CFP for CCCC 2010 Workshop:
Revisiting and Revising the CCCs Through Exchanging International Post-secondary Writing Research
Following this year's successful CCCC workshop on international
research about writing in higher education, we are putting together a full-day workshop for next year, and are seeking interested scholars from countries other than the United States doing writing research or scholars working with international colleagues on cross-national research.
Please consult last year's workshop description in the 2009 Cs
program, copied below. You will see that the workshop is designed for minimal presenting and maximal actual discussion and exchange about research projects. This is key to successful deep dialogue.
For 2010, we would like to focus in particular on exchanging drafts or papers developing aspects of the issues that rose to the surface at the 2009 workshop:
• The relationships between global and local issues; how they
interact. intersect or resist each other.
• The relationships between disciplinarities and writing, within or
across borders.
• The effects of international and global economics and politics on
educational policies, pedagogies and research projects.
• The effects of technology on writing in local and global contexts or
in cross-border research and teaching.
• The impacts of English or "English" (i.e. one type: academic,
British, US etc.) on writing studies outside of English-speaking
regions.
• Methodologically and theoretically rich/ productive ways to do
crossborder or internationally collaborative research.
• Terminology in different contexts (work on literacy, discourse,
rhetoric, writing, pedagogy, technology, etc. in studies outside the US)
Please contact us if you would like to propose a project for
consideration; we need just a title and an informal paragraph
describing your research. We would appreciate having your proposal by May 1, 2009, in order to select projects and process the workshop proposal for the May 8 CCCC deadline.
Cinthia Gannett and Tiane Donahue
2009 Workshop
International Writing Scholarship and Collaborative Research:
Attending to the Waves between Continents
At the 2008 CCCCs, the need for nourishing research traditions in the field of composition was foregrounded. As part of this project, David Russell called for changes in CCCC formats, including the creation of new kinds academic encounters at which participants would have read each other's work before arriving so that the bulk of the time at the conference would be spent in discussing new and nuanced ideas more fully and substantively, not just hearing about them in panels or roundtables.
The topic of international scholarship about writing in higher
education begs for the extended attention made possible by such a
format, in a pre-conference workshop slot. The pre-conference workshop venue seems a perfect space for piloting the idea of advance reading and focused discussion. International topics by their very nature require time, processing, extended discussion, and defined protocols for opening up the various linguistic, theoretical, and institutional differences that may prevent scholars from fully engaging what each is presenting or arguing, or appreciating the larger intellectual, cultural, linguistic-discursive frames and traditions in which the projects take place and produce meaning.
This workshop will create a space for in-depth conversation among
scholars and teachers interested in scholarship from international
contexts. It will feature both international and U.S. scholars, and
will focus on exchange about these scholars' research, including
actual exchange in small groups about texts read in advance of the
workshop, but also meta-work on framing the exchange and meta-
commentary on how we must attend to international work. The meta-work is framed in the workshop questions below.
Each workshop leader will provide the co-chairs with a text by
December 2008; these will be posted online at the CompFAQS
International Writing Studies wiki for access by all workshop
participants, both the workshop leaders and the CCCC workshop
registrants.
Workshop leaders will include with their text:
-A brief institutional description and an exploration of how that
factors into writing study in their context;
-A glossary of any potentially context/culture-specific terms;
-A digest (a list with one-sentence descriptions) of key theorists,
theories, or frames used.
All participants, both workshop leaders and CCCC participants signing up for the workshop, will read the work in advance.[1] The workshop leaders will engage in discussion about the glossary of terms from December to February; the glossary collectively produced will be available for workshop registrants and will be further discussed during the workshop itself. What will be particularly significant about this workshop will thus be its rich exchanges before and during the workshop, as well as its resulting products.
The workshop leaders' texts will be grouped into three clusters. Each person will choose a text from each cluster that is particularly
important to his or her interests. At the workshop, all participants
will work in small groups three times, once with the author of each of the three texts that individual participant has chosen for a focus. We will provide the following framing questions, also in advance, that
will guide the discussion:
• What is the meaning of the research reported on, its results? What is its import for readers in the group? What do we make of it, in the
context described by its author(s)?
• How local is "local" research? Can it translate to other contexts,
for example?
• What are the specific research claims, methodology, evidence and interpretive frames that distinguish the project?
• What are the specific research claims, methodology, evidence and interpretive frames that might connect, intersect or connect across projects?
• What are the challenges of understanding research projects and
traditions from different national and cultural contexts?
• What are the challenges of translating, adapting, or combining
research projects and traditions from different national and cultural
contexts? How does the specific issue of languages of publication
factor into this discussion?
• How global is "global" research?
Workshop schedule:
1:30-1:45 General introduction; reiteration of the
workshop's purpose
1:45-2:30 Cluster one small-group discussions
2:30-2:45 Coffee, break
2:45-3:30 Cluster two small-group discussions
3:30-4:15 Cluster three small-group discussions
4:15-5:00 Plenary discussion: refocus on objective: "what's
at stake in this exchange"
[1] We realize there may be registrants near the conference date who may not have full time to read the texts. We are working on plans for managing this issue; they might include no walk-in registrants or simply a note to registrants...