Category: Uncategorized

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research I University, State University

Characterization of Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What went wrong?  What went right?

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

Sherry Richer: Case #4

Characterization of Institution

Research I

Characterization of Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What went wrong?  What went right?

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

“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 

 

 

 

 

   

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

1. First-Year Writing

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

2. College Writing and Reading

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

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

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

4. Writing Programs

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

5. Writing Centers (including Writing and Speaking Centers)

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

6. Community, Civic, and Public Contexts of Writing

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

7. Approaches to Teaching and Learning

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

8. Inclusion and Access

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

9. Histories of Rhetoric

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

10. Creative Writing and Publishing

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

11. Information Literacy and Technology

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

12. Language, Literacy, and Culture

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

13. Professional and Technical Writing

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

14. Theory, Research Methodologies, and Praxis

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

15. Antiracism and Social Justice

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

16. Writing Abundance

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

 

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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We will send an email 24 hours in advance that is putting the cancelation policy in effect, if that are any cancelations made within 24 hours passengers are reliable for the fare unless it is the airline that cancels, with more than a 24-hour notice all cancelations are free. Passengers MUST CALL  to cancel, no email cancelations will be accepted. 

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As soon as the trip is completed and payment has been processed we will send a payment receipt to the email on file. 

 

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.

 

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.

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.)