Author: ksuchor

“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 CCCC Task Force on Social Justice and Activism at the Convention is looking for facilitators for the following pre-convention workshops. Please help us by sharing widely.

Workshop #1 (Wednesday, 9:00 – 12:30): Exploring Issues in Social Justice and Activism

This workshop will be set up in a round-robin format with four different “stations” focusing on different issues related to social justice work in institutional and civic settings.  Workshop participants will cycle through each of these four stations in 40-45 minute intervals, ensuring that every attendee has the chance to learn from each mini-workshop.  A small group of facilitators at each station will be responsible for leading attendees through their workshop (presentations, activities, discussions, etc.) for each of the four time slots available.  The goal of this workshop will be to help participants explore social justice and activism issues from the following perspectives:

• Group #1: Social Justice and Activism in the Context of Program Administration and Service
• Group #2: Incorporating Pedagogies of Social Justice in the Classroom
• Group #3: The Possibilities and Limitations of Scholarly Work on Social Justice
• Group #4: Safety, Security, and Public Awareness

Workshop #2 (Wednesday, 1:30 – 5:00): Planning for Social Justice Work in Home Institutions

This workshop will, we hope, build upon Workshop #1 with a focus on planning for social justice work in the participants’ home institutions at the curricular, programmatic, institutional, civic, research, and/or classroom level.  (It is not a requirement that participants in Workshop #2 have also attended Workshop #1, however.)  The specific goal of this session will be to share ideas, brainstorm approaches for implementing social justice work in local contexts, and help participants plan specific strategies that they can enact on their home campuses once they leave the conference.  In this session, participants will meet in small working groups (4-5 people) to discuss their individual contexts and plans for social justice work at their home institutions.  These breakout groups will meet for an hour, and participants will then move to a new table with a new group of people, to share and further develop their plans.

We are currently in talks with specific facilitators for Workshop #1’s groups, who will have more details at a later date. We will likely need 1-2 more facilitators for each of the Workshop #1 groups and 10-15 (or more) for Workshop #2 breakout groups. If interested, please email Romeo Garcia, Al Harahap, and Michael Pemberton expressing your interest in working in Workshop #1 (with specific Group #), and/or as a breakout group facilitator in Workshop #2, as well as your CCCC 2018 status as currently confirmed panel presenter, workshop facilitator, or neither. We hope to provide an opportunity for those who do not yet have a speaking role at the conference to be listed in the program, but depending on response are not ruling out those already on the program. The deadline for adding facilitators’ names into the Workshop descriptions in the conference Program Book is December 15th, so please respond ASAP if you have an interest.

Complete Information for Booking with Champion Shuttle
for the 2018 CCCC Annual Convention

This discount expires March 12, 2018.

 

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The Action Hub is our onsite common space where members can meet, brainstorm, write, and take other actions on what they have learned from convention panelists. This year’s Action Hub is jam-packed with opportunities to use, think about, and engage in writing as a strategy for action.

You’ll find stations devoted to incorporating writing in lively and engaging ways in your classroom, ways to use writing to communicate with audiences inside and outside of schools, opportunities to practice talking about writing, and more! You’ll also find stations sponsored by local Houston organizations, providing an opportunity for attendees to learn more about the vibrant and exciting Houston writing scene.

Stations in the Action Hub include (but are not limited to):

 

Knowledge Shaping

Work with others to turn research and knowledge from the field into messages for the broader public intended to change practices and result in action. Attendees can drop by during scheduled hours to consider how to share messages about research from our field with a wider audience. Attendees will work with others to, first, use a heuristic that asks them who the stakeholders are for this research-based issue and, second, design messages about the issue for those stakeholders using a variety of modes and media.

Examples of research-based topics that need to be shared with a wider audience might include dual enrollment, class size, assessment, etc. Examples of modes and media with which attendees can work include Buzzfeed, letters to the editor, Piktochart, white papers, press releases, Medium, etc. Attendees should come with the research-based ideas they want to work with and be ready to engage in invention and message-creation. Sponsored by the CCCC Research Committee.

 

Pitch Practicing

Practice talking to audiences outside of the field—whether faculty from other departments, administrators, community members, or others—about writing and writers. Pitch practicers are distinguished and experienced colleagues from the field who can play a variety of roles and provide feedback on your talking points. See the schedule to find out which pitch practicers will be available in what roles.

 

Writing for Change

In conjunction with 4Cs for Equality (4C4E), Writing for Change invites organizations and individuals to share their efforts to use their writing for positive change in their local communities, programs, classrooms, and the global community. Learn how to generate conversation with local, state, and federal policymakers via face to face contact and written communication.

 

Meet the CCCC Executive Committee

In addition to being a conference in the “get together once a year” sense, CCCC is also a conference of NCTE—a formal organization within the NCTE umbrella. Get to know the colleagues who currently serve as officers of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, share your concerns, ask questions, and/or learn more about how you can get involved!

 

HEROic Action

The CCCC Queer Caucus invites members to support the Houston LGBTQ community in response to the recent Houston Prop #1 Ordinance that has repealed equal rights measures. We will work with local area activists and politicians who will help us shape our letters to draw policymakers’ attention.

 

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

The DALN—the largest publicly accessible, online archive of first-hand literacy accounts in the world—will be on site to collect stories about participants’ literacy backgrounds. Please consider contributing to this valuable teaching, research, and archival resource.

 

The Writing Studies Tree

The WST is a crowdsourced database of academic genealogies in writing studies: links of mentoring, collaboration, education, and employment among people and places in the field. Come explore your connections and contribute to the WST’s ongoing efforts to map the field as a living network.

 

Undergraduate Research Focus Groups

We hope that both undergraduate researchers and those who mentor their work will join us for these focus groups, which explore the mentor-student relationship that anchors undergraduate research activity—a high-impact practice—in our disciplines. We’ll engage mentors and students in separate conversations, encouraging discussion about the work that is happening at various institutions, the forms it is taking, its impact, and how it can be further supported.

Since there is little public data regarding the impact of undergraduate research in our discipline, these focus groups are designed to help us talk about our individual and collective experiences with undergraduate research in our discipline, and then to take action to extend its reach.

 

C’s the Day

C’s the Day is a game that promotes a lively, active, and eccentric approach to 4Cs. By completing quests to earn the fabled Sparklepony, rhet/comp trading cards, and other prizes, we hope you’ll gain a new appreciation for how games and play can lead to real exploration, learning, and engagement. Play the game; win the conference!

 

Stations featuring Houston local organizations:

  

Writers in the Schools (WITS)

Flash pedagogies! Since 1983, WITS has been partnering with schools across Houston to bring the joy of writing to school-aged children. WITS also partners with teachers who want to incorporate creative and process-based writing into their highly structured, assessment-based curriculum. Visit WITS to participate in energetic and creative activities to help bring creative pedagogies to your writing classroom.

 

Inprint Poetry Buskers

The Inprint Poetry Buskers are a team of local poets, many of whom are graduate students and alumni from the nationally renowned UH Creative Writing Program. They spread the joy of poetry at festivals and special events throughout the city. These talented poets, using a typewriter and themes specified by attendees, tap into the muse of immediate inspiration and write poems on the spot for free. The buskers often read out the poems and sign them, which attendees can take home and cherish forever. Inprint—a nonprofit literary arts organization—has for more than three decades fostered the art of creative writing and inspired a vibrant community of readers and writers in Houston.

 

CCCC will live stream a handful of regular sessions, business meetings, and plenary events during the 2018 CCCC Annual Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, March 14-17, 2018.

Registration is now closed for this event.

The posted registration rate of $75 is for VIRTUAL ATTENDEES only. All CCCC presenters, regardless of attendance status (onsite or remote), and onsite attendees are required to pay the regular registration rate.

The following sessions will be live streamed:. Note all times are in Central Daylight Time.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

8:30–10:00 a.m. CDT
Opening General Session

10:30–11:45 a.m. CDT
A.40, Transformative Labor: Positioning Yourself for a Two-Year College Career
In this roundtable, attendees will transform their labor and language to better meet the demands of two-year college tenure-track hiring.

12:15–1:30 p.m. CDT
B.37, Linguistic Approaches to Understanding Language Acquisition for Native and Non-Native Language Learners
Co-occurrence of lexical items; reading/writing strategies of L2 teachers; lexico-grammatical stances; multilingual students’ genre uptake.

1:45–3:00 p.m. CDT
All-Attendee Event
Literacy, Language, and Labor for Social Justice: Outward and Inward Reflection

3:15–4:30 p.m. CDT
C.06, Black Movement Discourse, Black Lives Matter, and Why We (C)Ain’t Wait
This workshop features Black Caucus leadership and a Black Lives Matter leader sharing Black rhetorical tactics across space to recent campaigns in Kansas City.

4:45–6:00 p.m. CDT
D.04, Latinx Futures: A Look at Emerging Latinx Research and Scholars
This sponsored roundtable will focus upon emerging Latinx researchers and scholars who want to increase their participation in academia.

Friday, March 16, 2018

8:00–9:15 a.m. CDT
E.37, Mobility and Englishes across Transnational Contexts
Transnational approach to writing; Chinese students’ challenges; international compulsory English; English faculty in the Middle East.

9:30–10:45 a.m. CDT
F.05, Laboring across Borders: Ethical and Practical Challenges in Administering Transnational Writing Programs
Aims to open dialogue on how the tensions between economic and pedagogical demands shape writing programs in three transnational contexts.

11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. CDT
G.03, Writing with Former, Current, and Future Members of the Military Standing Group Business Meeting
Our teaching and research supports past, present, and future members of the military in writing classrooms and programs.

12:30–1:45 p.m. CDT
H.02, Latinx Caucus Business Meeting

Live Stream Event Information

With registration for the live stream event, you will receive an email just prior to the start of CCCC 2018 containing a link to the live streamed sessions. In addition, after the convention, you will receive a link to a secure area of the CCCC/NCTE website containing the recordings of these sessions for future playback.

The posted registration rate of $75 is for virtual ATTENDEES only. All CCCC presenters, regardless of attendance status (onsite or remote), and onsite attendees are required to pay the regular registration rate. If you have not done so already, please register as soon as possible. CCCC relies heavily on this income to fund the many programs and initiatives that support its members.

Additionally, please note that CCCC will not be providing AV support for virtual presentations outside of the single room that is set up for live streaming. (Only specific sessions were invited to participate in the live stream this year as part of a pilot program.)

In collaboration with the Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession, CCCC is pleased to offer up to 10 small grants of no more than $300/attendee that can be used to offset the costs of childcare at the 2016 annual convention, either for use with approved providers or for other childcare needs as described by the applicant. A list of providers can be found here: http://4chouston.com/resources-and-accessability/childcare/. Priority for these funds will be given to adjuncts, graduate students, and/or other members demonstrating financial need.

To apply for funds, please complete the online application form by January 10, 2016.

Criteria for Evaluating Grant Applications

The committee will review the applications submitted and will rank them, prioritizing the following criteria:

• discussion of financial need and proposal for how funds will be used
• how the funding award will enable the applicant to attend and participate in the convention
• how participation in the convention will advance the applicant’s  personal and professional goals
• how the award will support applicant’s contributions to the profession and the CCCC organization

CCCC is pleased to provide up to ten grants of no more than $300 to recipients. CCCC assumes no responsibility for any liabilities associated with childcare or childcare providers.

Selected recipients will be notified by the CCCC Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession by January 30, 2016. Funds will be disbursed in advance of the CCCC 2016 conference.

Procedures for Award Recipients

After the convention, grant recipients should submit a one-page summary indicating how the funds were used and how the funding support the recipient’s participation in convention activities. Please submit the funding report to Holly Hassel (co-chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession) by April 30, 2016.

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Joyce Rain Anderson is an Assistant Professor of English at Bridgewater State College  She received her Ph.D in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of New Hampshire in 2005.  Her research and teaching interests include: first-year composition, personal and public writing, English Language Learners, Cultural Rhetorics, Indigenous and Survivance Rhetorics, American Indian Boarding Schools, (Re)presentations of Indigenous Peoples, and Vernacular Literacies. Currently, she is working on a co-edited edition on teaching Indigenous rhetorics. In 1996, she was a recipient of the Scholars for the Dream. She is co-founder of the American Indian Caucus and has served on the Resolutions Committee, Scholars for the Dream Section Committee and the Tribal College Fellowship Committee.

Kristin Bivens is an Assistant Professor of English at Harold Washington College in Chicago (on leave, AY 2011-2012).  She is currently a PhD student in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University; and an editorial assistant for Technical Communication Quarterly.  Kristin’s research interests include: contrapower harassment at two-year institutions, post-Katrina New Orleans (and Gulf Coast), medical rhetoric, feminist rhetorics, health literacy, and communicative practices in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).  She has served as a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession since 2007.

Kirsti Cole is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Literature at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Graduating with her PhD in 2008, Kirsti is currently working on two edited collections, and a textbook in rhetoric and culture.  She is also in process of writing a comprehensive study of the Feminist Workshop from 1991 to 2011. She is the co-author of “Feminist Social Projects: Building Bridges between Communities and Universities,” which appeared in College English in 2007, as well as “(Post)Modern Psychoanalysis: A Re-vis(ion)ing of Poe,” (2008). She has also co-edited a collection for thirdspace, an online feminist journal. Her research area focuses on the rhetoric of women’s activism and as a part of her service as Co-Chair of the Feminist Workshop for the Cs in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the Keynote speakers for the 2011 Workshop.  She has served as a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession for the Cs since 2006.

Violet A. Dutcher is professor of rhetoric and composition, chair in the Language & Literature department, and Writing Program Director at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  She received her Ph.D. from Kent State University. Her research interest is in women’s community literacy. She has served as a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession for the Cs since 2007.
 
Morgan Gresham earned her Ph.D from the University of Louisville.  She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where she is currently serving as chair of the Department of Verbal and Visual Arts..  Her research interests include digital composition, feminist pedagogy, and composition theory and practice. She has served as a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession for the Cs since 2006.

Holly Hassel is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County and chair of the University of Wisconsin Colleges Women’s Studies Program. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2002. She regularly teaches first-year writing courses and introduction to women’s studies, and her research interests in the scholarship of teaching and learning emerge directly from her classroom experiences working at an open-enrollment, two-year college. Her current SoTL research projects are focused on the transition of underprepared students to the expectations of college writing, as well as on assessment of student writing in the placement process. Her scholarly work has appeared in Feminist Teacher, the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,  Pedagogy, and College English, among others. Her co-authored article (with Joanne Giordano), “Transfer Institutions, Transfer of Knowledge: The Development of Rhetorical Adaptability and Underprepared Writers” received the Mark Reynolds Teaching English in the Two Year College Best Article Award in 2010. Holly has served on the Two-Year College Association Committee on Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment and joined the Status of Women Committee in 2011.

Rhea Estelle Lathan is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University. She holds a Ph.D in English and MA in Afro American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; a BA in Africology and English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Lathan’s research includes the literate and rhetorical history of women of African descent, the development of literacy, and the delivery systems for the teaching of writing; community based critical intellectualism of African American Women, identity politics and social historical activism as well as critical race theory in rhetoric and composition. Lathan teaches courses ranging from social historical perspectives on rhetoric and composition to more specialized African American Literacies, rhetoric, composition research methodologies and theories, literate practices within African American social movements, including Afrafeminist and literacy history.

Jolivette Mecenas is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Writing Program at the University of La Verne in La Verne (Los Angeles Co.), CA. She earned her PhD in 2009 from the University of Hawai‘i. In her contribution to the anthology, Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric, Jolivette wrote about the cultural rhetorics of Asian American pop culture and media. Recently, she interviewed Jeffery Paul Chan for an anthology on activism in the NCTE, Listening to Our Elders, Writing and Working for Change (eds. Blackmon, Kirklighter, and Parks, 2011). Her teaching and research interests include citizenship genres, civic-political discourse, feminist and queer publics, writing pedagogy, and writing program administration. Jolivette joined the Committee on the Status of Women in 2010, and she is also a member of the CCCC Asian/Asian American Caucus.

Dora Ramirez-Dhoore is an Associate professor of Ethnic American Literature at Boise State University. She earned her Ph.D from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, M.A. from New Mexico State University, and is a former Scholars for the Dream award recipient. She has served on the Executive Committee and is currently a member of the Latino/a Caucus. Dora’s research engages issues of production and consumption of texts tied to global and transnational perspectives of audience. Her work examines ideas of nation-building and the internalization of socio-political global affects, including their effects on health, illness, and the body. Recent publications include: “The Rhetoric of Aztlán: HB2281, MEChA, and Liberatory Education” in Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Community Literacy, and Service-Learning (ed. Steve Parks); “Let the Gummy Bears Speak: Articulating Identity in Sandra Cisneros’s ‘Never Marry a Mexican’” in Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek (ed. Cecilia S. Donohue); “Dissecting Environmental Racism: Redirecting the Toxic in Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood and Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus” in The Natural World in Latin American Literatures: Ecocritical Essays on Twentieth Century Writings (ed. Adrian Kane); and other essays.

Luisa Rodríguez Connal, Ph. D. is currently operating as an independent scholar and active member of the National Council of Teachers of English. Professional Activities: Member of CCCC Diversity Committee, Executive Committee, Latino/a Caucus, Progressive Special Interest Groups and Caucuses Committee, Service Learning Committee. Conference presentations at CCCC, MLA, Shifting Discourses in the Twenty-First Century. Texas A&M University. CSU Conference: Designing Change for Women and Minority, Emerging Careers for Women Conference, Pima Community College.  Publications: Chapters in Crossing Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies, Advanced Composition: Principles and Practices, 2001, Teaching Tools Theorized: From Practice to Theory and Back Again, and Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on the Official English Movement, Vol. 1. Articles in Who’s Who in Contemporary Women Writers, 1999, in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 1996, and in Making Connections. 4, 1 (Fall 1999). Bibliographic work for CCC Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric, 1992 and 1996.  I wrote a Master of Arts thesis on nonsexist language in 1988-89. Currently, my work includes an autobiographical piece which I will ultimately connect to many of the theories I used in prior work. While many know of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, I found one of her fore-mothers a Spanish nun from just before the Spanish Inquisition. I also study Puerto Rican female writers. I hope to contrast the works of current Puerto  Rican female writers with my own experiences. Position Statement: Women’s work in academia, specifically in the area of English which encompasses many new divisions such as English Studies, multicultural rhetorics and the like. It is important to explore our contributions to our profession and I look forward to working with others on the Status of Women in the Profession Committee.

Eileen Schell is an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and Chair and Director of the Writing Program at Syracuse University.   Schell is the author of Gypsy Academics and Mother-teachers:  Gender, Contingent Labor,and Writing Instruction (Heinemann, 1997), Moving a Mountain: Transforming  the Role of Contingent Faculty in Composition Studies and Higher Education  (NCTE, 2001),  Rural Literacies with Kim Donehower and Charlotte Hogg (SIUP, 2007), Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies co-edited with K.J. Rawson (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), and Reclaiming the Rural  co-edited with Kim Donehower and Charlotte Hogg (SIUP, 2012).  Eileen is currently Chair of CCCC Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession; she formerly co-chaired the Committee on Contingent, Adjunct, Part-time Faculty Issues as well as serving as a member of the Executive Committee of CCCC.

Hyoejin Yoon is Associate Professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include “Affecting the Transformative Intellectual: Questioning ‘Noble’ Sentiments in Critical Pedagogy and Composition” in JAC, winner of the 2005 Elizabeth A. Flynn award for best feminist essay in rhetoric and composition, and a chapter “Learning Asian American Affect” in Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric, edited by LuMing Mao and Morris Young. Hyoejin has recently been involved in higher education administration and institutional assessment. She has been a member of the CCCC Committee on the Status of Women since 2010.

Records archived at the National Council of Teachers of English indicate that the origins of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession dates back to 1978. The early group of 139 members called themselves the “4Cs ? Exchange.” Their stated purpose was “sharing…. listening….thinking….responding….laughing ….planning” and they convened at the women’s luncheon in Kansas City. The minutes of this meeting indicate that the group had first convened the year earlier in 1977 in Philadelphia. Additionally, the group published a newsletter with the intent of acknowledging the impact of all the feminist energy and commitment within the group, to channel some of the humanistic power swirling “over luke-warm soup, limp lettuce and greasy chicken,” and to assert a founding momma’s right to defer to the energy and vision of the young.

The group asked the CCCC officers to authorize a “4C’s Women’s Committee with members not to be designated 4Cs chair. Items of business included circulation of letters explaining why 4C’s would not assemble in convention cities located in states that had failed to ratify the ERA; passing a resolution on Sexism in Language,” creating a liaison between the committee and the 4Cs officers, and editing the newsletter.

Additionally, the group sponsored sessions at the annual meeting that concerned issues of interest to women. They questioned the masculinist format of reading papers/lecturing in panel presentations; made efforts that supported, highlighted and disseminated feminist work in the discipline; and coordinated a hospitality/discussion hour with wine and cheese.

Evidence suggests that the group continued to work informally and openly until records indicate in 1989 that it was officially listed as a standing committee under its current name. By this time the Committee’s work included offering a half-day Women’s Open House for the purpose of informal networking and “R and R” for CCCC women; submitting a proposal for a half-day preconvention workshop, “Demarginalizing Women’s Ways of Writing”; and sponsoring a SIG session to elicit proposals for Committee work from CCCC women and to form CCCC panels; have a women’s table in the exhibitor’s hall; send a copy of the “Guidelines for Nonsexist Use of Language in NCTE Publications” along with a cover letter to members of the Association of Departments of English. Minutes indicate that the Committee, even then, was seeking ways to determine the need for daycare at CCCC conventions.

A gap in history exists in that which has been recorded in the archives until 1994. Then Chair of the then officially named Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, Elizabeth Flynn requested an investigation of the feasibility of conducting a study of the status of women in CCCC and sponsored two sessions at the 1995 CCCC that were coordinated by the committee. The sessions focused on issues such as discrimination, harassment, and diversity.

Throughout the second half of the 1990s, the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession worked in three primary areas: 1) support scholarly and feminist work in composition/rhetoric by sponsoring proposed sessions for the CCCC convention, which included a proposal to institute an Outstanding Article on women’s Issues in Composition Award; provide SIG and other fora for women to discuss the material conditions of their professional lives; and provide moral support and leadership to the preconvention Feminist Workshop.

Chairs on the record include

Karen Hollis 1987-1990

Elizabeth Flynn 1994-1996

Joy Ritchie 1997-2000

Heather Bruce 2001-2006

Eileen Schell 2007- present