Institute Date: November 3, 2025
Proposal Deadline: Wednesday, August 13, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. ET
Submit a Proposal
Important Dates
* Informational Meeting with Co-chairs:
Tuesday, July 22, 2025, 3:00–4:00 p.m. ET (Optional)
Register to Attend via Zoom
* Proposal deadline: Wednesday, August 13, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. ET
* Proposal notifications: Early September 2025
* Fall Virtual Institute: Monday, November 3, 2025
Please email cccc@ncte.org with questions.
Several need-based waivers will be offered for accepted presenters. An application will be shared when acceptances are sent in early September.
About the Virtual Institute
The CCCC Virtual Institute is an opportunity for teachers and researchers in composition and rhetoric to be in conversation with one another outside of the Annual Convention. This one-day event will have a program of presentations, roundtables, showcases, and workshops, all of which will be open to registered attendees. The goal of the annual Virtual Institute is for CCCC members to learn from one another and engage with each other on a topic of broad significance to the field.
Teaching Writing as a Public Good
2025 Virtual Institute Program Co-chairs: Sherita Roundtree, Towson University, and Amy J. Wan, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY
“The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself.”
—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
The theme of the second annual CCCC Fall Virtual Institute is Teaching Writing as a Public Good. CCCC selected this theme given the ongoing push in the United States to privatize public services, and the continued attacks on public education (Commer 2024), revocation of grants for higher education (Cantwell 2025), and deconstruction of other public services and resources more broadly. Personhood itself is also under threat as evidenced by dehumanizing anti-trans, anti-immigrant, and anti-choice legislation and policies. And minoritized people continue to face precarity due to state-sponsored violence, such as the increased militarization and authoritative freedom of police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and some political representatives. These material and ideological conditions make our work not only more challenging but also devalued. These sociopolitical understandings about the relationship between writing classrooms and the public lead us to consider the following questions, which serve as a guide for this year’s institute:
- What role does composition as a field play amidst such hostility toward ourselves, our students, and our communities?
- How is writing a vital practice in the struggle to survive?
Writing as a public good, and the teaching of writing as a way to cultivate that public good, is a political commitment—an urgent one. This commitment calls for our collective movement, efforts, and thinking inside and outside our academic institutions. Writing as a public good is often assumed to be a goal of writing classes from the first year and beyond in two- and four-year institutions. It implies a shared benefit, community, and relationality, as well as a writing practice that has an impact beyond the classroom door (Mathieu 2005). Writing classes that take up the mantle of the public good often move beyond the classroom and institutional space by allowing students to practice writing in community, social, disciplinary, and professional contexts. But such classes might also be making assumptions about who the “public” is and what serves as good for them, ignoring community dreams and desires.
Our hope is that the institute’s conversations will complicate common assumptions that writing is always a public good while also examining ways to strengthen writing’s efficacy in public spaces. We recognize the variety of frameworks that conceive of writing as a public good, including ones that emerge from considerations of virtue and ethics (Duffy 2019), justice (Kynard 2018, Hubrig 2020), citizenship and democracy (Jacobson and Shah 2023, Wan 2014), civic engagement (Holmes 2016), community writing (Blancato et al. 2022, Johnson 2017, Moss 2010, Pritchard 2017, Sackey 2024), work (Bollig 2025), technology (Pigg 2021), multimodality (Tham and Jiang 2024), social movements (Richardson and Ragland 2018), and public policy (Commer 2024, Flowers 2024). We also draw from literacy studies to avoid assumptions that writing’s “good” is autonomous (Street 1984, Vieira et al. 2020). In addition, we encourage that we all keep in mind how writing—and the teaching of writing—can enact and perpetuate great harm for various publics.
And while composition as a field has a long history of both explicitly and implicitly connecting our work with the public and imagining what we do as/for a public good, our relationship with the public has not always been reciprocal. Our expertise often feels ignored when public discourse on social media, major news outlets, and public-facing academic publications address issues of literacy and writing through a narrow scope of what it is and is not, what can and cannot be—despite our field challenging binaric literacy assessments and documenting the multiplicity of literacies over time. To that end, this year’s Virtual Institute provides an opportunity for us in rhetoric and composition to consider how we might do more to foster reciprocity with the public through public writing, collaboration, service, instruction, and so on.
We hope that part of these discussions will question the idea of writing as a public good while also prioritizing idea generation, interaction, and collaborative learning toward the cultivation of hooks’s “engaged voice.” This year’s institute provides a space for us, as teachers and researchers, to be in conversation with one another about the ways we can realize that commitment. We seek proposals that address some of (but are not limited to) the following questions:
- Teaching Public Writing:
- What are best practices for projects and classroom practices that can guide students with their public writing?
- How does critical thinking help bridge the gap between writing classrooms and public spaces?
- What are the conflicts between teaching and believing in the value of writing for the public good and the way that the concept of “public good” has been weaponized toward different student populations?
- Public Perceptions of Writing
- What does the public understand writing to be?
- How does our work as writing researchers and practitioners engage public perceptions about the purposes and possibilities of writing?
- Reassessing the Idea of a “Public Good”
- What are our assumptions about what is “good” for ourselves and others?
- How are our assumptions about the public good informed by our own subject positions and/or local contexts?
- How do we manage the labor (emotional, physical, institutional) of public writing?
- Contexts for Public Writing
- Who and/or what informs how the public is defined and what communities are/are not accounted for within those definitions?
- How do public policies limit and/or expand the potentialities of writing as a public good?
- How do we teach when there is active local legislation against it?
- How do institutional and political contexts affect public writing projects?
- Public Writing Technologies
- What affordances and constraints accompany digital and multimodal public writing projects?
Program Format
We invite Group (4–6 people) and Individual proposals for this year’s CCCC Fall Virtual Institute, devoted to critical conversations on “wicked problems” challenging rhetoric and composition. We will prioritize proposals that speak to the ways they might engage a virtual audience.
Presenters will choose one of four session formats that prioritize interaction and application among themselves, attendees, and the public—broadly defined. Across these session formats, presenters and attendees will have an opportunity to workshop in-process materials; connect theory to practice; respond to topic-specific positionings; and learn from others who are doing this work. Session formats include the following:
- Public Writing in Process: This session format invites presenters to collaboratively workshop in-process program plans, curricula, assignments, or other forms of public writing beyond the classroom and/or lead virtual institute attendees to workshop their classroom and other public writing materials. Presenters will facilitate a participatory, process-based session that practices the steps of document revision in real-time. This session structure is ideal for those who have materials that are in draft form or in need of reimagining and could benefit from collaboratively generated feedback.
- Material Showcase: This session format invites those who have incorporated public writing into their programs, courses, assignments, or other forms of scholarship. Presenters will describe a program, class, assignment, or other context for public writing, offering an opportunity to share details about implementation, considerations of local contexts, success stories, as well as frictions and roadblocks, and offer advice for those interested in developing their own projects. We imagine that these sessions are an opportunity for attendees to hear from and ask questions of colleagues who have worked on public writing projects and learn about best practices.
- Roundtables: This session format invites both groups and individuals to discuss an element of public writing including but not limited to theory and history to practice considerations; administration; curriculum; assessment; writing for public audiences; translating the concerns of our field for the public, including in public policy and legislation; community writing; labor and public writing. Roundtable participants should propose a topic and their stance, and they should be prepared to present a short position, participate in a conversation with other presenters, and prepare a couple of questions that invite attendees to the conversation.
- Generative Groups: This session format mirrors the approaches of a think tank where a group (or more) discusses a series of questions, offers a set of instructions, and/or provides a set of tools for idea building. This session is meant to not only prioritize creation and development for presenters but also for attendees. Proposals for these generative groups should identify a problem of policy or practice, using the session time to work together to develop a response and/or plan of action. In this case, presenters should consider an activity structure that encourages attendees to identify the implications of the group activity for their own communities and contexts.
Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria
For Group (4–6 speakers) Proposals
- Proposals should be no more than 1,000 words long.
- The proposal should speak directly to the session format—public writing in process, material showcase, roundtable, generative group.
- The proposal is grounded in a concept or series of concepts related to public writing and the session format.
- The proposal offers explicit ideas about how the presentation will engage a virtual audience.
Although this is not a deal breaker for program acceptance, we encourage and will prioritize proposals that include presenters from two or more of the following institution types: community colleges, HBCUs, tribal colleges, colleagues from institutions outside the United States, teaching colleges, HSIs, and/or AANAPISIs.
For Individual Proposals
- Proposals should be no more than 500 words long.
- The proposal speaks directly to the session format—public writing in process, material showcase, roundtable, generative group.
- The proposal is grounded in a concept or series of concepts related to public writing and the session format.
- The proposal offers explicit ideas about how the presentation will engage a virtual audience
Please note that you do not need to be on the program to attend scheduled sessions and share ideas with the larger learning community at the Virtual Institute.
Works Cited
Blancato, Michael, et al. “Brokering Community-Engaged Writing Pedagogies: Instructors Imagining and Negotiating Race, Space, and Literacy.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2022, pp. 23–46.
Bollig, Chase. “Postcapitalist Professionalization: Civic Education and the Future of Work.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 76, no. 3, 2025, pp. 370–95.
Cantwell, Brendan. “What Will Be Left of Higher Education in Four Years?” Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 June 2025. https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-will-be-left-of-higher-ed-in-four-years
Commer, Carolyn D. Championing a Public Good: A Call to Advocate for Higher Education. Penn State UP, 2024.
Duffy, John. Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing. Utah State UP, 2019.
Flowers, Katherine S. Making English Official: Writing and Resisting Local Language Politics. Cambridge Press, 2024.
Holmes, Ashley J. Public Pedagogy in Composition Studies. National Council of Teachers of English, 2016.
Hubrig, Adam. “‘We Move Together’: Reckoning with Disability Justice in Community Literacy Studies.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2020, pp. 144–53.
Jacobson, Brad, and Rachael W. Shah. “Building Our Ideals into Program Structures: Democratic Design in Program Administration.” Composition Studies, vol. 51, no. 2, 2023, pp. 86–105.
Johnson, Latrise P. “Writing the Self: Black Queer Youth Challenge Heteronormative Ways of Being in an After-School Writing Club. Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 52, no. 1, 2017, pp. 13–33.
Kynard, Carmen. “Stayin Woke: Race-Radical Literacies in the Makings of a Higher Education.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 69, no. 3, 2018, pp. 519–29.
Mathieu, Paula. Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition. Boynton/Cook, 2005.
Moss, Beverly J. “‘Phenomenal Women,’ Collaborative Literacies, and Community Texts in Alternative ‘Sista’ Spaces.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–24.
Pigg, Stacey. Transient Literacies in Action: Composing with the Mobile Surround. WAC Clearinghouse, 2021.
Pritchard, Eric Darnell. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Southern Illinois UP, 2017.
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.
Sackey, Donnie Johnson. “How Community Means.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, 2024, pp. 50–55.
Street, Brian. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge UP, 1984.
Tham, Jason, and Jialei Jiang. “Understanding Writing Instructors’ Feelings toward the Affordances of Multimodal Social Advocacy Projects: Implications for Service-Learning Pedagogies.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 76, no. 1, 2024, pp. 4–34.
Vieira, Kate, et al. “Literacy Is a Sociohistoric Phenomenon with the Potential to Liberate and Oppress.” (Re)Considering What We Know: Learning Thresholds in Writing, Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State UP, 2020, pp. 36–55.
Wan, Amy J. Producing Good Citizens: Literacy Training in Anxious Times. U of Pittsburgh P, 2014.
