Author: ksuchor

Committee Members

Lisa Arnold, Chair
Chris Anson
Tiane Donahue
Bruce Horner
Jay Jordan
LuMing Mao
Vivette Milson-Whyte
Xiaoye You

Committee Charge

This committee is charged to:

1. Design a research project to gather information about writing programs in the U.S. that are attempting to address global communications and communication within globalized professions and communications. Since CCCC has numerous groups desiring to gather, analyze, and disseminate information about curricula and programs, this committee’s research design (rationale, methodology, time and budget recommendations from CCCC, analytical framework) will be combined with other groups’ data-collection requests.
2. Design a research project to gather information about the growth of postsecondary writing education in different regions of the world.
3. Identify organizations and networks in other regions that might form relations or partnerships with CCCC so as to establish international professional cooperation and communication. For each entry in this list, articulate one or two specific mechanisms to increase communication and propose one or two possible activities or agreements that might be possible between the entity and the CCCC.

November 2017 Update

The committee currently coordinates its efforts with the Transnational Composition and the International Research Consortium Standing Groups. It sponsors the International Writing Studies page on CompPile and is currently exploring how this work, as well as other sites related to globalization and international writing research, programs, initiatives and activities, might be hosted on an online, publicly accessible platform. The committee continues to explore options through which CCCC can encourage international participation and collaboration. The committee has presented a policy statement for consideration by the CCCC Executive Committee.

Jessica Reyman, PhD Candidate, University of Minnesota
Assistant Chair, CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus

CASE OVERVIEW

BMG Music v. Gonzalez is an important case in a series of high-profile peer-to-peer file sharing cases in the past several years (including MGM Studios v. Grokster, discussed above) because it is the first in which the Court addresses a lawsuit against an actual individual user of peer-to-peer file sharing technology rather than a technology company. This case involved a copyright infringement claim against a 29-year-old woman, Cecilia Gonzalez, who downloaded over 1,370 copyrighted songs within the first few weeks of getting a broadband Internet connection in her home. Gonzalez argued that her use of the songs was a “fair use” (under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act). She said she was just sampling music to determine which songs she would like to purchase. While Gonzalez was able to show that she purchased discs containing some songs she downloaded, she has never owned copies of at lest 30 of the songs. BMG music sought damages based on those 30 songs.

The 7th Circuit Court, ruling in BMG’s favor, did not agree that Gonzalez’s downloading of songs with the purpose of “sampling” qualified as a fair use. After conducting a four factor fair use analysis (based on the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, the amount and substantiality of the work, and the market effect of the use), the Court concluded that Gonzalez’s use of the songs was not a fair use. It was argued that her fair use defense failed on two counts: first, the purpose of her use was not nonprofit and, second, she downloaded and kept entire songs, “for which, as with poetry, copying of more than a couplet or two is deemed excessive.” In addition, the Court made a distinction between the case and the 1984 Sony-Betamax case, arguing that “[t]he premise of Betamax is that the broadcast was licensed for one transmission and thus one viewing. Betamax held that shifting the time of this single viewing is fair use. The files that Gonzalez obtained, by contrast, were posted in violation of copyright law; there was no license covering a single transmission or hearing – and, to repeat.” In other words, according to this narrow reading of Sony, because Gonzalez did not erase the songs from her computer after listening to them once the downloaded songs could be viewed as a substitute for purchasing the songs.

Gonzalez further argued that her downloading activity might be perceived as “good advertising” that would lead to increased music sales. The Court rejected this argument as well, noting that there are existing markets for introducing potential consumers to music, including radio and sampling offered by licensed Internet sellers such as the iTunes Music store. These sellers pay royalty fees for the samples, and only use them with the copyright holders’ permission. In addition, the Court argued, these “previews share the feature of evanescence; if a listener decides not to buy (or stops paying the rental fee), no copy remains behind.”

Based on the reasoning above, the Court ordered Gonzalez to pay $22,500 in damages to BMG Music. Gonzalez reported to the Court that “she has learned her lesson, has dropped her broadband access to the Internet, and is unlikely to download copyrighted material again.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION TEACHING AND RESEARCH

One significant implication arising from BMG Music v. Gonzalez is its potential to place further limitations on what constitutes fair use. Fair use is an essential exemption to the exclusive rights of copyright holders for writing educators and researchers. It limits content owners’ rights in ways that allow uses related to instructional, scholarly, and artistic work, such as making classroom copies, quoting from material, building on existing studies and works, making parodies, and creating works of commentary and criticism. This decision has the potential to eliminate the use of a fair use defense for peer-to-peer file sharing activity altogether. While the ruling establishes that Gonzalez’s use was not a fair use, it isn’t clear what downloading activities would qualify as a fair use, if any. What if you already owned a legitimate copy of the work you downloaded? What if you erased the material from your computer after use? The decision leaves a window of opportunity open for these potential uses, but the Recording Industry Association of America is already doing what it can to close that window (the RIAA now arguing that copying files from a purchased CD is not protected under fair use).

In addition, the ruling supports a larger trend on campuses toward what might be called a “permissions culture.” The ruling considers potential markets for digital works as part of the fair use analysis and suggests that if a use competes with such markets then it is not a fair use. As digital technology makes possible wide distribution of copyrighted works, it also makes possible new markets for restricting access through licensing mechanisms. With the proliferation of new markets for digital works, University officials have become increasingly wary of potential lawsuits for the use of digital versions of copyrighted works in teaching and research. It is now a widely accepted belief that the potential risks of copyright infringement lawsuits can (and should) be mitigated by paying royalties and engaging in the permissions market. In fact, paying royalties for using portions of copyrighted works in online coursepacks, copies posted on class WebCT and other course management sites, and in Internet publications has become the default model on many campuses, without consideration of whether individual uses may qualify as fair uses. We can see evidence of this trend in the recent release of a service from the course management software, Blackboard, that automates the permission process for any copyrighted works shared on course websites. Unfortunately, seeking permissions for educational or nonprofit uses often results in paying hefty royalties or, at times, denial to use the work at all.

Finally, the decision in BMG Music v. Gonzalez supports a common misunderstanding in the larger, ongoing debate surrounding copyright law that copyright infringement constitutes theft. In the oral argument, Justice Easterbrook asked how this case differs from shoplifting a book from Barnes & Noble, implying that it doesn’t. And in the judicial opinion, he reiterates that “music downloaded for free from the Internet is a close substitute for purchased music.” This analogy is misleading because it conflates stealing physical property with copying and using copyrighted works. The notion of “theft of intellectual property” fails to acknowledge the rights that users do possess under copyright law, and obscures the benefits that come with copying and distributing copyrighted materials. It suggests that intellectual property holds value only in the creation of exclusivity and the rewards granted to authors. Instead, the rhetoric of the debate needs to openly acknowledge the way in which this pervasive analogy obscures the goal of copyright law to provide incentive for future works and to constantly replenish a very valuable public domain.

LOOKING AHEAD

The decision in BMG Music v. Gonzalez sends a clear message to individual file sharers that they will not likely be able to successfully challenge the infringement claims filed by content owners, at least not with a fair use defense. As a result, individual users weighing potential risks may choose to discontinue use of peer-to-peer file sharing networks, despite their potential noninfringing uses, or, like Gonzalez, drop their broadband access to the Internet altogether. As scholars and educators, we know that there are instances in which downloading digital copies of copyrighted works can be a fair use. And we likely cringe when hearing that cases like this encourage people to disconnect their Internet connections. Unfortunately, this ruling supports the perception, already held by many individuals in our classrooms and on our campuses, that nothing can be downloaded for free for any purpose and that fair use is a meaningless defense, particularly in digital contexts.

The recording and movie industries are doing what they can to communicate the powerful, though deceptive, message that all peer-to-peer file sharing is stealing. Two decisions this year alone, MGM Studios v. Grokster and BMG Music v. Gonzalez, only provide fodder for the inflated rhetoric of the content industry. As scholars of rhetoric, writing, and language, I believe that we can play key roles in the ongoing public debate surrounding these issues. We need to better articulate our defenses of peer-to-peer file sharing for legitimate purposes, and of our fair use rights more generally. We can begin in our classrooms, discussing with students the ways in which peer-to-peer file sharing technologies may prove useful to our research and writing activities. In our discussions with campus copyright officials, we can assert fair use defenses when they apply to our regular work activities. And among higher-level university administrators, we can raise the visibility of the damages caused by the “permissions culture” that has driven recent copyright policy-development and best practices. Finally, it is our responsibility to move these discussions into the high-profile public debate about peer-to-peer file sharing, articulating more clearly, perhaps in the model of this paper, what is at stake in recent intellectual property developments. We should work on all of these fronts to protect the intellectual property rights that are so important to teaching and scholarly activity in rhetoric and composition studies.

Download BMG Music v. Gonzalez Opinion
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/RG0KJJF5.pdf
No. 05-1314 (7th Cir. Dec. 9, 2005)

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research II

(Here we operate on contracts. No tenure system. It would still take Sherry 6 years to get promoted which she’d get at the start of her 4th, 2 year contract  if she had 3 or 4 publications or a book— traditionally defined.)

Characterization of Department

M.A. granted in English Studies (with either an Applied Linguistics or Literature focus)
B.A. granted in English (with about a 50/50 division between language and literature)
M.A. granted in Communication
B.A. granted in Communication

How would Sherry Richer’s case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

I believe that our Science Faculty accepts published software as a publication as well; therefore, we could do so in the Humanities I think.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Richer? Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Here is what I think the Chair should say:  

“Sherry I am very impressed with your work in the Freshman Writing Program. You are really a breath of fresh air in the wonderful ways in which you teach and support the graduate TAs. I’m also very impressed with your innovative software scholarship and my old Harvard classmate who’s at Penn tells me that your listserv is first rate. In short Sherry we value you here.

I am glad to see that you have a chapter in a book as that’ll certainly count as a good publication for tenure,but that and one other article in an electronic journal aren’t enough. You know, you’ll need about 7 refereed articles for tenure,or you could write a book in the next 3 to 4 years and be promoted that way. As Head Sherry, I’d like to see you do a book. That’d make the task of getting you promoted much easier. The way you’re going now, I’d say you’ll fall short on the research articles, so why not a theoretical book on some aspect of the history Rhetoric? That’s what the Department would like to see and that’s what would make the tenure process go smoothly for you”

What are the Personnel Committee’s responsibilities toward Richer?  Which  did they fulfill?  Fail?

In the scenario you say a few times that Sherry “feels” or has a “nagging feeling”. This makes me “feel” that nobody has clearly told Sherry what she needed to do for tenure. It should be the responsibility of the Chair or his/her designated Personnel Committee member to orient folks like Sherry when they arrive in the department so they are 100% aware of what is required of them.

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The Dean in a Research II University must make it clear to the departments that promotion criteria must be shared with new faculty as soon as they take up their duties. In most large schools  Deans wouldn’t be involved early on in a case like Sherry’s other than an occasional or yearly letter restating the department’s evaluation of the candidate.

What are Richer’s responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

I guess that Sherry should have asked (if she wasn’t told) for specific promotion criteria…Not what the criteria should be, but actually what they are.  The candidate does have some responsibility for her future. 

What went wrong?  What went right?

Sherry had too many feelings about the requirements for promotion and seemingly not enough facts. The department was very traditional and couldn’t/wouldn’t allow for non-traditional types of scholarship.Also the department displays a lack of understanding with the types of activities a writing program coordinator or a TA supervisor gets involved in…….Right / not too much. Sherry should have gone to a more flexible institution that was aware of training in Writing Studies today.

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research I University, State University

Characterization of Department

Ph.D. granted in in English (Literature/Rhetoric & Composition)
M.A., granted in in English (Literature/Rhetoric & Composition)
M.F.A. in Creative Writing
B.A. granted in English (literature, creative writing, English education)

How would Sherry Richer’s case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

This case would not go forward.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Richer? Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

At my institution the Department Head would undoubtedly say that Richer was doing commendable teaching and professional service with her list-serv, her involvement with professional organizations, and her TA training work on campus, but that her ethnographic research needed to lead to significant book-length publication that would be viewed by her peers in the writing community as cutting-edge work that significantly impacted the field.

He would remind her that three years of her probationary period had passed and that she had in effect only two and one-quarter years left to complete her book manuscript and get it accepted by a major press.  He would tell her that the department strongly supported her because of her record of service and teaching and the potential of her research, but that, unfortunately, the university was determined to enforce stringent tenure standards and that only a well-reviewed book plus evidence of a developing second project of great promise would be sufficient to make her case.

He would urge her to apply for relief from teaching duties from the university’s released time program, to cut back her service commitments, and to concentrate on finishing her manuscript.  If she did not, he would say, she would need to begin looking for a position at a university with lower publication standards where solid teaching and service to the profession, along with a modest publication record, were sufficient for tenure.

What are the Personnel  Committee’s responsibilities toward Richer?  Which  did they fulfill?  Fail?

N/A

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

N/A

What are Richer’s responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Richer may have done many things correctly, but if she could not also demonstrate scholarly excellence through major publications, she was not competitive enough to meet the university’s standards.

What went wrong?  What went right?

I do not agree with this one-size-fits-all approach to tenure decision-making, but if it in fact the norm here, and it makes it especially hard for the university to find people who can provide essential service in untraditional, but needed areas.

Committee Members

Dev Bose, Co-Chair
Ruth Osorio, Co-Chair
Margaret Fink (2022-2024)
Allison Hitt (2022-2023 and 2024–2026)
Millie Hizer (2022-2025)
Jo Hsu (2022-2023 and 2024–2026)
Ada Hubrig (2022-2024)
Vyshali Manivannan (2022-2025)
Nicole Snell (2024–2026)
Amy Vidali (2022-2025)
Anne-Marie Womack (2022-2024)

Responsibilities and Duties

1. To maintain, lead revisions of, and advocate for the principles outlined in the CCCC position statement Disability Studies in Composition: Position Statement on Policy and Best Practices
2. To select one member to serve on the EC according to procedures articulated in the Committee’s bylaws
3. To educate CCCC leadership and membership on disability and access before and during the Annual Convention, including
   • Drafting and circulating the Convention Access Guide
   • Hosting and staffing the access table at the Convention
   • Producing guidelines for members and presenters about accessible and inclusive conference presentations
   • Maintaining a website on accessible conference planning and attending
4. To support the production of an Access Guide for each Convention, including
   • Identifying a team to write the Access Guide
   • Determining compensation provided by CCCC for this team
   • Contributing a CDICC member to serve on the Local Arrangements Committee
   • Helping to circulate the Access Guide
5. To submit a budget annually to the EC for approval to fund the CDICC’s accessibility work
6. To present an annual report on accessibility and disability issues within the organization

Membership

1. Nine members elected by CCCC membership
2. Affiliate members, as needed

Terms of Office

1. 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.
2. All chairs and members will serve for a three-year term; terms will be staggered so that no more than three seats will be filled in any election cycle.
3. A chair or co-chairs will be selected by the CDICC membership by the process spelled out in the bylaws.

Meetings

1. The CDICC will hold open meetings at the CCCC Convention and provide virtual access.
2. In addition, the CDICC will meet in conjunction with annual program planning, Convention meetings, and elections. Other meetings may be called at the request of the chair or co-chairs.
3. ASL interpreters and CART services will be funded by CCCC and available at the meetings.

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research I

Characterization of Department

Ph.D. granted in English
Ph.D. granted in Composition/Rhetoric
M.A. granted in English
M.A. granted in Composition/Rhetoric
B.A. granted in English

How would Sherry Richer case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

How would Richer’s case turn out?  The chair could recommend that the dean give Richer a one-year terminal contract at this point.  Or she could recommend another three-year contract, noting in the clearest possible terms what Richer will have to do before her sixth-year tenure review.  The following scenario assumes that Richer’s chair is willing to ask the college that Richer be renewed for an additional three years.

The conversation: The chair reviews Richer’s achievements in the three traditional areas of faculty effort: teaching, research, and service.  She notes Richer’s good progress as a teacher, pointing to evidence accumulated over three years that, after a rocky start, she is adjusting nicely to the demands of both undergraduate and graduate instruction.  The chair then iumps ahead to service, a category in which Richer plainly excels.  There is no question that Richer is making significant contributions to the intellectual life of the department, as well as to the campus at large.  Indeed, the chair worries aloud that Richer’s service contributions are so great that some colleagues may question whether she has enough time to sustain a serious program of research.  And that, in fact, is the question the chair next pursues.  She asks Richer how she plans to complete a book by the time she is up for tenure.  Richer explains her research interest—examining how TAs integrate technology into their teaching—and the chair agrees that this is a promising line of inquiry.  But she raises two questions, one about content, the other about timing.  The chair presses Richer for details about how she will frame her report, how she will make it of interest to the sort of first- or second-tier university presses acceptable to her departmental colleagues.  Richer is able to name a range of presses that she and the chair agree might publish her work.  Then the chair asks how Sherry is coming along with the writing, how soon she might be sending out query letters to press editors. Sherry offers an optimistic answer—she thinks the manuscript will be done within a year and a half—to which the chair responds by working through what she knows to be a reasonable schedule for getting a manuscript in press.  Six months or more for querying various presses, six to nine months for review of the complete manuscript by the press showing the greatest interest, several months for requested revisions, up to three months for approval by the editorial board, then nine months to a year in production.  Richer reluctantly agrees with her chair that it will be extremely difficult for her to have a book under contract and in press by September of her sixth year—just two years and four months away.  Even if she does, her tenure case could be problematic. College and campus tenure committees prefer to see a book in print, or at least page proofs.  There is no chance that Richer will find herself in this position, no matter how hard she works.  After Richer and her chair brainstorm ways for her to clear time to write, the chair adds a discouraging afterthought: Richers two publications are likely not to be esteemed by her colleagues, the one because it is online and because it was invited, the other because it appeared in an edited collection not published by a university or association press.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Richer?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Richer’s chair failed her by not working with her from the start to understand and meet the department’s tenure standard.  Annual reviews backed with creative plans for clearing time to write would have been an immense help.  Some might even argue that the chair failed Richer by not opting to issue her a terminal contract, given how unlikely it is that Richer will finish her book on time.

What are the Personnel Committee’s responsibilities toward Richer?  Which did they fulfill?  Fail?

Not applicable at the two Research I institutions with which I’ve been affiliated..

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The dean should insist that chairs in her college produce annual reviews of untenured faculty members—reviews that are substantial and (at least every other year) inspected by a department’s tenured faculty members before being forwarded to the dean. These reviews should include serious accounts of teaching, service, and research—and should be most candid in their assessment of an untenured colleague’s research program.

What are Richer’s responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Perhaps Richer should have sought out the advice of colleagues as she pursued interests in teaching, service, and research that did not advance her rapidly along a course toward completing a book manuscript.  Perhaps she should have asked about the process of finishing and placing such a manuscript.  Perhaps.  But, as an assistant professor, it’s hard to know what questions to ask, when to ask them, and of whom.  If Richer has an important responsibility at this point, it’s to figure out what sort of institution will reward the mix of teaching, service, and research she’s comfortable doing–and to seek employment there.

What went wrong?  What went right?

What went right?  As a result of challenges in the classroom, Richer grew as a teacher.  As a result of her work with TAs, she learned much—and shared much—about how to help others to integrate technology into the teaching of college writing.  These are considerable achievements, and should be recognized as such by Sherry’s colleagues.

What went wrong?  Sherry apparently didn’t receive the early guidance she should have, guidance that would have helped her seek out and stay on the path toward publication of the sort demanded by her department.  This guidance might have opened up a conversation—again, early—that could have led Sherry’s chair and colleagues to be accepting of a book project like that she seems poised, at the end of year three, to launch.  Sadly, the nature and quality of Sherry’s book project really aren’t at issue, given the near impossibility of completing the task in time for her sixth-year tenure review.

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research I University, State University

Characterization of Department

Ph.D.’s in English and in Composition Studies (Composition degree is English in name and location.)

How would Sherry Richer’s case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

I’d say that the department chair has already failed this faculty member. And so has the chair of the personnel committee. I’ve been both, so I feel this strongly. Both Chair and PC-chair should have made it clear that doing TA-training software will not substitute for the book, particularly when she’s only teaching one class/semester! And (it’s not clear in the case as presented) that she may even be released from that?  So she has had plenty of time to do her book.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Richer? Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The chair would say that this person needed to get on with her publication.  Was there a book in the works? And if so, had she thought about a publisher? If not, what book might she think of pulling together? From the outline of the case as you present it to me, “This is a university that wants a book for tenure.” So those are the rules. The chair of the Department does not have the power to change the University’s rules.

The chair would remind the faculty-member of the calendar: assuming that it would take at least a year to shop her book around, and assuming that her TDY was three years out and that her tenure file would go forward at the beginning of her sixth year (October, at our institution) that she had less than two years in which to complete her book ms and send it out.

What are the Personnel Committee’s responsibilities toward Richer?  Which  did they fulfill?  Fail?

The Chair/PC Chair might go to the Dean and see if the Dean was willing and felt able to argue that X, Y, and Z were somehow to be considered a book-equivalent in this person’s case.

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

If the Department and Dean could line up on this issue [that X, Y, and Z were somehow to be considered a book-equivalent in this pcase], then the book becomes less of an issue. But everyone needs to know, in writing at this point, what the rules are. The Dean can’t guarantee the Provost’s reaction either—so this is all problematic and depends upon the Chair’s ability to talk frankly and openly with her Dean and her Dean’s ability to talk frankly with her Provost. One could make the argument that times are changing and what this English Department really needs is people adept at and interested in emerging technologies–that the book-requirement is at odds with the university’s need to move into new modes of education. But that argument should have been made during the hiring process.

What are Richer’s responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Richer is responsible herself for making sure that she understands the criteria for tenure & promotion to Associate Professor. Her chair has, I’m sure, explained them to her. If Richer thinks that her good works with TA’s will somehow ‘count’ as something else, does she have evidence that this will be the case? Or is she deluding herself? She needs to know what counts, and for what. She needs to know what amounts of X, Y, and Z she needs to qualify for tenure/promotion at her institution.

What went wrong?  What went right?

I don’t know what went wrong or right. If Richer does get tenure, then things went right. If not, not. It depends on the Chair & the Dean and their willingness/ability to negotiate a tenure contract for Richer that does not require the book. It also depends upon Richer’s ability to push projects along and out the door. It does not seem that she’s done a great deal in her first three years; if her second three years is more productive than her first, she might have a chance.

“Languaging, Laboring, and Transforming”

2018 CCCC Annual Convention
March 14–17, 2018
Kansas City, Missouri

Program Chair: Asao B. Inoue

Click here for a blog post from Program Chair Asao B. Inoue with additional guidelines for CCCC 2018 proposals.

 

Call for Proposals 

As teachers, researchers, and administrators, we often imagine our work with and about language as work that transforms people, ideas, classrooms, disciplines, communities, and even society. Many of us imagine our work with language as work that revolutionizes—work that changes ideas and people for the better—but how might our work be more than its product or outcome? How might our work be change, be revolutionizing, be labors that are the practices of transformation themselves? How might we use our annual conference as a space for languaging, for laboring with and about language, for practicing transformation and revolution with and through language?

Languaging—our laboring with and around language—is the center of what we do as teachers, researchers, and administrators of programs, departments, and centers of communication, learning, and research. We usually call it rhetoric, or discourse, or writing, but really, rhetoric is just another way to name our laboring with words, with students, with community members, with texts. And while we might see the fruits of our language-laboring in a semester or over a few years in communities, programs, or classrooms, in students or colleagues, in ourselves, I want us to consider ways that the practices of languaging are themselves transforming labor, and they may be the best outcome or product we might hope for in our research, teaching, or other work. In short, the fact that we language may be all we have for sure. For instance, what if the point of any writing class or article was mainly the languaging inherent in that work: writing the syllabus, reading and dialoguing with students over their languages, drafting and revising of an article or book, reading scholarship in the field, or listening to colleagues in meetings? What if the goal was the process, the labor, the languaging itself? How might this subtle change revolutionize us, our classrooms, our conference? We usually focus on something else that languaging gives us or produces for us, the article, the syllabus, the lesson or comment that is meant to help a student. What if we didn’t act this way? What if the point wasn’t the article to be published but engaging in articling, or syllabusing, or lessoning, or reading, or writing—in short, what if the point was the languaging? And what if that languaging could be labored at in compassionate ways that brought us together while engaging with our differences, be they racial, ethnic, linguistic, bodily, ideological, or something else. In a way, I’m arguing that seeing our diverse intellectual efforts as languaging is also to see our labors as intersectional. What if the key to a socially just tomorrow was really acting socially just today, changing the now structurally through attention to our languaging, being aware of our constellated histories as relatives and relations invested in collectively working to changing today structurally through languaging, through an acknowledgment that all labors and laboring matter and function in distinctive, rhetorical ways?

My twin brother and I had a twin-language. That’s what my mom called it. I have only one, vague memory of it. I am standing on white asphalt, a driveway, next to my mom and my brother. I think it is in Dallas, Oregon, so I must be three or four years old. I am saying something to my brother, my mom listening on, looking down and smiling but her eyes are confused. Her soft, warm hand rests on the back of my neck. She doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but I know she’s listening. I feel her warm, loving hand. My brother responds, and I feel the words like bubbles coming from my mouth. The act of twin-languaging was mouth acrobatics. I conjured the sounds from the back and bottom of the mouth, curling the tongue often, and drawing in the cheeks on both sides because sometimes the sounds came from the sides of our tongues, near the cheeks. Our voices would raise in pitch. This is what I remember of our twin-language, the language that nurtured my brother and me. I have only good feelings about it. It was fun to do, meant only to do, with my brother. But others heard us: “you shouldn’t let them talk like that.” As we grew into the larger social world, we quickly lost our intimate twin-language. The language came and went like breath, sustaining us for just a moment.

Languaging as laboring also points us to bodies in time and space, laboring bodies, so the verb of languaging—language as labor—has material, emotional, linguistic, and discursive dimensions. We perform languaging in the fullest sense that the verb can mean. We use our bodies to language. What implications might thinking about languaging as fully embodied labor mean? What might it mean to language self-consciously as transforming at our national convention? How might we transform our sessions and labors at our convention by conceiving of our languaging labors there as labors of transformation? Who or what might be transformed? What new language-labors might we propose and engage in? How might our languaging there also engage deeply and meaningfully with the material and emotional aspects of languaging? What would happen if we wrote lovingly, loved how we wrote, asked students to do the same, designed courses and curricula with goals around cultivating or engaging with how language makes us feel and how we feel when we language?

And so, as you consider your proposals for sessions and papers, consider them not as end products, not as panels and papers to propose; instead, think of your proposals as arguments for particular scenes of languaging and laboring. What languaging do you propose to have happen in your session? What would that laboring look like, feel like, sound like? Who would be laboring in the session? What might the experience be in that moment? And how might that session be only about the languaging and laboring in that session? I urge us to be more mindful about what we propose, that we propose laboring and not simply papers, presentations, or products. I urge us to think of what we want to do at the conference as that, as doing, as laboring, as languaging that is the transforming acts that we hope for our conference and ourselves. I urge us to think of our labor together as communal laboring, as laboring done not just with others but for them.

To facilitate this change in the conference, each presentation or session will have three hashtags associated with it instead of clusters. We will not use clusters. Ideally, all sessions will be pitched toward the widest and most general CCCC audience of writing and rhetoric teachers and scholars as possible, and will be judged by reviewers accordingly. I’m hoping this will encourage a more inclusive conference, one less fragmented, where folks who may not have engaged in some sessions in the past may do so this time, and one that is more intersectional in nature. These changes, I hope, will also capture the strongest and most compelling proposals.

Thus, as you think about what you may do at our conference, consider ways our laboring with and on language might be processes of transformation, or the transforming of people, places, languages, ideas, ethics, classrooms, communities, programs, organizations, and ultimately our world. I am particularly interested in ways to transform the languaging and the languaging spaces of the conference itself, ways of bringing more languages in, code-meshed and mongrel ones, ones that open the borders of languaging in the territories we labor, not close them. I want us to stop focusing our view on the spot at our feet and see the wide and diverse landscape around us, explore, feel, and language with those not like us. Transform the languaging practices of the conference. Conceive and enact languaging at our conference in ways that transform us, our students, pedagogies, research, communities, and the organization and its spaces themselves.

If the labors of languaging make, create, and destroy, how might knowing this—paying attention to our languaging as labor that defines and makes us and our futures, that destroys or harms us, that transforms—help us make more socially just futures at our national convention, or in our classrooms, in our work with others? How do we language in ways that are antiracist or decolonizing or working against gender binaries and harmful assumptions about sexuality or (dis)ability or resist patriarchal assumptions? How do we language in ways that do not oppress others? How do we language in ways that bring larger publics to our table for communion or take us to their tables? How might we use our time in Kansas City to labor for the urgent social justice issues that confront us today, in our classrooms, writing programs, communities, nation, and world? How might we language for human freedom? How might we language for now, this moment, in our bodies, as much as for tomorrow?

Ultimately, I urge us to consider how our time together in Kansas City at our annual gathering might be conceived of and designed as laboring today, for today, and as a way of transforming us structurally. So come to Kansas City. Language with and for us. Let us language together, labor next to and for each other. Let us transform our languaging, our conference, and ourselves.

Peace.

  

Asao B. Inoue
University of Washington Tacoma
2018 Program Chair 

 

 

 

 

   

Cultivating Capacity, Creating Change

2017 CCCC Annual Convention
March 15–18, 2017
Portland, Oregon

Program Chair: Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt

CCCC is in its seventh decade as an organization. Through its history, its members quite literally built a scholarly discipline, professionalized the teaching of writing, and fought to ensure access and justice for students. Today, CCCC members continue to expand and deepen understandings of rhetoric and writing; transform literacy teaching and learning and foster the conditions in which it occurs; and engage rhetoric and writing for a range of purposes, including advocacy, both inside and outside of the academy.

However, as a mature organization, we struggle with identity and the messiness and dissonance inherent in democratic endeavors, and we face an increasingly challenging, even hostile, external environment for the work we do. Our ability to sustain ourselves, both individually and collectively, requires purposeful cultivation, and that concept, cultivate, is the centerpiece of CCCC 2017. To cultivate is to enrich, nurture, enable, foster, and grow, all activities that this year’s Convention is designed to facilitate. A generative and re-generative concept, the theme cultivate is appropriate both to the productive region surrounding the CCCC 2017 convention site, Portland, Oregon, and to the actions necessary to develop the current and future generations of teachers, scholars, and leaders.

Late NCTE Executive Director Kent Williamson recognized that our organization—and its membership—must conscientiously create the conditions that ensure long-term vitality. He envisioned capacity building and collaboration as the way forward: mindfully developing and empowering members, who can use their capacity to act on behalf of themselves, their colleagues, and their students and, collectively, the organization and the profession at large. By cultivating member capacity, members can create change. It is labor-intensive yet rewarding work, enabling members and the organization to grow and flourish organically, from the inside out.

My goal for CCCC 2017 is to use the Convention as a space to cultivate members and member capacity for action. To achieve this involves reenvisioning the first “C” in CCCC, Conference, as more than an association of professionals, but a “meeting of minds,” and it involves engaging as a “conference,” as the etymology of conference suggests, coming together to discuss and work on shared interests and issues. To that end, I would like to build upon the transformative work of my immediate predecessors to encourage innovative and interactive session proposals, to create space within the program for the less structured, grassroots exchanges among members, and to plan a Convention that utilizes our time together to the fullest, from Wednesday’s preconvention workshops through Saturday’s closing events.

While CCCC 2017 will maintain the traditional aspects of our Annual Convention—showcasing members’ scholarly and professional work, participating in meetings (SIGs, caucuses, and governance activities), networking and socializing—it will also include spaces that invite member engagement in capacity building, including the continuation of the Action Hub and “Dialog” sessions to promote organizational transparency, innovations of Chair Joyce Locke Carter. Additionally, the 2017 Convention will feature two new highly interactive sessions that draw upon member expertise and interests: a series of “Cultivate” sessions, which are designed to build member capacity in particular ways, whether cultivating new voices in scholarship, preparing future faculty or future organizational leaders, developing our public voice, or sustaining ourselves as professionals; and a series of “Think Tank” sessions, which provide space during the convention for members to work together on various professional and organizational issues and, later, share their work and offer recommendation or action items in a closing plenary. For these new “featured” sessions, which are not part of the regular peer review process, a later call for topics and potential facilitators will be issued in summer to invite member input and participation.

With you, I hope to make the annual convention more than an event; I would like it to become a space for conversation and activity that continue throughout the year. The convention theme, then, is intended to be action-oriented. Cultivate should describe the overall convention experience, rather than prescribe the acceptable (and accepted) themes of proposals. I want “Cultivating Capacity, Creating Change” to promote the notion—and facilitate the activity—of a “Conference,” not to direct the members’ scholarly work, although sharing ideas and examples of intellectual and professional “cultivation” is welcome.

As we look ahead to our next gathering in Portland, Oregon, I invite us to consider how we can use our time together to cultivate ourselves, one another, CCCC, and the field.

• How do we cultivate new voices in the field and in the organization?
• How do we create broader understanding and appreciation of our disciplinary landscape?
• How do we develop future writing teachers, scholars, and leaders?
• How do we sustain and enrich our members in their varied interests throughout their careers?
• How do we, individually and collectively, cultivate our public voice?
• How do we build our capacity to take actions on issues important to our members?
• How do we conscientiously create the conditions for learning and for change?
• How can we build and maintain relationships, connections, and alliances?
• How can we foster openness, transparency, and consciousness in our membership and the organization at large?

What better place than Portland, the city that embodies the notion of environmental sustainability, to work together to find answers about how to sustain ourselves? Situated at the confluence of two rivers, surrounded by the forested Cascade mountain range, at the top of the fertile Willamette Valley, Portland is a place of productivity and possibility. The Willamette Valley’s fertility is the result of both its geologic history—volcanic activity and Ice Age floods—and modern cultivation practices. Similarly, CCCC’s capacity for growth and change is built on the work of our predecessors and our own continual, mindful cultivation. I encourage us to use our time together, March 15–18, 2017, to tend to our Conference, so we continue to grow and thrive.

Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt
Yakima Valley Community College
Yakima, WA
2017 Program Chair

 

 

 

 

 

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

1. First-Year Writing

• FYW curricula
• Pedagogical approaches to FYW
• Theories of learning to write, writing, and writers
• Institutional contexts
• Assessing, evaluating, and responding to students’ writing
• Peer review and collaboration
• Online first-year writing instruction
• Learning to teach FYW
• Transfer theory, writing about writing, and threshold concepts in writing studies
• Professional development for FYW teachers
• Developmental literacy
• Acceleration and co-requisite support
• Transdisciplinary approaches in FYW

2. College Writing and Reading

• Basic writing curricula and pedagogies
• Teaching nondegree credit courses online
• Developmental writing, reading, and learning support programs
• Teaching and supporting structurally disadvantaged students
• Public policies and politics of remediation
• Collaboration with secondary/K–12 writing programs and instructors
• Methods and measures of placing students in writing, reading, and support courses
• Dual credit/concurrent enrollment courses, programs, students, and training
• Reform mandates facing two-year colleges and other access institutions
• Integrated reading and writing courses and curriculum
• Evidence-based reading instruction
• The role of reading in writing courses
• Writing about reading
• Critical reading strategies
• Designing curriculum to support critical reading
• Preparing instructors for teaching reading
• Relationships between reading and writing
• Digital reading
• Research on postsecondary reading
• Supporting readers in online courses

3. Institutions: Labor Issues, Professional Lives, and Survival

• Labor activism and advocacy
• Contingency studies
• Ethical writing program labor practices
• The state and status of labor in the field of writing studies
• Institutional case studies
• Teaching about labor issues
• The labor of online writing instruction and equity for instructors
• Organization and operations of educational institutions
• Working conditions for contingent faculty and graduate assistants
• Teacher support, mentoring, and professional development
• Strategies for managing academic workloads, i.e., community college and teaching intensive workloads, GTA workloads
• Labor in open-access contexts
• Challenging narrow views of scholarship and intellectual work
• Academic hiring
• Adapting or transitioning to new work environments
• Cross-institutional partnerships and projects
• Disciplinarity, including trans-/multi-/inter-disciplinarity
• Professional organizational histories and issues

4. Writing Programs

• Assessment of writing programs
• Evaluation of instruction
• Writing program administration at a range of institutional contexts (research-intensive, comprehensive, private liberal arts, two-year colleges, tribal colleges, minority-serving institutions)
• Independent writing programs
• Undergraduate writing curricula and pedagogies
• Graduate curricula and pedagogies
• Teaching and mentoring graduate students
• Supporting writing instructors across the range of position types (GTA, contingent, tenure-line faculty, lecturers/fixed-term instructors)
• Professional development support for teachers of undergraduate and graduate students
• WAC/WID
• Administration of FYW programs of upper division or vertical writing programs
• Administration of writing majors
• Administration of writing centers and learning centers
• Community literacy and lifelong learning programs

5. Writing Centers (including Writing and Speaking Centers)

• Writing/speaking center administration
• Writing/speaking center pedagogy
• Undergraduate tutor education
• Graduate tutor education
• Graduate student administration/administrators
• Writing/speaking center theory
• Writing/speaking center assessment
• International writing center collaborations
• International/transnational writing/speaking center theory and practice
• antiracism, anti-oppression writing/speaking center praxis
• Intra- and interinstitutional collaborations

6. Community, Civic, and Public Contexts of Writing

• Community literacy practices, programs, and outreach
• Civic engagement and deliberation
• Public advocacy and policy work
• Adult education
• Prison literacy and literacy instruction
• Community-based teaching and learning
• Teaching and learning in nonacademic contexts
• Theories of public engagement and civic life
• Social justice and activism
• Service-learning programs and courses
• Civic engagement pedagogy in writing courses
• Developing writing-focused internships

7. Approaches to Teaching and Learning

• Faculty development
• Professional development
• Theories of learning
• Writing pedagogy and education
• Instructional design
• Trans-/inter-/multi-/disciplinary pedagogies

8. Inclusion and Access

• Students, diversity, and access
• Teaching and learning practices that support access, retention, and degree completion
• Access to college-credit course work
• Gatekeeping courses
• Access to the profession
• Accessibility for students, instructors, scholars
• Barriers to college participation
• Barriers to participation in the profession
• Writing studies work informed by disability studies

9. Histories of Rhetoric

• Engaging students in historical reading, writing, and research
• Disciplinary and professional histories
• Histories of rhetoric
• Histories of curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy
• History of writing instruction
• Histories of education
• Histories of composing and composition
• Histories of literacy theories and practices
• Cultural histories of teaching and learning
• Oral histories and traditions
• Histories of alternative sites of, and approaches to, education
• Historiography and theories of history

10. Creative Writing and Publishing

• Nonfiction, fiction, poetry, drama, screenwriting, and songwriting
• Audiovisual writing and digital genres
• Life writing, memoir, autobiography
• Other alternative forms of writing
• Creative writing pedagogy
• Publishing
• Relationships between creative writing and academic writing
• Creative writing in the first-year writing curriculum

11. Information Literacy and Technology

• Supporting students’ information literacy skills
• Designing courses around information literacy
• Online writing instruction
• Collaborations with libraries and librarians
• Teaching and learning in digital and online spaces
• Using technology to support learning
• Electronic publishing tools and practices
• Media studies
• Intellectual property
• Theories of technology and digital cultures
• Narratives of culture and technology

12. Language, Literacy, and Culture

• L2 writers and readers
• Second language writing pedagogies
• Disciplinary collaborations between writing studies and TESOL
• Translingual and multilingual practices and pedagogies
• Transnational and multilingual student needs and interests
• Language policies
• World Englishes
• Literacy as a cultural practice
• Diverse literacies (workplace, community, etc.)
• Literacy research, narratives, and theories

13. Professional and Technical Writing

• Pedagogical approaches to professional and technical writing
• Writing in the professions: business, science, health, public policy, etc.
• Information design and architecture
• Usability and user-experience design
• Workplace studies
• Intercultural and culturally competent communication
• Theories of technical and professional writing

14. Theory, Research Methodologies, and Praxis

• Theoretical frameworks associated with feminism, intersectionalism, queer theory, disability studies and crip theory, labor and class studies, decolonization, etc.
• Critical race theory
• Counterstory, critical narrative inquiry, critical rhetoric
• Methodology and research design
• Quantitative and qualitative methods (big data, historical, narrative, grounded, ethnographic, etc.)
• Pedagogical approaches to instruction in methods and methodologies
• Applications and ethics of research
• Institutional Review Board processes and practices
• Practical applications of theory
• Pedagogical approaches for teaching theory
• Trans-/inter-/multi-/disciplinary approaches
• Transnational feminist rhetorics

15. Antiracism and Social Justice

• Linguistic justice
• Rhetorics of race and racism
• Antiracist writing assessment
• Racial justice
• Racial healing
• Raciolinguistics
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion
• #blacklivesmatter
• Antiracist pedagogy
• Radical and liberatory pedagogies
• Activism and organizing
• Coalitional work and rhetorics
• Equity-oriented pedagogies
• Equity-oriented program administration
• Action-oriented approaches for social justice

16. Writing Abundance

• Logics and rhetorics of abundance and scarcity in rhetoric, composition, and technical communication teaching, research, and administration
• Challenging deficit perspectives about marginalized students, colleagues, and communities
• Taking stock of past and present disciplinary and institutional abundances
• Mapping the material flow of resources within postsecondary institutions
• Working toward more just redistribution of resources in institutions and communities
• Disrupting settler colonialism in academic work
• Recognition of existing abundances through engagement with marginalized knowledges
• Trans-/multi-/inter-disciplinary perspectives about writing abundance
• Practical applications of “Writing Abundance”