, the chair begins fitting the convention into the space available for the convention – because each convention is fit only to the available space, not to a generic space. Once this process begins, the investment of time, connections, and money has begun; each of those is lost if and when a convention is moved or cancelled. NCTE also signs contracts for space (convention and hotel) once a convention is sited. The contracts for these locations have cancellation penalties. Depending on the contracts, these penalties can be extremely expensive (hundreds of thousands to over one million dollars).

Any funds associated with cancellation come from the CCCC contingency fund, money set aside for transformational CCCC efforts and initiatives. A drop in CCCC’s budget could mean the loss or elimination of these efforts. It also inhibits CCCC’s and NCTE’s abilities to negotiate future contracts, since these contracts require that organizations have funds available in case of emergency cancellation.

8. While I’m at it, where do I learn about CCCC governance, committees, policies, etc.?

9. If I want to be more involved in the organization, what can I do?
Join a Special Interest Group or Standing Group (see the program for meeting times) and/or express your interest in serving on a CCCC committee (including award selection committees) by emailing the CCCC Liaison at cccc@ncte.org.

10. How are CCCC EC Members and Officers elected?
A nominating committee solicits nominations and presents a slate for voting.

11. How does CCCC pay for its meeting rooms?
Two models. In large hotels (and some convention center cities), CCCC gets free or substantially subsidized meeting rooms if members fill a certain number of sleeping rooms. (CCCC contracts for a certain number of rooms. If bookings fall short, the organization has to pay the difference. If it books too few, then members can be left to fend for themselves.) In other sites, we pay separately for meeting rooms in the hotel or in a convention center. This costs tens and tens of thousands of dollars.

12. What’s the registration fee, and how does that compare to other national association convention fees?
$240 for CCCC members; substantially less for grad students and adjuncts/retirees/veterans. Generally cheaper. This compares very favorably to other national association conferences, whose registration costs are generally upward of $300.00. The CCCC Executive Committee has consistently voted over the years to keep registration costs as low as possible.

13. How generously does CCCC support adjuncts, graduate students, etc.?
CCCC has a number of programs supporting adjuncts, graduate students, and undergraduates.

The CCCC Assistance Fund for Contingent Faculty provides funding ($500 grants) to the CCCC Annual Convention to contingent faculty at two-year colleges and four-year colleges and universities. Funds are raised from the CCCC membership and matched by CCCC. The number of awards is dependent on the amount of donations received.

The Professional Equity Project subsidizes adjuncts, providing registration, membership in CCCC, and a check for $150.

Scholars for the Dream gives 20 awards (of $1,000 each) for scholars of color to attend the convention.

Tribal College awards gives 2 awards (of $1,500 each) to attend the convention. In recent years, 4 graduate students each year have received $750 to attend the convention.

Most recently, 6 individuals receive $750 scholarships for their work on disability issues; 3 individuals whose work participates in the making of meaning out of sexual and gender minority experiences receive $750 scholarships; and 2 scholars from Mexico, Central, or South America receive $1,000 scholarships. This amounts to approximately $60,000 of support each year.

14. Do CCCC’s leaders wish we could do more to support these groups?
Certainly! That said, the Executive Committee (which serves as the financial manager for the organization) must balance between the needs and interests of all of its members, trying to use its resources (people, financial) as effectively as it possibly can. This means that the Executive Committee needs to be very strategic in its decisions at all times.

15. How do we pay for the support we do provide?
Membership dues, convention registrations, member contributions, sponsorships, and advertising and exhibiting income.

16. After all the convention bills are paid, what do the members get from a surplus—if any?
As a nonprofit, membership organization, CCCC puts any surpluses towards programming and membership services. For example, in the past decade, CCCC has funded over $600,000 in research grants.

17. Who sets the program?
The CCCC program chair (assistant chair of CCCC) writes the call for proposals and sets the strategic direction for the convention. The assistant chair also recruits Stage 1 and Stage 2 reviewers. This group blind reviews all submissions for CCCC.

Stage 1 review takes place online (usually between May and June), and has historically included individual proposal submissions. Stage 1 review must be completed before stage 2 review can begin.

Stage 2 review typically takes place online has historically included all panel submissions and workshops.

18. What’s the acceptance rate?
Historically, 33-38%.

19. How does NCTE staff help?
As a conference of NCTE, CCCC has no staff of its own. Instead, CCCC contracts with NCTE staff to assist with the management of the conference. In this instance, CCCC contracts with NCTE’s convention department, which helps not only CCCC and the NCTE annual conventions but also meetings of several other constituent groups. CCCC benefits from the expertise of those staff. The NCTE staff designs and handles printing, websites, hotel and exhibitor negotiations, registrations, etc. Membership dues and convention registrations pay a portion of the salaries of the many good NCTE folks.

Eileen Maley retired in July 2015 after working a total of 42 years for NCTE and serving over 15 years as the CCCC Convention Manager. Any CCCC Chair will tell you that Eileen helped to make every conference what it was, working tirelessly and with excellent humor behind the scenes. She was there to address every question, every idea, every concern—and with a smile and an excellent joke to top it all off.

Below are excerpts from messages sent by some recent CCCC Chairs who wanted to thank Eileen one last time.

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If I can be considered the desk general of a military campaign, Eileen Maley was my best field marshal. I’d move a piece on the big map of the battlefield, and then, often much more quickly than I would have expected, she’d write me to say it was done.  The bridge was captured, the train depot secured, the supply lines beefed up.

That sort of big-picture-coupled-with-detailed-implementation relationship is what made Tampa work.  It’s what allowed me to dream and plan big, knowing that Eileen had the logistical experience to make those ideas happen.  She was a fabulous partner to my academic team and will be missed.

Joyce Carter

  

Upon becoming program chair, I knew that I was in good hands when Eileen sent me a clear and full timeline of all my responsibilities and benchmarks.  Bless you for that, Eileen.  It was a life-saver.

My most vivid image of Eileen is of her walking the halls of the convention center, usually with Jacqui Biddle, the two of them, decked out in multiple badges, comfortable walking shoes—ready to head wherever they were needed:  a problem with tech,  a last minute mix-up in rooms, you name it they were on it.    Eileen was a pro’s pro:  unflappable, and able to find humor in just about anything.   And a glass of wine, she realized, would ease all the rest.   

Howard Tinberg

 

Planning a huge convention almost immediately after being elected into the Officer’s rotation is a deep-end-of-the-pool experience. A lot of helpful advice comes from past program chairs. But for me and so many other Assistant Chairs of CCCC, Eileen Maley was a godsend. It wasn’t just that she knew everything about what would happen, good and bad, before and during the convention—and how to plan for it—but that she made it all seem like it could be done without a loss of mind or spirit. Imagine sending off a panicked email about some forgotten detail or leaving a gaspy urgent phone message and then hearing back from Eileen in . . . five minutes. Every time. Eileen seemed to be everywhere. Nowhere was this more visible than at the convention itself, where at every turn of a hallway there she’d be, holding her pager and cell phone and a batch of papers, ready to ward off the next possible catastrophe. I kept wondering whether Eileen ever wound down and put the conference out of her mind and turned off her cell phone and pager and stopped worrying about a million small details. So I told her that the blues band we commissioned to play at the opening session was doing a gig at a nearby venue on Saturday of the convention and urged her to show up. I figured she’d be roaming the cavernous spaces of the convention center all evening. But I’d tried.

My family and I went to the blues club that night, and to my surprise and delight, there was Eileen with friends and family at a large table near the stage. We joined them, and for a couple of hours, we forgot about the convention, CCCC, and all the little glitches (that only Eileen was aware of anyway).

At 6:30 the next morning, she was starting all over again, cell phone and pager in hand. Thanks, Eileen, for all your years of service to our organization, and for your friendship and so-wise counsel. So many of us are in your debt.

Chris Anson

 

When CCCC wants a top-notch convention, who you gonna call?  Eileen.  If there’s something weird and it don’t look good, who you gonna call? Eileen.

Over the years, she has guided us meticulously through the rigors of Stage 2 reviews, and searched for affordable, accessible properties, always keeping in mind budget-conscious attendees. With the 2009 San Francisco convention, I witnessed how, through her trusted working relationships, she could solve sticky problems and even negotiate complimentary facilities.  During conferences, she was the first one to check operations, greet faculty, remind presenters where they were supposed to be, and the last to leave special events. Now, we’ll miss her combing the hallways in tennis shoes with clip board. We’ll miss her knowledge of everything, and her patience with our many questions.  Thanks Eileen for always going the extra mile!

Marilyn Valentino

 

Until you have been through it, you can’t know how complex organizing the C’s conference is. Eileen has been there, done that.  I really mean done that.  More times than she probably cares to remember. But she is really good at it–identifying venues, negotiating great deals, getting the financials right, organizing logistic and academic processes, and herding all the voluntary labor to keep processes on schedule.  Then she fields all the questions and confusions from the membership so that all arrive happy and ready to engage.

Although I have organized more than my share of conferences, I never could have gotten through this one without her, and she made it easy and a pleasure for all of us chairs.  Efficient and effective, she still has excess energy for jokes and multiple identities. Did I mention, Eileen is a hoot.

Charles Bazerman

 

How Do You Solve a Problem like Eileen?
(with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)

The question’s not “How do you solve a problem like Eileen.” Rather, it’s “How do you solve a problem like Eileen’s leaving us?
Now, that’s the much tougher question. You see, Eileen is NCTE’s long-time problem solver. She is, as Rodgers and Hammerstein put it so simply, “a darling! a demon! a lamb!” And everyone’s favorite, to be sure.
And it’s only in Urbana and only Eileen who can solve our problems. We call Eileen to find out why our NCTE password doesn’t work. We email Eileen to see if she can find a way to change the day or time or meeting space of our CCCC presentation. We ask her how we might order coffee service for our workshop. And we go to Eileen, too, to see if she can—somehow—find our university a party room at the last minute. If anyone can make things happen, it’s Eileen.
Only in Urbana.
Only Eileen.
And when you’re CCCC Program Chair, it’s Eileen who soothes your worries and complaints, assuring you that all the characters in the CCCC-convention drama play their own predictable roles.
The wondrous Eileen—talented, generous, sharp as a tack, fun as a circus—is much more than her Coach bags, zinfandel, and wicked humor. She is, as those lyricists would say, the unpinnable cloud, the untouchable moonbeam.
In other words, our Eileen is magic at its best.
Oh, how we’ll miss her!

Cheryl Glenn

 

Eileen Maley
A warm woman who empathizes when things go wrong.
A convention manager who helps plan conferences, suggests room assignments, gets information into the program, finds chairs for chairless sessions, schedules workshops, finds LCDs, relocates misplaced sessions, contracts with audio-visual folks so presentations, large with sound and visuals, go off without a hitch, finds missing items . . . with a smile.
A person with cell in hand and some kind of walky-talky in (other) hand walking–no, almost running–to a crisis to make it stop.
A throughline from Milwaukee and Nashville to Chicago and two-times New York City and New Orleans and St. Louis and Indianapolis and two-times San Francisco and Louisville and San Antonio and Tampa.
Tampa, 2015, lovely sunny cheerful palm trees straw hats perfect Tampa.
Our last CCCC with Eileen.
Our Eileen.
You are missed.

Kathleen Blake Yancey

  

  

As you may recall from the original convention CFP, my goal for the Portland convention is to provide space within the program to engage as a “conference,” a meeting of minds—to come together to discuss and work on shared interests in an informal, democratic way.

To this end, the chair’s portion of the convention program will largely be dedicated to two new types of highly interactive sessions:

1. “cultivate” sessions—workshop-style sessions, which provide space for members to “cultivate capacity” in various ways
2. “think-tank” sessions—facilitated discussions around organizational, professional, or disciplinary issues or concerns, intended to generate concrete recommendations for how to “create change.”

In both cases, these sessions will draw upon member interests and expertise and will be designed to be collaborative, working exchanges rather than “presentations” with featured speakers.

While some “cultivate” sessions have already been solicited from members or groups or have been selected out of proposals submitted in the blind review process, I am also calling on the general membership to help me shape the program in order to create featured sessions that are member-driven and member-supportive.

A few possible topic areas include:

• cultivating new voices/new lines of inquiry in research and scholarship
• preparing future and early-career professionals (including majors/graduate programs)
• improving literacy teaching and learning
• sustaining ourselves as professionals throughout career
• engaging and retaining members in the organization
• cultivating future CCCC leaders
  developing our public voice (teacher/scholar/advocate)
• cultivating connections (cross-generational, across interest groups, between institution types, interdisciplinary, etc.)
• advocating for social justice and equity inside and outside the organization

I invite you to email me (cccc2017programchair@gmail.com) by September 15, 2016, with your session ideas related to the topics above or with other themes or issues you would like me to consider for “cultivate” or “think-tank” sessions.

I welcome your recommendations for potential facilitators and/or plans for engaging members around these or other themes. (Please include “cultivate session” or “think-tank” in the subject line of your email.) There is no need to send full “proposals,” as your suggestions will not go through a formal review process. I will read your ideas and follow up with those I may want to feature in the limited space I have available on the program.

Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt
CCCC 2017 Program Chair

 

2016 CCCC Annual Convention

April 6-9, 2016, Houston, Texas
Writing Strategies for Action

     

For over five decades, writing researchers and teachers have explored the many things that writing is, the many things that writing does, and the many roles that it plays for individuals and groups. From these efforts, some broad points of consensus have emerged from our research and practices. For example: writing is an activity that can be used for a range of purposes—to help writers develop their identities, facilitate thinking, express ideas, demonstrate knowledge and understanding. Writing is also a subject of study that fosters people’s abilities to identify expectations within and across boundaries and make conscious decisions based on those expectations, developing the kind of flexibility that leads to the production of “good” or “successful’ communicative products.

From this research- and practice-based knowledge, the field has contributed to ways of understanding and acting upon ideas about writing that can be seen in curriculum, majors, minors, graduate programs, collaborations with colleagues in other disciplines and with communities. At the same time, though, debates about what writing is, does, and can do sometimes don’t reflect this knowledge. A few recent examples illustrate the point: Basic writing courses and programs are being marginalized or eliminated. State legislatures are establishing writing standards. Policy actors are contending that if secondary education reforms are successful, first year writing may become a “remedial” course. There are signs that the open access movement that brought diverse students and diverse voices into the academy, a movement that has contributed in important ways to our ethos and identity as a discipline, seems to be moving in reverse.

Each of these actions suggest potential consequences for different students and institutions. They point to the need for strategic action. This action requires that we continue to articulate—for ourselves and to and with others—what writing is and does. It also entails research- and experience-based discussion with one another, with colleagues at our institutions, with members of the communities in which we live about why understandings of writing matter, about where and how writing development occurs in postsecondary education, and about the implications of research-based understandings about writing as an activity and a subject of study.

Read more from the 2016 Call for Program Proposals (PDF).

Linda Adler-Kassner
University of California, Santa Barbara
2016 Program Chair 

 

  

 

Performance-Rhetoric, Performance-Composition

2019 CCCC Annual Convention
March 13–16, 2019
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Program Chair: Vershawn Ashanti Young

Call for Proposals

Rhetoric is one of the peas—composition is the other—in our disciplinary pod.

 Yet the institutions, publics, and students we serve often think rhetoric is simply “words, words, words.” And sometimes, we in the discipline wanna take our two peas and pick them outta they one pod, where rhetoric be in the mind, while composition be the written manifestation of that internal work. But, hold up! What if we think of rhetoric and composition as live, as embodied actions, as behaviors, yes, as
performances inside of one pod—our discipline—that lead to the creation of texts, to presentations, that invite mo performances and certainly mo co-performances?

Come join me in Pittsburgh for CCCC 2019.

 We gon show up, show out, practice, and theorize performance-rhetoric and performance-composition. Ahm talkin bout buttressing the public good and engaging communication pedagogies that open possibilities, many of them yet unknown—in reading, writing, speaking, listening, visuality, and digital communication. I prod you to raise new questions about performance-rhetoric, performance-composition, or you can ruminate on one of mine:

• What benefit could performance-rhetoric yield for understanding how the body relates to composition practices?
• What does performance-composition do for increased acquisition and demonstration of robust communication skills, not just for our students, but for us all?
• How can performance-rhetoric foster a translingual orientation toward language and literacy?
• What does performance-composition offer to the practice and understanding of the everyday linguistic practice of code-meshing?
• How can performance-rhetoric unearth old but gold theoretical practices that lead to exciting, inventive, and stimulating pedagogical dimensions?
• How can performance-composition help us to keep on keeping on, keep strutting our stuff, keep us woke bout our responsibilities to antiracism, to practicing class, gender, and social justice?

As you prepare yo proposal, also note that the structure of CCCC 2019 will be based on the traditional cluster system. Ahm also planning special programming, including workshops on Saturday of the convention for local K–12 teachers to explore hip-hop pedagogies and performative writing/communication.

I have asked a few of our colleagues, yeah, a few of my homies, to offer they thoughts on the terminological and theoretical functions of performance-rhetoric and performance-composition in the work that we [can] do. Because these peeps will also be Stage II reviewers, they will help determine the accepted proposals and help shape the conference program. So, I hope you will pay special attention to the knowledge they spittin. (Also see the vid of some of these scholars discussing the concepts Performance-Rhetoric and Performance-Composition.)

Vershawn Ashanti Young
2019 Program Chair

 

Elaine Richardson:

By emphasizing writing as performance art, I embrace a theory of embodied knowledge that challenges dominant institutions’ biases for standardization. “While intellectual rigor has long been measured in terms of standard linguistic acuity and print production that reinforce the dominant culture’s deep meanings, performance art is suspect because of its ephemeral, emotional,” (Joni Jones, “Sista Docta,” 1997: 53) critical, malleable, and imaginative nature.

Thinking about writing as performance brings together critical issues of language and identity, such as the meanings writers bring to words and how words work in the world. “Performance challenges Composition Studies to refocus its attention away from fixing the discipline to stretching it, opening the definition of ‘composing’ and requiring us to be open to periods of indecision and flux” (Meredith Love, “Composing Through the Performative Screen,” 2007).

 

Bump Halbritter:

The lens of performance spotlights the interpretive possibilities of both rhetoric and composition. Performance-rhetoric is composed to mean. Performance-composition, at some point, throws up its hands and says, “You take it from here.” As such, performance is a productive filter for considering most of my collaboratively authored works: musical compositions and recordings; edited, digital-video productions; scholarly -ogy texts (methodology, pedagogy); syllabi, writing prompts, and curricula. Each of these performances of art, inquiry, and pedagogy has emerged through acts of collaborative composition—partnerships that blur actors and audience, influence and invention, creation and interpretation, what (all) is said and what (all) is heard. Performance-rhetoric and performance-composition may have their say, but rarely the last word.

 

Frankie Condon:

Performance-rhetoric is speaking and writing in which the rhetor—a social justice warrior or accomplice, say—puts her money where her mouth is—not just saying what she thinks but doing it too in the words she chooses and the manner of her speech or writing. When we speak or write, we are making our relations: affiliating, disaffiliating, transforming who we think we are or could be with and for others. There’s no quicker way to demolish affiliations across lines of difference than by saying one thing and by one’s words doing another. But one powerful way of beginning to move from the selfish side of the self/other binary to articulating at the joint or point of interdependence between us is to deliberately, reflectively reach for performativity: for being and becoming just as we advocate for justice.

 

Derek Mueller:

Performance courageously courts unpredictability; so, it’s risk-taking. Performance envelopes activity with style; so, it’s attentionseeking. Performance recombines rhetorics’ means and sensoria and inheritances, chancing spectral composites. Shouldn’t we, then, insofar as carrying out this discipline’s work, invite, prime, and elicit performance more expansively?

 

Andrea Lunsford:

Performance-rhetoric/-composition rests on the premise, put forward and explained by Kenneth Burke, J. L. Austin, and many others, that language has the capacity to act, to do things and to make things happen in the world. Students can see such performances at work from the revolutionary American Declaration of Independence to a current Kickstarter site whose statements/images are so compelling that they elicit spontaneous donations. A second premise underlying performance rhetoric/composition is its epistemic ability: performance-rhetoric/composition not only records thought or knowledge but rather has the capacity to produce and perform both.

 

Meredith Love:

It’s always been clear to me, this connection between rhetoric and performance. Performance-rhetoric elucidates the movement of language and the ways that words do. It brings to consciousness the ways in which languages and bodies co-mingle and our desire for words to prompt action. Indeed, performance-rhetoric is both playful and generative, but at all times dangerous and risky. In the end, it is a process insistent on connection, reminding us that we are agile animators of words who cannot stand still but must stretch out for the hands of others.

Steven Lessner:

Performance-rhetoric offers crucial spaces in our pedagogies and research for listening to, interacting with, and learning from diverse voices, experiences, and literacy practices unfairly silenced in US society. In two-year college writing classrooms where I teach, students choose hip hop as a performance-rhetoric to vibe with, research, and connect to their writing. Students often highlight that hip hop, with its intellectual flow, revolutionary critiques, and intricate rhymes and rhythms, offers a needed place for marginalized voices to speak up and back to individuals and institutions that perpetuate racism and classism. Hip hop as a performance-rhetoric brings those individuals who are forgotten by society to the center of a conversation through art. Spitting fire on the mic since ’94, MC Nas echoes this sentiment when defining his role in hip hop: “I thought that I would represent for my neighborhood and tell their story, be their voice, in a way that nobody has done it.”

Jerry Won Lee:

In thinking about “performance,” I am drawn to the question of language, specifically in terms of what kinds of language and what kind of languages are imagined as “appropriate” for “academic” use. Maybe it’s time to shift the expectation of “performing appropriately with language” to the “performative through language,” in the sense of language as doing and reconstituting. This way, we can start imagining radical possibilities for what “appropriate” is in the first place.

Collin Craig:

When I write as an academic, I leverage both the cultural and performative possibilities of rhetoric. It allows me to center alternative voices and stories that are relegated to the margins and to reclaim them as sites for knowledge making and theory building. As a researcher, it allows me to explore the performative potential of literacy by Black and Latino students that I mentor at The Black Male Initiative. Performance-composition as a liberatory practice permits me to assert my voice as a counterstory to the memory of dramatic struts and cadences sung in rhythm by a military father who performatively spoke a language of shining Black masculinity with his body. Performance-composition as a cultural rhetorical practice affords me the opportunity to interrogate prevailing epistemologies, canons, and linear rhetorical traditions that are used to sanction curriculums and shape education policies and political agendas.

Andre Jones:

When a brother hears performance-rhetoric immediately a brother thinks of how “stiff” White people sometimes be (the emphasis on mimicking it) and thinks about the “cool pose” associated with young Black men (the emphasis on avoiding it). Both reflect cool, calm, and collectedness when faced with adversity, but they ain’t tantamount: the cool pose marks terrorism, indifference, anti-intellectualism. In pop culture, the cool pose is unsophistication rather than a serious, very real way of existing for Black people; one that if harnessed, respected, demonstrated more, could usher in a new era of re/presenting. Think of Obama’s dusting dirt off his shoulder—POTUS performing collectedness a la Jay-Z..

David F. Green Jr.:

Performance is never merely a set of rehearsed acts, but a way of achieving competence through repetition and embodied action. I find this to be true with regards to the study of writing and rhetoric specifically; thus, whether we openly acknowledge this or not, written or oratorical performances are always attempts to refashion or remix sedimented assumptions about identity and language competence provided by the communities we are born into or step into. Moreover, the decisions we make to demonstrate our respective competencies to those same communities are in many ways shaped by what we come to believe about rhetoric either explicitly or intuitively. From a pedagogical perspective this understanding of rhetoric and performance becomes a valuable way of acknowledging that texts, experiences, and writing are always given meaning according to time, place, and context, and that this requires an attentiveness to the way developing writers come to view and produce meaning through shared performances, by those who value the progressive possibilities of rhetoric and writing instruction.

 

Douglas S. Kern:

Performance rhetoric is an encounter of action or inaction—the way one might perform their silence, arms crossed, to elicit discomfort or embody resistance. It’s pursuit vs. obstacle. We employ performance rhetoric to achieve whatever ends we seek. When you’re talking to your mother, don’t ya act a certain way? The waiter down the street, don’t he act a certain way when he’s bringing you your food? The performative act gives birth to or fosters the essential discourses which pop up all around us (both academic and beyond).

 

 

 

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At CCCC 2018 in Kansas City, an all-convention event, entitled “Literacy, Language, and Labor for Social Justice: Outward and Inward Reflection,” will be held on Thursday, March 15, from 1:45-3:00 pm. The session will have short presentations by local activists from Kansas City, MO, who can speak to our concerns and needs as a diverse body of literacy, rhetoric, and writing teachers and researchers. In addition to the panel, we will have opportunities to talk in small groups in response to a collection of statements from teacher-scholars in our field reflecting upon literacy, language, and labor for social justice.

It is anticipated that these table discussions will produce information for both the participants to take home with them that may inform their work there, and the CCCC organization to help it continue to re-imagine itself in more socially just and activist ways. We are looking for members attending the convention to serve as discussion facilitators during this event. Discussion facilitators will be responsible for the following tasks at tables during the event:

• Reading the collection of statements prior to the session (to be circulated a month before the convention) in preparation for the event.
• Engaging participants at your table in discussion of the questions raised by the statements and the panel discussion.
• Taking notes on the discussion, including documenting questions, ideas, and thoughts for further action. Facilitators will then contribute any notes taken to an online space to document the table’s discussions.
• Identifying questions, problems, points of tension, or forward actions that emerge from the discussion and be willing to share during the Q and A session.

If you are interested in serving in this role, please submit your name, email, and institution on this form by January 20, 2018. A list of table facilitators will be included in the program, with your institutional affiliation.