Author: ksuchor

March 3, 2021

This week, CCCC 2021 Program Chair Holly Hassel and event staff completed the difficult task of narrowing our list of accepted sessions by approximately 50 percent to accommodate the financial and logistical constraints of shifting from an in-person Convention to a virtual event. The CCCC Annual Convention is contracted several years in advance and typically involves a year of program planning. Moving online required months of contract renegotiation and multiple revisions to the program. Holly described this process in detail in a pair of blog posts published earlier this year, available here and here.

Throughout this process, transparency has been our watchword. However, we recognize that understanding why and how previously accepted sessions were cut from the Convention program does not mitigate the surprise, pain, and frustration of learning that your session was among those cut from the program. In a year marked by losses large and small, we are deeply sorry for inflicting an additional professional and personal disappointment.

As we move forward with CCCC 2021 preparations, we reaffirm our commitment to transparency and openness as we strive to create a welcoming, accessible, and inclusive virtual space in which to connect with one another online until we are able to come together in person once again.

The Northeast CCCC Summer Conference originally scheduled to take place at Boston University during the summer of 2020 has been moved online and will be held virtually over Zoom from July 6–7, 2021. The conference theme—Critical Literacies in the 21st Century Classroom—remains the same. For more information please see the website: https://necccc.org/

The conference program is now available.

Conference registration is open with the following rates. Registration will close at 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, July 2, 2021.

• $40 CCCC members
• $65 NCTE members
• $115 nonmembers
• $30 for graduate student/retiree

Register here

Plan to virtually attend #4C22 with personal and professional goals in mind. Select sessions aligned to those goals and be prepared to explain how they will contribute to your professional know-how in these areas. CCCC provides a certificate of participation and has partnered with the University of San Diego to offer 3.0 graduate-level semester hours of continuing education credit. Visit the course page for further details about continuing education credit.

REGISTRATION:  Remember to register! Registration is required for all speakers.

NCTE EVENT POLICIES: Please review prior to Convention.

CCCC 2023 LAND/WATER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Please visit this resource for researching and creating your own CCCC 2023 Land/Water Acknowledgement.

PROGRAM DETAILS:

On-demand recordings will be available for attendee viewing until May 18, 2023.

ON-DEMAND SESSIONS:

Recording:

• For your on-demand session recording, we highly recommend presenting your session just as you would at an in-person event.
  • For Panel Presentations/Roundtable Sessions: If your session is fully on demand, we request you record the session with all of your co-presenters together, either in person or as a meeting via Zoom. If you are not able to record it together as a single presentation, please combine your recordings and upload only one video file. Only one person from your session needs to upload materials.  
• The recommended length of your presentation is a minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 75 minutes.
• We recommend ending your presentation with a slide showing your contact information—email, website, phone number—so attendees can contact you with comments or questions.
• In order to be ADA compliant, presenters must include closed-captioning or a session transcript for all on-demand sessions. You may use whichever captioning or transcript service you’d like, but we recommend: 
  • Zoom 
  • Rev 
  • Zubtitle 
  • TranscriptionStar 
  • Handbreak

Tips and Tricks:

• Use hardwired internet service when recording 
• Use a headset for clear audio 
• Embed video clips into your PowerPoint presentation 
  • Select a slide, then go to Insert> Video 
  • Select Video on My PC. 
  • Select the video you want to add from your computer, then select Insert 
• Include proper introduction and closure; thank the audience 
• Choose a quiet environment 
• Test lighting and camera positioning prior to presentation 
• Be mindful of your background 
• Mute your microphone when not speaking 

Uploading:

Session recordings and additional materials may be uploaded via this form on the 2023 CCCC Annual Convention Website.

For your video, you may upload either an MP4 or you may send a link to the video of your session that has been uploaded to one of the following hosting services:

Preferred Video Hosting Partners: YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, SlidesLive
Other Recommended Services: Zoom Recordings, Wistia, Sprout Video, Brightcove, iPlayerHD, VeritasTV, Crowdcast, and Wix Video 

If you send a link in the form to a video that has been uploaded to another hosting platform there is no size restriction. Please set your video as unlisted, so it is only accessible via a direct link.

• Approved File Types for attaching via the form: 
  • PDF 
  • If you are uploading a video recording directly to our form, the video must be an MP4 and the size limit is 100MB. 
• If your presentation is in PowerPoint, Word, etc., please convert it to a PDF prior to uploading. 
• Please limit to one video, one handout, and one transcript file per session. We are unable to upload more than one video to the platform. 
• Your file names should include part or all of your session title depending on title length, and it should also include the file type. For example: PresentationTitle_Video, PresentationTitle_HandOut, PresentationTitle_Transcript.
  

Virtual session recordings will be available to registered attendees in the digital platform until May 18, 2023. 

The deadline to submit virtual materials is 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, February 3, 2023.

ADDITIONAL FAQ:

• What happens to presentation content after May 18, 2023?
  Presentations will be archived at NCTE for historical purposes.
• Can presenters share their own presentation outside of Convention?
  Yes, presenters are free to share their presentations outside of the 2023 CCCC Annual Convention after Convention has concluded. Please be mindful not to share presentations prior to Convention as it will devalue the program. We do, however, highly encourage you to promote your presentation on social media.
• Can video presentations be downloaded from the Convention platform?
  No, archived video presentation content will not be downloadable.
• Can I include music in my presentation?
  Music can be used in your presentation only if you own the rights, have purchased the rights for this purpose, or if you have permission to do so.

If you have additional questions regarding technical logistics for your presentations, please email us at ccccevents@ncte.org.

Several CCCC Standing Groups are holding a virtual option for their meetings in 2025 outside of the Annual Convention dates. Below you will find dates and times for Standing Groups that have provided information on virtual meetings. This list will be updated as we receive requests for meetings to be added.

Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition

Meeting Date & Time: Tuesday, March 25, 2025, 6:00–7:30 p.m. ET

“What is ‘Writing’? An Open Forum on Definitions, Directions, and Methodologies”
The focus of the session will be what “writing” means (or could mean) in our discipline and how it is researched. We are interested in hearing from researchers, teachers, and graduate students about writing research. Some potential topics that might animate our small and large group conversations:

• what writing has meant and how it has been studied historically in the field
• where the study of writing is headed or should be headed
• new methods for studying writing: challenges and potential outcomes
• activist understandings of writing

The recipient of the 2024 Janice M. Lauer Institutional Achievement Award in Rhetoric & Composition Doctoral Studies, Texas Tech University Technical Communication and Rhetoric May Seminar, will be recognized during the meeting: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/english/programs_degrees/online/tcr-may-seminar.php.

Sign up: Please contact Laura Micciche for a Zoom registration link.

The Role of Reading in Composition Studies SIG Virtual Meeting

Meeting Date & Time: Tuesday, April 15, 2025, 7:30–8:30 p.m. ET

The Role of Reading in Composition Studies SIG will be holding a virtual session in April in addition to the in-person session at the Cs. Attendees at the virtual meeting will discuss teaching and research as it relates to postsecondary reading, including the use of Artificial Intelligence, and will also have the opportunity to put together panels and sessions focused on reading for next year’s Cs.

Sign up: Please contact Ellen Carillo to request the Zoom link.

Global & Non-Western Rhetorics Standing Group

Meeting Date & Time: Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 6:00–7:30 p.m. ET

Please join us for our annual business meeting, open to all! As a Standing Group of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, we promote a global and inclusive understanding of various rhetorical traditions worldwide, welcoming all emerging, established, or independent scholars and friends to join us. Our business meetings are only partially dedicated to “business.” During the meeting we announce relevant conference events, provide updates on the Standing Group’s initiatives, review our mebers’ accomplishments over the year, facilitate discussion of new ideas and projects, and offer you a chance to network with other attendees. No pressure, and nothing to prepare in advance! The meeting will be held via Zoom, and registration is required to help us track attendance.

Sign up: Please contact Tarez Graban for a Zoom registration link.

January 2021

As an organization dedicated to the study of the power and effects of language and discourse, we feel the need to address the events of January 6—specifically, the riots and insurrection at the Capitol building during the congressional meeting to certify the results of the 2020 election. This event, though unprecedented in its particulars, was an expression of historic white supremacist narratives, and continued a tradition of domestic terrorism by white nationalist groups and their allies and affiliates. In this sense, this event marks a continuation of this historic white nationalist narrative, and in particular, the increasingly virulent attacks on democracy. In this statement, we draw attention to the power of language to call forth and bring about action, the power of rhetoric and writing to heal our pain, and our responsibility as educators.

We condemn the actions of the rioters of January 6th in the strongest possible terms, just as we condemn the language and actions of those who worked to legitimize and enable this event. Several statements issued by professional organizations and academic institutions are now in circulation; these speak to the magnitude and impacts of the riots, as well as to our obligations as professional educators to speak to the relationships among language, power, and social formations and actions. CCCC is committed to fostering inclusivity, equity, and social justice. The violence at the Capitol and the ongoing efforts at voter suppression are clear examples of what is at stake in this work.

We reaffirm our mission as teachers and scholars of rhetoric and writing to equip students with the means to make sense of their worlds and to instruct them in practices of attending to the meaning others may be making of their own. At present, it is possible for people to exist within bubbles of harmful misinformation. These spheres of misinformation are, in fact, cultures sustained by community relations, so this is part of the exigence for the educational work to be done. To strip misinformation of its power is not only critical but relational, and is attentive to the human interests at work. As literacy educators, we have a moral obligation to cultivate rhetorical awareness, so that as communicators, students will approach harmful, hateful messaging with the means to discern the distinctions between facts and lies and the motives at work in diverse rhetorical situations. Likewise, we call upon literacy educators to redouble their pedagogical efforts toward responsible use and dissemination of information.

A path forward includes strategies for both healing and action. Even as rhetoric has been largely responsible for creating the environment in which we now find ourselves, we offer rhetoric (including the repertoire of linguistic and actionable tools afforded by its use) to facilitate something positive: healing. We can work toward healing by supporting students and members of color, by providing avenues for students to process grief through writing and discussion, and by cultivating in students the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to make ethical and responsible choices as they engage in civic discourse. Lastly, we can continue to do our part as educators to produce citizens who understand, value, and advocate democratic principles that are built on a foundation of radical representative inclusion.

Friday, November 13, 2020
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET

View the webinar recording

CCCC membership is required in order to attend or view a recording of this webinar. Join now.

This panel features four recipients of the 2020 CCCC Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award and the CCCC Scholars for the Dream Travel Award. The presentations will be followed by an audience-driven Q&A session as well as networking time.

Presenters:

S. Brook Corfman, University of Pittsburgh
“Against Performance: Conference Themes and Trans Critique”
Spurred by the generic and uncritical use of “performance” across presentations at the 2019 CCCC conference—quite distinct from Vershawn Ashanti Young’s call—I bring trans studies and composition into conversation, including trans studies’ critiques of performance theories. I question when and how composition turns to other fields for its methods and innovations, showing how the tension of the composition–performance–trans studies triangle elucidates composition’s broader habits of borrowing without speaking back to other areas of cultural study.

Elise Dixon, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
“Making and Unmaking: What the Lesbian Avengers Taught Me about Writing”
This presentation details a queer and cultural rhetorics framework for understanding how queer communities’ communal composing practices allow them to enact the process of world making. Through ethnographically informed qualitative interviews, I detail themes related to making from former members of the Lesbian Avengers—an activist group prominent in the 1990s—to illuminate how the communal practice of making is a deliberate and complex rhetorical act of world building, especially for marginalized communities. I conclude by discussing what lessons (academic) leaders can learn from activist organizations such as the Avengers and how to apply those lessons in their administration.

Florianne (Bo) Jimenez, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Echoing and Resistant Imagining: Cultural Rhetorics and Decoloniality in Filipino Student Writing”
I’ll be presenting my research on Filipino student writing during the American colonization of the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century. Using theories from cultural rhetorics and decolonial thinking, I offer an overview of the transnational discourses on race, class, and language that collided at the colonial schoolhouse and analyze how student writers negotiated, resisted, and subverted US colonial ideology through writing in English.

Loretta Ramirez, California State University, Long Beach
“Critical Pedagogy and Chicanx Rhetorical Inheritances: Recovering Chicanx Historical Genealogies to Decolonize Composition Classrooms”
Developing insights from my work in decolonial theory and the long history of Chicanx visual and textual rhetorics, this presentation examines ways in which introducing genealogies of cultural rhetorics into the composition classroom may foster inclusive practices. By contextualizing student rhetoric within various cultural inheritances, I suggest that writing programs might better foster strategies wherein students enter their own historical rhetorical lineages to locate, assess, and participate in the formation of their own academic voices.

Moderator:

Timothy Oleksiak, University of Massachusetts Boston
Timothy Oleksiak is an assistant professor of English and director of the Professional and New Media Writing program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His work on queer listening and rhetoric has appeared or is forthcoming in Composition Studies, PRE/TEXT, College Composition and Communication, Peitho, and Pedagogy.

 

Respondent:

Jackie Rhodes, Michigan State University
Jackie Rhodes is professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. A two-time cowinner of the CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award (for Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self and Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics), she focuses her scholarly work on intersections of rhetoric, sexuality, and technology.

 

Share your learning on Twitter at #4Cchat.

View additional webinars in the CCCC Webinar Series.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
September 2020

Background Information

Read this message from Vershawn Ashanti Young, CCCC Chair, and Temptaous McKoy, Chair, CCCC Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force, about the development of and exigency for this statement.

CCCC Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force
Temptaous Mckoy, Chair, Bowie State University
Cecilia D. Shelton, University of Maryland
Donnie Sackey, University of Texas at Austin
Natasha N. Jones, Michigan State University
Constance Haywood, Michigan State University
Ja’La Wourman, Michigan State University
Kimberly C. Harper, North Carolina A&T State University

As a coalition of Black scholars, we participated in the Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force convened by CCCC chair Vershawn Ashanti Young to create a position statement regarding Black technical and professional communication. In addition to fulfilling that charge, we used our agency as scholars in the area to produce the resource list presented here. We composed this position statement and resource list as initial steps toward defining Black technical and professional communication practices and practitioners; advocating for their inclusion in the body of mainstream disciplinary literature; and carving out the methodological, theoretical, and practical space that will enable other Black scholars in the field to see and do such work. The statement and resource list will also assist teachers and researchers of technical and professional communication.

Black technical and professional communication (TPC) is defined as including practices centered on Black community and culture and on rhetorical practices inherent in Black lived experience. Black TPC reflects the cultural, economic, social, and political experiences of Black people across the Diaspora. It also includes the work of scholars in the academy and the contributions of practitioners. In all, Black TPC contextualizes the experiences and cultures of Black peoples through research, teaching, and scholarship.

In lieu of a traditional written statement, we offer a thematically organized and contextualized list of suggested readings drawn from both within and outside of the discipline and the academy. We believe that these resources will begin defining the contours of the scholarship, activism, and design work that Black technical communicators and scholars are (and have been) doing. Furthermore, we believe that offering this resource, rather than a traditional statement, will help scholars better equip themselves with access to appropriate readings to continue the work of Black technical and professional communication advocacy.

Engaging with the Resources Provided

This resource list represents the beginnings of scholarship examining the Black experience in technical and professional communication. Achieving inclusion in TPC and in the academy requires scholarship that examines efforts to create a more equitable, socially just, and race-conscious academic field. The resources presented here include research addressing issues of inclusion and equity as related to Black scholars; this list is not exhaustive.

We identify three goals for this resource list:

1. To advocate for the inclusion of Black TPC scholars’ intellectual contributions, acknowledging that our scholarship and rhetorical traditions are fundamental to developing a fuller and richer understanding of TPC’s disciplinary history and future
2. To raise awareness of and amplify Black TPC methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and spaces and places of practice
3. To identify the contours of scholarly, activist, and design work in which Black TPC practitioners have long been and continue to be engaged

As you engage with this list, please be aware that some resources are repeated across categories because we acknowledge the overlap in ideas and primary concepts. As a coalition of scholars, we are working actively to amplify Black scholars and scholarship in TPC. With that in mind, please look forward to the publication of an already-in-progress article detailing the contemporary trajectory of Black research and pedagogy in our field. The following list summarizes the themes addressed here.

Black User Experience Design: Our attention to Black perspectives on user experience design answers the question of how we can use design to enable more inclusive experiences across users, especially for Black people.

In the Community: We draw your attention to community through literature on space and place in order to consider how Blackness constitutes and is constituted by location.

Black Rhetorics of Health Communication: We draw your attention to the importance of understanding rhetorics of health communication from a Black perspective.

Social Movements, Black Activism, and Digital Rhetorics: We draw your attention to the long-standing themes of social justice in the Black rhetorical tradition and the tactics that activists use to advance social movements.

Black Cultural Rhetorics as Technical and Professional Communication: We draw your attention to the presence of Black culture and its influence on the production of technical and professional communication.

Black Digital Methods and Methodologies: We draw your attention to conversations and developing methodologies across a number of fields that use Black experience and existence as a place of departure.

Narrative and Black Experiences in TPC and the Academy: We draw your attention to the labor bestowed upon and endured by Black scholars in sharing their narratives alongside and within their TPC scholarship.

Black User Experience Design

User experience design from the perspective of Black TPC taps into Molefi K. Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity by placing the suppressed histories and experiences of the Black Diaspora at the center of evaluating the social, economic, and political aspects of design. These perspectives are driven by practitioners (rather than scholars) of technical and professional communication who push against the marginalization of Black lived experiences in design thinking. Their perspectives encourage us to consider design as it positively impacts and emerges from the needs of the Black community.

“Benjamin Evans: The Power of Inclusive Design.” Design Better from InVision, 28 May 2019, https://www.designbetter.co/podcast/benjamin-evans.

Blacks Who Design. Blacks Who Design, 2020, https://blackswho.design.

Cherry, Maurice, editor. Recognize (design anthology). 30 Sept. 2019, https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/category/recognize/.

Gebru, Timnit. “Understanding the Limits of AI: When Algorithms Fail.” MIT Technology Review, 26 Mar. 2018, https://events.technologyreview.com/video/watch/timnit-gebru-ai-limits-algorithms-fail/.

Iyamah, Jacquelyn. “Black People Have Always Been UX Designers: Space-Making Is an

Iterative Design Process.” Medium, 8 June 2019,

https://medium.com/black-ux-collective/black-people-have-always-been-ux-designers-sp

ace-making-is-an-iterative-design-process-fcefe4cce846.

Nechole, Amber. “A Journey into Afrocentric UX.” Medium, 2 Sept. 2018, https://medium.com/black-ux-collective/a-journey-into-afrocentric-ux-2709a3534521.

Revision Path. Maurice Cherry, 28 Feb. 2013, https://revisionpath.com/.

28 Black Designers. 28 Days of Black Designers Project, 2020, www.28blacks.com.

In the Community

Community in Black technical and professional communication involves considering how Black peoples are bound together in place on account of where they live, work, visit, and play. The focus on community in Black TPC centers on considerations of how rhetorical practices construct and are constructed by place to support the lives of Black peoples. In these contexts, communities can be form in workplaces, public spaces (e.g., neighborhoods, towns, barbershops, music venues), private spaces (e.g., churches), and digital spaces (e.g., Black Twitter). A focus on community takes into account the ways in which Black peoples practice forming spaces into places while using these locations to examine identities, experiences, and associations.

Battle-Baptiste, Whitney, and Britt Rusert, editors. W.E.B. DuBois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.

Brock, André, Jr. Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. New York UP, 2020.

Byrd, Antonio. “Between Learning and Opportunity: A Study of African American Coders’ Networks of Support.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 31–55.

———. “‘Like Coming Home’: African Americans Tinkering and Playing toward a Computer Code Bootcamp.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 71, no. 3, 2020, pp. 426–52.

Finney, Carolyn. Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. U of North Carolina P, 2014.

Florini, Sarah. Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks. New York UP, 2019.

McIlwain, Charlton D. Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter. Oxford UP, 2019.

Moore, Kristen R. “Black Feminist Epistemology as a Framework for Community-Based Teaching.” Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Angela M. Haas and Michelle F. Eble, Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 185–211.

Moss, Beverly J. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches. Hampton Press, 2003.

Black Rhetorics of Health Communication

Black rhetorics of health communication (BRHC) build on the work of scholars from health communication, rhetorics of health and medicine, technical and professional communication, medical communication, rhetoric, and other fields. BRHC scholarship acknowledges the health disparities and generational mistrust that Black communities have in relation to the medical establishment and discusses what happens when race, gender, and class intersect with the health-care industry. It takes account of Black maternal health, reproductive justice, Black feminism, and rhetorical theories. It brings together academics, practitioners, and health-care providers from divergent fields to discuss the design, delivery, and effects of written documents on patients, communities, and the medical profession. These works, while not rooted in TPC, are integral to any study of health communication that aims to understand and deal with issues of ethics and health disparities in American medical culture.

Davis, Angela. “Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights.” Women, Race, and Class. Random House, 1983, pp. 202–21.

Harper, Kimberly C. The Ethos of Black Motherhood in America: Only White Women Get Pregnant. Lexington Books, 2020 (forthcoming).

Heifferon, Barbara, and Stuart C. Brown. Rhetoric of Healthcare: Essays toward a New Disciplinary Inquiry. Hampton Press, 2008.

Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Free Press, 1993.

Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. U of Minnesota P, 2013.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty. Vintage, 1999.

Ross, Loretta J. The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice. Duke UP, 2016.

Ross, Loretta J., and Rickie Solinger. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. U of California P, 2017.

Smith, Wilbert. Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed. Christian Faith, 2018.

Townes, Emilie M. Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care. Wipf and Stock, 1998.

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Harlem Moon, 2006.

Social Movements, Black Activism, and Digital Rhetorics

With the social justice turn in TPC studies (see, for instance, Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action, Rebecca Walton et al., Routledge, 2019), much more scholarly and pedagogical focus has been applied to the ways in which technical and professional communication reinscribe inequities, as well as the possibilities for our discipline to intervene toward more just outcomes. As one might expect, this focus includes both a growing body of research on racial justice and calls for the fields of technical communication and professional communication to specifically redress racial harm. The short bibliography presented here aims to add dimensions to that call in three ways: (1) focusing on technology and anti-Blackness, (2) focusing on Black activists’ and Black researchers’ communication and analysis of technology and Blackness, and (3) focusing on Black activist rhetorics as kinds of technical communication.

Benjamin, Ruha. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press, 2019.

Black Lives Matter. https://blacklivesmatter.com/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2020.

BYP100. Black Youth Project 100. https://www.byp100.org/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2020.

Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke UP, 2015.

Heyl, Julia Childs. “We Hid Escape Routes in Our Roots: Honoring the History of Hair Braiding in the Black Community.” Julia Childs Heyl, 25 July 2019, http://juliachildsheyl.com/we-hid-escape-routes-in-our-roots-honoring-the-history-of-hair-braiding-in-the-black-community/.

Jones, Natasha N. “The Importance of Ethnographic Research in Activist Networks.” Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication, edited by Miriam F. Williams and Octavio Pimentel, Taylor & Francis, 2014, pp. 46–61.

Shelton, Cecilia D. On Edge: A Techné of Marginality. 2019. East Carolina University, PhD dissertation. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/7433.

Black Cultural Rhetorics as Technical and Professional Communication

Cultural rhetorics in TPC call for the use of nontraditional knowledge-making practices that are not directly tied to institutional or higher-education knowledge. Moreover, cultural rhetorics in TPC combine the lived experiences of practitioners with what we’ve come to know, and even redefine, TPC to be. This list includes scholarship that exemplifies the combination of culture and the academy while remaining true to the origin of information and its relevance.

Banks, Adam J. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground. Routledge, 2006.

Carson, A. D. Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions. 2017. Clemson University, PhD dissertation.

Cobos, C., et al. “Interfacing Cultural Rhetorics: A History and a Call.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 37, no. 2, 2018, pp. 139–54.

Hierro, Victor Del. “DJs, Playlists, and Community: Imagining Communication Design through Hip Hop.” Communication Design Quarterly Review, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 28–39.

Jackson, Ronald L., II, and Elaine B. Richardson, editors. Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations. Routledge, 2014.

Leger, Shewonda. The Cultivation of Haitian Women’s Sense of Selves: Towards a Field of Action. 2019. Michigan State University, PhD dissertation.

Mckoy, Temptaous T. Y’all Call It Technical and Professional Communication, We Call It #ForTheCulture: The Use of Amplification Rhetorics in Black Communities and Their Implications for Technical and Professional Communication Studies. 2019. East Carolina University, PhD dissertation.

Richardson, Elaine. African American Literacies. Psychology Press, 2003.

Watts, Eric King. “‘Voice’ and ‘Voicelessness’ in Rhetorical Studies.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 87, no. 2, 2001, pp. 179–96.

Black Digital Methods and Methodologies

The following is a working list of sources that highlight Black digital methods and methodologies across various fields. One commonality among these methods lies in the fact that they center Black experience(s) as a way of understanding technology, community, ownership, and ethics through a cultural lens. Understanding that digital or online data are “always already” shaped by and through people, these methods stress that data are never separate from human experience. Thus, they remind us that we should continue to cultivate research practices that are critical, relative, and multifaceted.

Brown, Nicole M. “Methodological Cyborg as Black Feminist Technology: Constructing the Social Self Using Computational Digital Autoethnography and Social Media.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 19, no. 1, 2019, pp. 55–67.

Everett, Anna. “The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere.” Social Text, vol. 20, no. 2, 2002, pp. 125–46.

Jones, Natasha N. “Rhetorical Narratives of Black Entrepreneurs: The Business of Race, Agency, and Cultural Empowerment.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, vol. 31, no. 3, 2017, pp. 319–49.

Richardson, Elaine, and Alice Ragland. “#StayWoke: The Language and Literacies of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 2018, pp. 27–56.

Sawyer, LaToya Lydia. “Don’t Try and Play Me Out!”: The Performances and Possibilities of Digital Black Womanhood. 2017. Syracuse University, PhD dissertation. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/785.

Wourman, Ja’La J., and Shingi Mavima. “Our Story Had to Be Told! A Look at the Intersection of the Black Campus Movement and Black Digital Media.” Spark: A 4C4Equality Journal, vol 2, no. 9, 2020, sparkactivism.com/volume-2-call/vol-2-intro/our-story-had-to-be-told/.

Narrative and Black Experiences in TPC and the Academy

The following list provides resources on narrative (and storytelling) and Black experiences in TPC and the academy. Narrative resources can include scholarship that examines or explains how narrative, storytelling, or both are used by Black scholars (in method, theory, and practice). Narrative approaches to research and pedagogy often highlight the lived experiences of Black scholars in TPC, in the academy, and in the world. As a result, this list also includes scholarship about the lived experiences of Black scholars in technical and professional communication and beyond.

Baker-Bell, April. “For Loretta: A Black Woman Literacy Scholar’s Journey to Prioritizing Self-Preservation and Black Feminist–Womanist Storytelling.” Journal of Literacy Research, vol. 49, no. 4, 2017, pp. 526–43.

Edwards, Jessica. “Race and the Workplace: Toward a Critically Conscious Pedagogy.” Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Angela M. Hass and Michelle F. Eble, Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 268–86.

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This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

Thursday, September 24, 2020
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET

View the webinar recording

While this recording is available to everyone, you will need to login into the NCTE site to view the video (there is no cost to create a login). To view this video with closed captioning, hover over the bottom right of the video and click “CC” and “English.”

This panel features four recipients of the 2020 CCCC Disability in College Composition Travel Award. An audience-driven Q&A as well as networking time will follow the presentations.

Presenters:

Anna Barritt, University of Oklahoma
“When UDL Isn’t Enough: Navigating Institutional Barriers to Access”
Universal design for learning is critical for creating an accessible and inclusive classroom environment, but writing instructors are often left with insufficient resources and guidance for supporting students with disabilities beyond access to class content. This presentation documents one administrator’s journey in making a writing program more widely accessible, including the failures, successes, and lessons learned.

Adam Hubrig, Sam Houston State University
“Eugenic Ideologies in Composition’s Past and Present”
As composition studies was forming in America, so were eugenic ideologies. This presentation explores how eugenic ideology continues to shape conversations about composition.

Jessie Male, The Ohio State University and NYU Gallatin
“Building a Community of the Sick (Or Why You Should Read the Acknowledgments)”
This presentation will address the teaching of pain memoirs, specifically Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, Sonya Huber’s Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System, and Esmé Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias. These texts demonstrate a veritable shift within the genre of disability memoir by capturing disability identities and experiences that don’t adhere to a social model—writing that both indicates disability pride and a desire for cure. The presentation focuses on how the utilization of these memoirs in the classroom complicate popular understandings of disability as enforced isolation, potentially shifting students’ relationships with their own bodies and communities, inviting them to consider disability as transformative and rooted in care.

Ruth Osorio, Old Dominion University
“Inviting Human Frailty into the Academic Conference: An Analysis and Oral History of the CCCC Access Guides Authors”
This presentation examines the rhetorical work that goes into composing genres that enact access within professional settings.  Furthermore, the presented will discuss how these guides enact access as an ongoing rhetorical project, in which a community welcomes, values, and makes space for the presence of human frailty.

Moderator: Christina V. Cedillo, University of Houston-Clear Lake

Respondent: Jay Dolmage, University of Waterloo

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Committee Members

Alexandria Lockett, Co-chair
Matthew Vetter, Co-chair
Sweta Baniya
Charles Bazerman
Dana Comi
Dylan B. Dryer
Tarez Samra Graban
Jennifer K. Johnson

Committee Charge

1. Knowledge Equity: Focus the efforts of the initiative on knowledge and communities marginalized by structures of power and privilege within academia and Wikipedia.
2. Capacity Building: Organize events, programs, and collaborative projects for CCCC members editing Wikipedia as subject specialists.
3. Infrastructure: Develop online spaces to provide support resources and ongoing opportunities for engagement, collaboration, and community for initiative participants.
4. Sustainability: Serve as primary point of contact with initiative partners, advisors, and personnel, and work with the NCTE Executive Director to develop grant proposals to fund activities with associated costs.
5. Research and recommendations: Track participation and assess impacts of initiative activities, circulating findings and actionable recommendations to the CCCC Executive Committee and interested stakeholders.