2025 Call for Proposals

Submit a Proposal

The proposal submission database is now open.

Proposal deadline for the 2025 CCCC Annual Convention is 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 31, 2024.

Full Call for Proposals

Criteria and Guidelines

General Information

Program Format

Area Clusters

Information Required to Submit

Volunteer to Review Proposals

Grants and Travel Awards

Important Dates

Proposal database opens: April 6, 2024

Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 31, 2024
Proposal notifications: Early September 2024
Session schedule notifications: December 2024
Convention dates: April 9–12, 2025, Baltimore, MD

Questions and requests for coaches can be sent to CCCCevents@ncte.org.

“Computer Love”: Extended Play, B-sides, Remix, Collaboration, and Creativity

2025 CCCC Program Chair: Kofi J. Adisa

Where do music and writing intersect for you, dear reader?

If you are like me, music holds a significant place in your life. Whether it’s rock, R & B, country, classical, pop, rap, jazz, techno, funk, reggae, or Afrobeat, my love for music is as eclectic as my reading lists. In fact, reading and listening to music underpin many of my creative and intellectual endeavors. When I compose fiction, assignment prompts, or student evaluations, I often have some kind of music playing in the background. There’s something neurological happening as Miles Davis plays or as Dave Grohl sings. I’m listening and listening as my mind focuses on and ponders the tasks at hand.

I don’t think I’m alone.

One of my favorite songs is “Computer Love” by the funk band Zapp. The song is from the band’s 1985 album The New Zapp IV U. My late mom played it often when I was a teen. She especially liked how Roger Troutman used the “talk box,” which was a device hooked up to a keyboard or guitar that made his voice sound, well, computerized. The synthesization of his voice and the instrument did not end with him or with the talk box. Teddy Riley, an experimentalist musician in his own right (Corbett; Miller), also used it, and many artists—including Cher, T-Pain, Kanye West, and others from the late 90s and early 2000s—used Auto-Tune, an even more computerized processor to mask and alter their singing voices (Reynolds).

Though the oversaturation of Auto-Tune turned me off, those earlier Zapp songs never failed me. As I am writing this call for proposals, Zapp’s song “More Bounce to the Ounce,” off the band’s 1980 self-titled debut album, plays—computerization and all. In fact, the version I am listening to is an extended play, meaning the original 5:11 version has a longer instrumental that extends the song to 9:27. This extended mix is not new or original to dance music. B-sides of songs and albums have a long history, too much for the purposes of this writing (see Eaton; Elkhwad; Paphides; Wald) and give listeners another level or version of the music.

If we think about the nature of music, with its the syncopation, blending, and sampling of sounds, and if we extend our thinking to writing, with its incorporation of visuals, graphics, and other designs, we can remix and play with them and create a sociocultural practice within the genre (Church; Jordan and Miller; Tinsley). For example, remix writing assignments with an attention to music or integrate music into the creation stage of composing; have students create a visual and musical autoethnography or a rhetorical soundtrack for their previous or current semester; collaborate with other disciplines to develop a curriculum that samples, remixes, or bridges reading, thinking, writing, music, and technology. Countless possibilities exist in the remix.

Likewise, the B-side or 33⅓ offers another sociocultural practices. B-sides are the songs not on the original albums and are themselves cultural phenomena (Elkhwad). Kind of like Solange being the B-side to Beyoncé, the 33⅓ reveals something hidden, unique, unexpected, novel—the type of music where you wonder why it wasn’t on the original or as popular. This isn’t to say that the B-side is better or worse than the A-side of an album or, in my example, of the sisters. (Of course, both sisters have their A- and B-sides.) My point is that the B-side plays, experiments, and distinguishes itself from the usual, the norm. If we think of our classrooms as spaces to play the B-side of teaching and learning, for instance, what could that look like? In what ways can the incorporation of technology distinguish student writing or its labor from traditional approaches to research, self-expression, or argumentation? B-sides to writing pedagogy might look completely different than A-sides or traditional writing education.

Because this technological writing collaboration exists in movies, animations, and, of course, writing, our position as teacher-scholars, theorists, writers, and lifelong learners should be as cautious practitioners of this creative moment. Technologies such as generative AI (GAI) offer possibilities but also ethical dilemmas. Remixing or sampling GAI in writing assignments might create opportunities to expand digital and AI literacies for all students. Finding the B-side to Information literacy skills may sharpen students’ understanding and transfer across disciplines. Still, students will need to learn how to distinguish disparate voices coming together to make a new song (think about “That’s What Friends Are For”) from artificial ones (think “Heart on My Sleeve” [Shanfeld]). Student voices should not be supplanted by GAI or other technologies. Instead, their voices, our voices, should blend in a rhythm and style of collaboration, like with a talk box, or a computer love.

Area Clusters to Remix

The following question clusters are examples that might help you organize your proposals and create a program. The full list of area clusters is available here. 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.

First-Year Writing as a Space to Remix

How might first-year writing (FYW) curricula be remade so that music, technology use, and play occur organically?
How can peer review become another kind of collaborative remix?
What would sampling other disciplines do for FYW?

College Writing and Reading as a B-side to Literacy

How do we flip the script on corequisite and developmental writing and reading to engage the creative side of literacy?
How do we collaborate with a technology that assures student readers and writers?
How would this B-side be measured? Can it be measured?
Where do our K–12 partners fit into this extended play of music, culture, and collaboration?

The Extended Play of Inclusion and Access

What spaces can open for LGBTQIA+ students to compose and create a holistic dataset that may be absent from current models?
What possibilities remain hidden on the B-side of technology that can support neurotypical and neurodiverse students?
Where can prior knowledge and learning for nontraditional students be another kind of extended play of access and opportunities?

Remixing Writing Programs

How can generative AI, music, and assessment work together to inform creativity in writing?
How might writing program administrators leverage technologies to remix their institutional contexts?
What would distinguish an undergraduate’s remix of a research project from a graduate student’s project?
How might Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines be better served as an extended play, a remix, or a B-side collaboration with other curricula or disciplines?

A Mixtape of Language, Literacy, and Culture

Can remixing, extending the play, and collaborating present new opportunities for World Englishes speakers, non-English speakers, or L2 readers and writers?
How might cultural music be a source of collaboration, analysis, or literacy practice?
Where do community and cultural literacy intersect with the remix?

The following range of topics is not exhaustive, and I hope it inspires a kind of play between composition, remix, collaboration, and creativity:

Autoethnographic Playlist: Historical, Cultural, and Political Meaning of the Personal Soundtrack
The Rhetorical Nature of Vinyl, Turntables, Sound, and the Typewriter
Reading with Machines: How Neurodiverse Students Learn with AI Assistant Tools
Translating Words, Images, and Sound
Fly Gods, Fly Girls, and African American Vernacular English in the Age of AI
Remix, Collaborate Black Womanism/Feminism Technology, Vernacular
For the Love of Reading, Writing, and Machine Learning
Displacing Authentic Voices and the Subjectivity of Algorithms
The Composition of House, Techno, Afrobeat, and the Computer: Creating New Ways of Feeling and Thinking about the Language of Music
Literacies Needed: Posthuman, AI, and Digital Discourses
Queer the Turntables: Sexuality, Identity, and Extended Play, Remix, and Creativity
Turn It Up: Language Acquisition, MTV, and Cassette Tapes

General Information about Proposals

Members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and others who are interested in the goals and activities of CCCC, are invited to submit proposals for sessions, posters, and workshops at the 2025 CCCC Annual Convention. Nonmembers are welcome to submit proposals but are urged to join the organization. CCCC is a nonprofit organization and cannot reimburse program participants for travel or hotel expenses.

Competition for a place on the program remains intense. Because of limited space availability, many good proposals will be left unaccepted. The practice of peer-reviewing proposals without names attached will continue, as will the practice of using the number of proposals received in each area cluster to determine the percentage of the program devoted to that specific area. Reviewers with special expertise in each area will advise the program chair on proposal acceptance.

Proposals must be submitted by 9 a.m. ET, Friday, May 31, 2024.

Cool Baltimore Attractions

Baltimore is home to a variety of attractions, notably the Inner Harbor and the National Aquarium. One of the other must-sees is the Sound Garden, located at 1616 Thames Street; this independent record store sells, buys, and houses “an immense and eclectic selection of music, movies, and real cool stuff,” according to its website. The 6000-plus-square-foot warehouse has vinyl, CDs, stickers, books, and so much more. Voted In Rolling Stone as the second-best record store in the US, it might be one of the best spots to find rare or vintage albums in the country.

The Book Escape is another attraction, especially for those looking for rare or vintage books. Located at 925 South Charles Street, the bookstore holds more than forty thousand titles, and shipping within the US is free.

B-side References

Church, Scott Haden. Introduction. Turntables and Tropes: A Rhetoric of Remix, by Church, Michigan State UP, 2022, pp. 1–14.

Corbett, John. Microgroove: Forays into Other Music. Duke UP, 2015.

Eaton, George. “Ming Your B-side.” New Statesman, 30 Jan. 2012.

Elkhwad, Halla. “The Function of the B-side in Modern Music Production: How a Relic of the Physical Music Format Era Became a Site of Experimentation.” 34th Street Magazine, 5 Oct. 2022, https://www.34st.com/article/2022/10/b-sides-sufjan-stevens-cd-tame-impala-gorillaz-beach-house-remix.

Jordan, Ken, and Paul D. Miller. “Freeze Frame: Audio, Aesthetics, Sampling, and Contemporary Multimedia.” In Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture, edited by Paul D. Miller, pp. 97–108. MIT Press, 2008.

Miller, Paul D., editor. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. MIT Press, 2008.

Paphides, Pete. “An Ode to the Joy and Madness of the B-side.” Vinyl Factory, 17 May 2017, https://thevinylfactory.com/features/an-ode-to-the-joy-and-madness-of-the-b-side/.

Reynolds, Simon. “How Auto-Tune Revolutionized the Sound of Popular Music.” Pitchfork, 17 Sept. 2018, https://pitchfork.com/features/article/how-auto-tune-revolutionized-the-sound-of-popular-music/.

Shanfeld, Ethan. “Ghostwriter’s ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ the AI-Generated Song Mimicking Drake and the Weeknd, Submitted for Grammys.” Variety, 26 Sept. 2023, https://variety.com/2023/music/news/ai-generated-drake-the-weeknd-song-submitted-for-grammys-1235714805/.

Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism. U of Texas P, 2018.

Wald, Gayle. “‘Have a Little Talk’: Listening to the B-side of History.” Popular Music, vol. 24, no. 3, 2005, pp. 323–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143005000541.

Zapp. “Computer Love.” The New Zapp IV U, track 2, Spotify app, Warner Records, 1985.

—. “More Bounce to the Ounce.” Zapp, track 1, Spotify app, Warner Records, 1980.