Category: Composition

GCCRC notes from 2010-10-26

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings > notes for Tues. Oct. 26th

On the table: a zoom-out approach to Journal of Basic Writing, Spring 2010, Vol. 29 Issue 1

Pedagogical Brainstorm

  • Look through your article, find a quotation (around a sentence long – perhaps a main claim (and if not, be prepared to summarize for context)), and, in an inkshed, play both the believing and doubting games with that quote. Read aloud from these inksheds.
  • Pass to the right a sentence from your article, and have that person play the believing and doubting games with that sentence.
  • Summarize a moment in your article, and then ask a series of questions raised by that moment, and pass both summary and questions to the others in the group; inkshed back to those questions.
  • Call back to a previous zoom-in text, and write in that author’s voice: how would that author respond to / critique your current article (e.g. if they were called upon to review this article for their journal)?
  • Or, even aside from a particular role-play, review the new article as if it had been submitted to a previously encountered journal: what makes this JBW article not a CCC article? (Or substitute journals as needed.)

For today, we choose the first.

Notes on articles

The Future of Basic Writing

by George Otte and Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk.

presented by Dominique Zino

Teaching Basic Writing in a Web-Enhanced Environment

by Linda J. Stine.

presented by Rebecca Mlynarczyk

More Talk about “Basic Writers”: A Category of Rhetorical Value.

by Pamela VanHaitsma

presented by Ben Miller

For the Future

  • For next week: zoom-in on “The Future of Basic Writing,” by Rebecca Mlynarczyk and George Otte


GCCRC sign-up 2

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings > advance sign-up for Tues. Oct. 19th

Sign up to read and report back on one of the titles below, by adding your name on the appropriate bulleted line. To edit just one section of the page, click the “Edit” link next to the section heading.

Journal of Basic Writing, Spring2010, Vol. 29 Issue 1

The Future of Basic Writing

by George Otte and Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk.

abstract from author:

In this article, we assess the status of basic writing early in the twenty-first century. Beginning with a discussion of the attacks on BW that intensified during the 1990s and early 2000s—attacks that originated from such diverse sources as state legislatures, university officials, and BW scholars themselves—we go on to summarize the responses to these attacks in the form of modified BW programs and practices. What does the future hold for basic writing and basic writers? There are no clear answers to this question. But the recent influx of increasing numbers of non-traditional students to the nation’s colleges and universities indicates that the need for basic writing and other compensatory programs will increase substantially in the years to come. And research suggests that, in the long run, providing access to higher education along with appropriate forms of academic support such as basic writing pays off for individuals and for society.

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  • Dominique Zino

Teaching Basic Writing in a Web-Enhanced Environment

by Linda J. Stine.

abstract from author:

Remarkably little has been published on what works or does not work in online basic writing (BW) instruction. Internet-based learning is not a natural fit for BW students, and instructors planning hybrid or distance learning courses face a difficult task, with little theory to guide them. This article reviews current research and advice on three key questions about web-based learning in general: how online learning affects the teaching role, what kinds of assignments are appropriate to this medium, and how teachers can best promote the sort of student self-reflection important to academic success. BW teachers are encouraged to consider carefully how best to translate general Web-based teaching/learning theory into praxis tailored to their specific students and then to share the results, so that their questions, their experiences, and the experiences of their students begin to play a larger role in the online education debate.

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  • Amanda Licastro

Expanding Definitions of Academic Writing: Family History Writing

by Sherry Rankins-Robertson; Lisa Cahill; Duane Roen; Gregory R. Glau.

abstract from author:

Narrow definitions of academic writing often do not serve students well because they ignore the rhetorically situated and social bases for writing and the potential role of writing to span the personal, professional, and civic areas of students’ lives. Broadening school-sponsored writing to include writing about family can help students to see the relevance of writing to their lives outside of school. Further, writing about family can encourage students to reflect critically on their conceptions of family, often coming to see family as a more complex construct. Using the topic of family in writing courses provides opportunities for students to engage in non-threatening primary and secondary research and involves students in writing that is multimodal, cultural, academic, and public. This article describes some activities and assignments that help writers to explore the concept of family.

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Realizing Distributed Gains: How Collaboration with Support Services Transformed a Basic Writing Program for International Students.

by Mutiara Mohamad and Janet Boyd

abstract from author:

As part of a broad, campus-wide Writing Initiative designed to improve student- writing skills, Fairleigh Dickinson University opened a new campus writing center in fall 2006. Concurrently, a separate component of this initiative was launched to replace the English for General Purposes instruction offered in the traditional English as a Second Language program with English for Specific Purposes, which provides non-native English speakers with discipline-specific instruction to improve their English proficiency. The newly appointed directors of these programs-the authors of this article-found themselves in a fortuitous collaboration that organically shaped the services each delivered. This collaboration eventually resulted in a basic writing model permutation that speaks to current trends in the field. This article (1) provides the developmental history of our collaboration, (2) describes the model of basic writing that emerged at our institution, which although specifically designed for students who are non-native English speakers has practical implications for all basic writers; and (3) demonstrates how campus support services provide students with the means for sustainable success beyond the classroom by extending the learning community.

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More Talk about “Basic Writers”: A Category of Rhetorical Value.

by Pamela VanHaitsma

abstract from author:

This article recuperates the notion of “strategic value,” but to new ends: rather than arguing whether or not basic writing should continue, this case study looks to one institution where it does, asking what value the category “basic writer” holds for teachers at this site. On the one hand, they confirm the existing scholarship’s critiques of the category’s strategic limitations. At the same time, they maintain its potential value when leveraged as a tactic to argue for resources for students, attempt to understand students, and articulate a view of teaching as in service of social justice. Given these tensions between problematic and productive uses of the term “basic writer,” debates about basic writing’s existence would be better served if they shifted away from wholesale critique or defense and instead grappled with more rhetorical questions about value for particular institutions or programs at specific moments in time.

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  • Ben Miller


GCCRC Notes 2010-10-12

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings > notes from Tues. Oct. 12th zoom-in session

Opening Thoughts

  • At the intersession workshop, we should discuss teaching practica at the various campuses. How to balance the needs of different students (i.e. us, the teachers practicing) at each campus, with different backgrounds?

Pedagogical Proposals

Notes on Douglas Hesse’s article

Choosing next week’s zoom-out session

We will be dividing up the articles from the most recent (Spring 2010) issue of the Journal of Basic Writing. Titles, abstracts, and sign-up page coming soon.

GCCRC Notes 2010-10-05

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings > notes from Tues. Oct. 5th zoom-out session

Pedagogical Strategy

Suppose you’d assigned readings to your students. (Suppose they might be grad students.) How would you start the lesson? What would you want them to share? (Note: these are possibilities in no particular order, not a sequence of activities we’re recommending doing all of.)

a) Freewrite/inkshed for 5-10 minutes on one/any of the questions below.

b) What conversation(s) is this text participating in? What is it responding to?

c) What sort of work is this text doing: is it solving a problem? Identifying a new problem? Offering new language/lenses to understand something? Examining pragmatic applications of theory (e.g. pedagogical or institutional case studies / anecdotes)?

Reports on text

Responsibility and Composition’s Future in the Twenty-first Century

Identifying a problem: “accountability” introduces too many audiences, some of which we might not even be aware of; accountability also takes authority away from the assessors/teachers, placing authority in the hands of governing bodies (administrators and national figures), most of whom are far away from the classroom and students.

Changing language: moving from “accountability” to “responsibility.”

Pragmatic applications: what notable programs have done; how “responsibility” will influence our approaches to assessment; e-portfolios, transparency, and an emphasis on local rubrics.

connection to Colomb: what publics want and will pay for; shifting vocab to signal different ownership

Franchising the Future, by Gregory G. Colomb

Changing language: The difference between service and public service (franchise) is the difference between a servant and a public servant: the former is told what to do, while the latter is told what his/her goals are (what the needs of the community are), and then given freedom to achieve those goals however he/she sees fit.

Seeking New Worlds: The Study of Writing beyond Our Classrooms, by Bronwyn T. Williams

The good news: The interest in writing beyond the traditional first-year and college composition programs has in many ways grown in the field of rhetoric and composition in recent years, often encompassing varied scholarship reflecting research and theory.

The bad news: We are doing this work largely out of contact with other complementary fields, where similar issues, research, and questions are taking place. These complementary fields (including K-12 literacy education, ethnographic and international literacy studies, and media studies) are doing what Williams calls “astonishingly similar,” even parallel work, but scholarly conversations are not taking place across fields and we’re not citing them in our work (with some exceptions, of course). Literacy is a set of socially constructed and culturally mediated practices, not a set of stand alone skills — we should not limit our professional interests to college writing. Writing happens everywhere and we should study it everywhere.

Change is small and local: The focus of our field has not undergone any transformation, or any conscious repositioning (despite calls for it in various places over the years), and seems to often step outside the scope of college writing only on an individual and/or small scale basis.

So what’s our problem? Do we feel our professional identity is being questioned? By others? By ourselves? Why are we not engaging with those in other literacy-related fields? We need a broader focus in our work, and to engage in broader conversations with other fields of related research. We need to actively rethink our research and publishing practices.

Reasons for this narrow vision? We tend to build our scholarship on scholarship that has already existed in our field, and academia and institutional practices encourage this. Makes it harder to step outside the box, rethink an entire pedagogical approach. Also, many of those now in comp/rhet are trained specifically in the field, as opposed to being drawn from it from other fields — their scope of experience is more limited because their focus has been on comp/rhet from the beginning.

What Williams thinks we should do about it: We should redefine our focus on writing (to include pre- and post-college writing) and we should include more literacy-related fields in our area of study. How? Invite them to our conferences and go to theirs, we should try to publish in their journals and welcome them to publish in ours, we should even consider hiring someone in a literacy-related field for a position in comp/rhet.

Overall, the article made some good points but did not make any significant claims beyond defining the problem. Not enough proposed solutions.

For next week:

We’re all going to read The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies, and discuss (a) how we might design a course or curriculum that fuses creative writing and composition studies; (b) how the article itself is built, craft-wise.

GCCRC sign-up 1

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings > advance sign-up for Tues. Oct. 5th

Sign up to read and report back on one of the titles below, by adding your name on the appropriate bulleted line. To edit just one section of the page, click the “Edit” link next to the section heading.

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 62, No. 1, September 2010

Issue Theme: Special Issue: The Future of Rhetoric and Composition

Franchising the Future, by Gregory G. Colomb

Abstract: Central to the future of rhetoric and composition (or writing studies or whatever label we use) is the service mission of composition: to teach students to write. But that term service has not and will not serve us well. This essay examines the limitations and dangers of a service mission and explores a different model, that of a franchise, a public trust that licenses us to control the largest block of classes on most campuses but also makes us responsible for the nation’s ability to write. The franchise model carries its own limitations,but it may also point to possibilities of great new promise and familiar danger.

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The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies, by Douglas Hesse

Abstract: For different reasons, composition studies and creative writing have resisted one another. Despite a historically thin discourse about creative writing within College Compositionand Communication, the relationship now merits attention. The two fields’ common interest should link them in a richer, more coherent view of writing for each other, forstudents, and for policymakers. As digital tools and media expand the nature and circulation of texts, composition studies should pay more attention to craft and to composingtexts not created in response to rhetorical situations or for scholars.

  • Ben Miller
  • (But if you want it, too, sign up by clicking “edit” at the right.)

Disciplinarity, Divorce, and the Displacement of Labor Issues: Rereading Histories of Composition and Literature, by Melissa Ianetta

Abstract: This essay argues that a trend in histories of literary and writing studies is to bifurcate the origins of the fields and so engage in those modernist narrative fallacies describedby Jean-François Lyotard. Such works limit our understanding of past practices and the longstanding connections between disciplinarity and labor.

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Responsibility and Composition’s Future in the Twenty-first Century: Reframing “Accountability”, by Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington

Abstract: “Accountability” is widely used in discussions about what should be happening in school, but it is not an appropriate guiding concept for assessments designed to improveteaching and learning. This article examines discussions about assessment for internal and external purposes; it then outlines an alternative frame for assessment that has “responsibility” as its core.

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Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework, by Steven Fraiberg

Abstract: This article argues that tracing multimodal-multilingual literacy practices across official and unofficial spaces is key to moving composition into the twenty-first century. Key tothis remixing of the field is a situated framework that locates multimodal-multilingual activities in wider genre, cultural, national, and global ecologies.

  • Amanda Licastro

Seeking New Worlds: The Study of Writing beyond Our Classrooms, by Bronwyn T. Williams

Abstract: As new ways of creating and interpreting texts complicate ideas of how and why writing happens, the field of rhetoric and composition needs to be more conscious of how ourinstitutional responsibilities and scholarly attention to college writing have limited its vision of writing and literacy. It is time to move beyond consolidating our identity asa field focused on college writing, reach out to other literacy-related fields, and form a broader, more comprehensive, and more flexible identity as part of a larger field ofliteracy and rhetorical studies.

  • Lisa Vaia


Writing in High School/Writing in College: Research Trends and Future Directions, by Joanne Addison and Sharon James McGee

Abstract: This article synthesizes and extends data from some of the most prominent and promising large-scale research projects in writing studies while also presenting results fromthe authors’ own research. By juxtaposing these studies, the authors offer a complex understanding of writing practices at the high school and college level. Future directionsare suggested in light of these research findings.

  • Dominique Zino

Making the Case for Disciplinarity in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies: The Visibility Project, by Louise Wetherbee Phelps and John M. Ackerman

Abstract: In the Visibility Project, professional organizations have worked to gain recognition for the disciplinarity of writing and rhetoric studies through representation of the fieldin the information codes and databases of higher education. We report success in two important cases: recognition as an “emerging field” in the National Research Council’staxonomy of research disciplines; and the assignment of a code series to rhetoric and composition/writing studies in the federal Classification of Instructional Programs(CIP). We analyze the rhetorical strategies and implications of each case and call for continuing efforts to develop and implement a “digital strategy” for handling data aboutthe field and its representation in information networks.

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Review Essay: A Field at Sixty-Something, by Chris M. Anson
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GCCRC Weekly Meetings

From CUNY Academic Commons

You are here: GCCRC > Weekly Meetings

Fall 2012

Meetings run from 6:30-8:30pm, in GC room 5409, unless otherwise announced. Save the dates for our upcoming events featuring speakers and workshops centered around writing studies and pedagogy:

  • Mon 9/10 – Meet and Greet the GCCRC
  • Mon 9/24 – Jason Tougaw on memoir writing
  • Mon 10/15 – Conference proposal workshop 
Fri 10/19 - 2:30-3:30pm, room 4406 - WPA Metro Affiliate meet & greet
Fri 10/19 - 4:00-5:30pm, room 4406 - CCRC Mina Shaughnessy Speaker Series, 
                                 featuring Sondra Perl and Charles Schuster
  • Mon 10/29 – Mark McBeth’s “Masquerade”
  • Mon 11/12 – Jessica Yood on turning informal academic writing into publishable work
  • Mon 11/26 – Dominique Zino on visual rhetoric
  • Mon 12/3 – Amy Wan (topic TBD)
  • Mon 12/17 – Peda-Pollyanna (an exchange of effective assignments and activities)

Spring 2011

Meetings begin at 6:30pm, in GC room 5409, unless otherwise announced.
Blockquoted announcements are non-GCCRC-specific events of comp/rhet interest.

  • Mon 1/31 – Welcome to the new semester!
  • Mon 2/7 – Orientation to wiki (via CFP calendar), Zzzotero
  • Mon 2/14 – Write a story from your teaching / studenting / Celebrate Jill’s orals!
    • introduce How People Learn strategy: divide up chapters, think about these anecdotes as you read. What does HPL help you see about the classes? What do these stories help you understand in HPL?
    • Sign up for a section here

No classes Monday, 2/21 — President’s Day

  • Wednesday, 2/23 is a CUNY Monday: class meets, but no meeting (read How People Learn)
  • Mon 2/28 – Discuss How People Learn
  • Mon 3/7 – Pipeline Project
    • Special guests: Rebecca Mlynarczyk and Sara Remedios
  • Mon 3/14 – Writing and Theater or Reading Strategies
  • Mon 3/21 – Digital Humanities tools (previews t.b.d.) 
Sat 3/25 – UConn Conference
  • Mon 3/28 – CCCC dry run panel presentation
  • Mon 4/4 – Writing time: no meeting, unless we want another workshop

CCCC, 4/6-4/9.

  • Mon 4/11 – Revolutionary Grammar (Erica)
    Collaborative writing: brainstorm session for CCCC 2012 and WPA 2011 
**Spring Break 4/17-4/26 - no class, no meetings
  • Mon 5/2 – Writing workshop (esp. for CCCC 2012 proposals)
  • Mon 5/9 – Mark McBeth visit: What should be the learning outcomes of a PhD in comp/rhet?
  • Mon 5/16 – Last Day of Classes

Fall 2010

Meetings begin at 2pm, in GC room 5409, unless otherwise announced.
Blockquoted announcements are non-GCCRC-specific events of comp/rhet interest.

Tues. Sept. 28th: introductions and solicitations
  • click here to sign up for next time’s zoomed-out journal session

Tues. Oct. 5th: zoomed-out session: CCC Sept 2010
  • presentation of individual articles
  • choose one to zoom in on
  • Notes are here

Tues. Oct. 12th: zoomed-in session: Doug Hesse’s “The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies”
  • some kind of exercise – maybe structural/genre analysis? or look closely at works cited.
  • see Zotero group for a copy of the article, or email gc.comprhet (at) gmail.com
  • sign up for zoom-out session next week (multi-disciplinary? or just college english?)
  • notes are here 
Wed. Oct 13th: Mark McBeth small-group discussion at 2pm 4pm-5pm
(in English Dept thesis room, to the left as you enter 4406)

Fri. Oct 15th: CCRC meeting (exact time/location TBA), 
followed by Mark McBeth’s job talk at Friday Forum: 4pm in 4406

Tues. Oct. 19th: zoomed-out: Journal of Basic Writing (JBW)
  • presentation of individual articles
  • RSVP by signing up for a text to report back on: click here
  • choose an article to zoom in on for next week 
Fri. Oct 22nd: Jessica Yood’s job talk at Friday Forum moved to Nov 12th

Tues. Oct. 26th: zoomed-out, take 2

GCCRC notes from 2010-10-26

Tues. Nov. 2nd:
  • zoomed-in session: “The Future of Basic Writing,” JBW Spring 2010.
    Download the full text via our zotero library.

Tues. Nov. 9th:
  • NO MEETING THIS WEEK: Instead, come to these Friday events: 
Fri. Nov 12th: Jessica Yood’s small seminar on her scholarship, 2:30pm
Fri. Nov 12th: Jessica Yood’s job talk at Friday Forum, 4pm
Fri. Nov 12th: Brandt/Troyka lecture at Hunter College, 6pm

Tues. Nov. 16th:
  • Collaborative writing session: We will compose a response to the Faculty Membership Talks, and send it to the committee by the end of this meeting.

NCTE Conference, Nov. 18th-21st

Fri. Dec 3rd:
  • Sondra Perl, Guidelines for Composing
  • (read “Understanding Composing” or first chapter of Felt Sense beforehand)

Tues. Dec. 7th:
  • writing workshop (seminar papers, etc)

GC English Teaching August 2010

From CUNY Academic Commons

Contents

17th ANNUAL ORIENTATION SESSION FOR TEACHING INTERNS

Monday, August 23rd, 2010, from 9:15am-4pm.

Sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in English, with breakout sessions coordinated by English student members of the GC Composition and Rhetoric Community:

  1. Designing Effective Syllabi and Assignments – Ben Miller
  2. Responding to Student Writing – Diana Epelbaum
  3. Classroom Management & What to do on the First Day of Class – Diana Colbert

Faculty introductions by Mario DiGangi, Ammiel Alcalay, and Rebecca Mlynarczyk

Handouts

The wiki isn’t accepting files at the moment; however, you can find our powerpoint slides and handouts on the non-wiki part of the Commons, at the following URL:

https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/gc-comp-rhet-area-group/documents/?category=36848

To view other files, simply change the “August 2010” category to “all categories.”

Useful Links

Discuss this event

GC Comp-Rhet Area Group

From CUNY Academic Commons

Contents

Who We Are

The Graduate Center Composition and Rhetoric Community (GCCRC) currently meets about once per week during the semester. Each meeting addresses a theme or issue relating to the field of composition and rhetoric as well as what is on our minds as graduate students in the field. Recent topics of discussion include basic writing and literacy; critical, constructivist, and expressivist pedagogies; discourses of social justice; ethnography, including (but not limited to) classroom studies; new media composition; the digital humanities; writing across the curriculum; and the history of composition instruction in the academy. As we aim to understand how current scholarship may influence our teaching experiences and classroom strategies, our conversations often result in individual and collaborative projects members choose to pursue outside of the meetings. Individuals from the group–and even entire panels of GCCRC members–have presented at national conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the Modern Languages Association (MLA) Annual Convention, the Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Conference, and the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference.

At the local level, the GCCRC has developed two main sources of support for teachers of writing: an annual intersession teaching workshop that takes place in January (to build on the summer orientation sessions new teachers attend in August), and a cross-campus intervisitation program in which students sign up to visit the classroom of other CUNY teachers in order to reflect on their own teaching practices. In addition, the GCCRC participates in the meetings and events of the larger CUNY-wide Composition and Rhetoric Community (CCRC), comprised of faculty, students, and staff from the full range of CUNY campuses. The CCRC sponsors a visiting speaker series that hosts some of the most prominent scholars in the field at a different CUNY campus each semester.

Affiliated groups: CUNY-wide Composition and Rhetoric Community (CCRC), Writing Program Administrators-New York Metro Area Affiliate

If you’d like to learn more about the GCCRC or join our list serv, please contact us!

If you’d like more information about the CUNY Intervisitation Initiative, please contact Diana Epelbaum at diana.epelbaum@gmail.com.

Currently matriculated students may sign our DSC roster here. And all are welcome to view or join our Academic Commons group. If you’re looking for our cross-campus affiliate group, the CUNY-Wide Composition and Rhetoric Community (CCRC), you can find them here.

Activities and Projects

Affiliated faculty

Sondra Perl
Mark McBeth
Jessica Yood

Ira Shor
George Otte
Rebecca Mlynarczyk (ret.)

Getting Involved

Interested in adding comp-rhet related pages? Edit this page to add a brief description and a link to the new page in a list below.[[Category:]]

Comp-Rhet CFP Calendar

From CUNY Academic Commons

Contents

Introduction

Our goal is to compile a list of conferences and journals that we might want to submit to, sorted chronologically. For each such journal or conference, we’ll post links to the originating site’s CFP, as well as compile our own notes – e.g. “gives great feedback on the writing” or “really fast turn-around time.”

Please contribute to expand our list or the information we’ve compiled! There’s even a convenient template you can use: just copy the wikicode from that page onto your new one.

Please also remember that matriculated GC students are eligible to receive funding ($300 per year for presenting at conferences; $200 for attending conferences) for their travels/fees.  Click here for more information about how to apply for this funding.

Calendar of Deadlines

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

[Journals]

Manuscript Submission Deadline: November 15, 2010

Multimodal Composing: Council on Basic Writing

Opportunities and Challenges

in Basic Writing Contexts

BWe Guest Editor: 

  Barbara Gleason, City College-CUNY

   Assistant Editors:

  Wynne Ferdinand & Lynn Reid

Extended Deadline for Submissions: November 15, 2010

Technical Guidelines for Submissions appended. 

                                   2011 BWe Special Issue: Call for Submissions

For the upcoming issue of BWe, we seek essays on multimodal writing in college and pre-college composition and rhetoric classes. As Cynthia Selfe argues in the June 2009 issue of College Composition and Communication, our profession’s continuing tendency to focus primarily on print literacy limits our understanding of rhetoric, discourages students from “identify[ing] their own communication needs” and needlessly limits individuals who have developed expressive identities in a digital age (“The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing” in CCC, June 2009, 618). By widening the possibilities for composing in their classrooms, instructors may establish more compelling and inclusive learning environments for students of diverse races and cultures, language backgrounds, ages, and communication interests. Teachers also may create classes that can better serve the needs of students learning differences, e.g., in the areas of vision, hearing, or attention.

Along with the potential advantages of incorporating multiple modes of composing into their curricula, instructors may well experience challenges that can obstruct curricular change or dampen enthusiasm of both instructors and students. Integrating new technologies into classes sometimes creates unwanted hurdles. Access to technology and digital literacies can sometimes encumber students. Instructors may experience new technologies as more burdensome than beneficial, especially when faculty are not rewarded for integrating new communication technologies into their curricula. In addition, educational institutions are increasingly demanding that digital texts and multimodal composing options be integrated into their curricula–sometimes before they have acquired the funds or the staff to support these efforts. We already know that we are experiencing a major transformation in communications that is permeating both our daily lives and our institutional realities. Most of us are struggling to develop our own expertise in multimodal composing while simultaneously teaching others to compose in digital environments.

We encourage prospective authors to consider both opportunities and challenges associated with teaching/learning multimodal composing. We hope to receive submissions that focus on one (or more than one) of these roles/ perspectives: writer, student, teacher, tutor, program administrator. We also welcome reviews of books & web sites that enhance instructors’ knowledge of teaching with new technologies OR that facilitate adult learners’ expertise in multimodal composing. Finally, since basic writing instruction is moving into new venues (e.g., as test-preparation courses in for-profit companies or in adult education programs), we welcome submissions that explore uses of multimodal composing in a variety of institutional environments.

Technical Guidelines for Submissions:

1. All submissions must be sent electronically to bwespecialissue@gmail.com

2. Use MLA style.

3. Acceptable submission formats include: MS Word or other word processing formats, web texts, and texts that include embedded multimedia elements. Images may be in .jpg, .gif, or .png format. Videos must be submitted as files, not as links to external sites.

4. Links to external sites may appear as in-text references or in a works cited list only. Web-based examples used to illustrate key ideas or arguments should be included in the text as embedded images, screen captures, video files, etc. Multimedia content hosted at an external site should be submitted as a file that can be hosted on the BWe server.

5. Submissions should be original work. Submissions containing work published or created by other authors must include their consent and/or follow fair use guidelines.

7. Submissions should be accessible in current versions of different browsers (e.g., Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome).

8. To ensure accessibility, a script or summary must accompany all multimedia submissions and/or video and audio content embedded in a manuscript.

Manuscript Submission Deadline: November 15, 2010

Email inquiries to Barbara Gleason at bgleason@ccny.cuny.edu.

Submit manuscripts to bwespecialissue@gmail.com

June 1, 2010: [Extended Deadline]

Computer and video games continue to inundate the entertainment market, and culture along with it. Traditional text games, adventure games, first-person shooters, the immersive worlds of role-playing games (massively multiplayer or otherwise), simulations, “casual” games such as solitaire, and even web advertisements posing as games have formed a landscape rich with opportunities to examine composition-rhetoric’s history, theory, pedagogy, and practice, where scholars can use, examine, and imagine the impact of games and gaming on writing.

Writing and rhetoric permeate games and game communities, and as a recent Pew study found, the civic engagement of gamers is greater than that of non-gamers, with higher instances of players considering moral and ethical issues as well as social responsibility — and in many cases, communicating with others about these issues. Engaged writing is also connected to the way gamers learn the complicated strategies, tactics, and rhetorics within game worlds, while games are increasingly used as tools to teach writing.

Rhetoric/Composition/Play will be an edited collection designed for scholars new to computer/video games as well as those who are more expertly versed. The book will consist of academic essays that assess, theorize, and contextualize computer/video games vis-a-vis composition-rhetoric. We invite 900-1200-word proposals for this proposed collection.

Specifically, we invite proposals that investigate the following (although the lists are not exhaustive):

1) Rhetorical theory and computer/video games (Theory: Rhetorical/Critical/Ideological/Cultural)

• How do various rhetorical theories intersect with game and play theories?

• How does playing games foster rhetorical readings of gaming spaces for the gamer?

• How does playing games necessitate certain rhetorical strategies and practices within game worlds and/or communities?

• What kinds of rhetorical agents and/or agency does playing games construct?

• How do other theoretical and critical approaches intersect with game and play theories?

• How do rhetorical, critical, ideological, and cultural approaches help us better understand the impact of games in literacy practices?

• What roles do games play as objects of production/ consumption?

• What are other assessments and critiques of the intersections between rhetorical and critical theory and computer/video games?

2) Composition and computer/video games (Practice: Writing/Learning/Playing)

• How and to what extent are processes of gaming, playing, and writing similar or divergent?

• How do game design and writing as design overlap?

• What are other assessments and critiques of the connections between writing and computer/video games?

3) Writing pedagogy and computer/video games (Praxis: Pedagogy/Composition/Gaming)

• How can electronic games help us reconceptualize classroom spaces?

• How can gaming worlds become pedagogical spaces?

• How can electronic games inform traditional writing practice?

• How can electronic games inform a critical, cultural pedagogy that facilitates students’ critical reading and rewriting of game spaces?

• What are other examinations of pedagogies that use electronic games to teach rhetorical and/or writing concepts and practices?

• What are some critiques, examinations, historicizations of current pedagogical trajectories of using off-the-shelf games, serious games, games-for-learning, and simulation in the writing classroom?

• What are the pedagogical differences between teaching with a game designed specifically for pedagogical purposes and teaching with a game designed originally for entertainment?

Send 900-1200-word proposals with brief author bio (with university affiliation) via email to Matthew S. S. Johnson (email: matjohn at siue dot edu) AND Richard & Rebekah Colby (email: rshultzc at du dot edu). Due to increased interest, we have decided to extend the deadline for submitting proposals to this edited collection. Deadline for proposals is 1 June 2010. Final manuscript length will be approximately 15-35 pages (standard, double-spaced). Queries welcome.

August 13, 2010: “Learning Technologies”
 Here are the submission guidelines

Academic Exchange Quarterly—a respected, peer-reviewed, print journal—invites original, unpublished manuscripts of 2000 to 3000 words for its Winter 2011 issue.

Learning technologies—technologies used to enhance learning, teaching, and assessment—are rapidly gaining popularity in higher education. However, the debate concerning the effectiveness of these technologies over more conventional means of teaching remains ongoing. The focus of this topic is to explore evidence-based research on any area relating to learning technologies, but we are especially interested in the following: pedagogical techniques that rely on learning technologies; the use of learning technologies in assessment of outcomes at any level (individual student to entire campuses); and comparisons of technologically-enhanced learning outcomes and conventional outcomes. In any case, we are seeking empirical, evidence-based research studies more than theoretical pieces.

Submissions are welcome from researchers, teaching and learning scholars, learning technology users, as well as others who are actively involved in higher education learning, including graduate students, faculty members, academic staff members, administrators, and researchers in non-academic settings. Submission instructions are available at http://www.tinyurl.com/AEQ-Tech. Identify your submission with the keyword: TECHNOLOGY-1. Please format your paper carefully according to the online instructions. Submission deadline is August 13, 2010.

Please feel free to get in touch with me with any questions:

Karen Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Writing Center Director
University of Washington Bothell
425.352.3536

[Archive: Deadlines Have Already Passed]

March 31, 2010: International Writing Centers Association (conference) – writingcenters.org/

Andrea plans to submit here; Call for Papers  |  More info from us

February 22, 2010: “Local Knowledge:” 5th Annual UConn Conference on the Teaching of Writing

The University of Connecticut’s Freshman English Program is calling for presentation/panel/roundtable proposals from instructors of writing (in all disciplines and programs) for the Fifth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing. While the theme for this year’s conference invites reflection on local knowledge and the role of archives in composition instruction, we encourage presenters to interpret “local knowledge” and “archives” broadly. We also invite proposals on other related topics.The University of Connecticut’s Freshman English Program is calling for presentation/panel/roundtable proposals from instructors of writing (in all disciplines and programs) for the Fifth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing. While the theme for this year’s conference invites reflection on local knowledge and the role of archives in composition instruction, we encourage presenters to interpret “local knowledge” and “archives” broadly. We also invite proposals on other related topics. See link for list of topics. http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/35793

Ccrc-fact-book

From CUNY Academic Commons

CUNY Comp/Rhet Fact Book

Intro

This is a page for compiling information about composition/writing classes and resources at the various CUNY Campuses. Ultimately you will be able to search by individual feature (e.g. find all schools with a two-semester sequence, or all schools with an undergrad-staffed writing center). For now, please follow the links below to information about each college campus.

And if you have information to contribute, please do!

List of Colleges

Four-Year Colleges

1. Bernard M. Baruch College
2. Brooklyn College
3. The City College
4. College of Staten Island
5. Hunter College
6. John Jay College of Criminal Justice
7. Lehman College
8. Medgar Evers College
9. New York City College of Technology
10. Queens College
11. York College

Community Colleges

12. Borough of Manhattan Community College
13. Bronx Community College
14. Hostos Community College
15. Kingsborough Community College
16. LaGuardia Community College
17. Queensborough Community College

Honors College and Graduate & Professional Schools

18. Macaulay Honors College
19. The Graduate Center
20. The CUNY School of Law
21. The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
22. The CUNY School of Public Health
23. The CUNY School of Professional Studies