CFP: There Are Writing Emergencies: Composing (Ourselves) in Times of Crisis (3/1 submission)
ten grrl
Hello colleagues,
You are invited to submit a proposal for a proposed edited collection tentatively entitled There Are Writing Emergencies: Composing (Ourselves) in Times of Crisis to be coedited by Dr. Holly Hassel (North Dakota State University) and Dr. Kate Pantelides (Middle Tennessee State University). As we write in the CFP (linked here and copied below), "In our classrooms, programs, and writerly lives, we find ourselves having to respond quickly, perhaps right now and with high stakes. Writing emergencies have immediate emotional, material, or institutional consequences, and require emotional, intellectual, and affective labor." As such, we hope to gather a variety of pieces that illustrate and interrogate writing emergencies. Please view the full CFP for more information about the scope and vision for this project.
We will begin reviewing chapter proposals of approximately 500 words by March 1st, 2023.
Proposals can be submitted using the following link: https://forms.gle/7KGopnqCCHbbba3s5. Questions can be directed to Kate Pantelides (kate.pa...@mtsu.edu) or Holly Hassel (holly....@ndsu.edu).
Sincerely,
Holly and Kate
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CFP: There Are Writing Emergencies: Composing (Ourselves) in Times of Crisis (edited collection)
The oft-quoted rejoinder goes, “There are no writing emergencies.” We laughingly say it to each other when we have to push a deadline back, and we draw on it to help students feel better when they need extensions. We know that writing takes time and multiple drafts. Composition itself evolved largely in response to pressures on immediate student writing to represent potential and ability. Instead, the field has steadily moved away from "objective" assessments to an understanding of writing as a process, with the best assessment of writing proficiency taking place across multiple pieces of evidence with recursive opportunities to develop a final product (see NCTE 2015; NCTE 2016; Huot, 1996; Yancey, 1998; Smagorinsky, 2006). This is to say: the farther along we have gotten in our understanding, the more we have leaned into process (see Lotier, 2021 for a discussion of postprocess scholarship). Many of us have adopted process as law so wholeheartedly that it feels like sacrilege to consider not moving through drafts and using timely distance to arrive at a changed writing product. This ideology prevents and complicates writing situations that invite (require) immediate response.
Increasingly (and perhaps always), it seems that there are in fact writing emergencies. Given the advent of digital composing and social media, and the impact of the pandemic, racial injustice, racial justice reckonings, assaults on democracy, and what seems to be a neverending panoply of cultural emergencies, we have been placed into emergency writing situations. Further, in a time when bots like ChatGPT can create immediate, extensive text, we contend that it is ever more important for humans to know how and and why to respond quickly. Although AI-facilitated communication is likely a promising pedagogical tool with myriad uses, it cannot judge how, why, and with what effect particular kinds of texts impact readers.
In our classrooms, programs, and writerly lives, we find ourselves having to respond quickly, perhaps right now and with high stakes. Writing emergencies have immediate emotional, material, or institutional consequences, and require emotional, intellectual, and affective labor (see Wooten, et al). We worry that our disciplinary adherence to the idea that there are no “writing emergencies” has allowed the emergencies that of course arise to be addressed individually--through invisible and devalued labor of the majority marginalized instructors in our field.
To disrupt this practice, we invite proposals for an edited collection animated by and responding to the reality of writing emergencies--in our own writing lives, in our classrooms, and in our programs. We are not suggesting that the era of emergency writing has no process, nor that it’s entirely new, only that the process is accelerated and intensified, with the expectation that the composing, revising, and refinement process sometimes takes place on a breakneck timeline, with a wide public readership and little time for recursiveness, or as Lester Faigley noted, "fast rhetoric" (qtd. in Keller).
At the same time, we think it's important to clarify what are emergencies, what is not an emergency, and what just feels like an emergency. Faculty, staff, and students face ever more pressure through technology, remote tools, and social media to be available; the pandemic has exposed just how many needs students have (and many have always had). Certainly in the ongoing pandemic, the ever-expanding demands of writing programs, teachers, students, and classrooms are not receding and burnout is common. How do we use strategies of discernment and prioritization when each new writing task seems to hum at the same intense frequency?
In this collection we assemble stories, insights, and solidarity, making clear that situations that we think are uncommon are not necessarily - thus the cathartic component of sharing stories and accumulating an archive (Ahmed). At the same time, we hope to help readers develop strategies for filtering and prioritizing competing urgent demands on writers, WPAS, and writing students. This is both a volume of scholarship and a toolkit of strategies.
We expect the collection to be organized in three sections. We identify some questions that might guide proposal writers for each section:
Writing Emergencies:
We’ve had many illustrative examples in the last few years of emergencies requiring written communication: public health crises, environmental emergencies, and violence against Black and indigenous people, for a start. Such situations either required clear communication, or the crises were compounded because of a lack of timely response. Given this knowledge - that sometimes writing must be immediate, we invite consideration of the following:
§ What writing emergencies have you found yourselves in, and how did you navigate them?
§ What is the impact of not recognizing a particular rhetorical situation as a writing emergency?
§ How do you identify writing emergencies? How do you make coalitions cognizant that a particular emergency exists?
§ What is the impact of responding to writing emergencies in timely ways? What are the costs of choosing to delaying a written communication?
Writing Classroom Emergencies
Our students continuously manifest the difficulties we’re all living. They are directly impacted by the myriad stressors we all face: politically, medically, environmentally, etc. Students bring these concerns and tensions to our classrooms in the midst of national disagreements about appropriate classroom content, weaponization, and ideology. Given these foundational challenges:
§ When has a routine day in the classroom become an emergency? What made it so?
§ What situations have materialized in your classroom that have surprised you or pushed you beyond your experience? How did you respond? How do you wish you responded?
§ What was a time in which you had to immediately react to a student in your classroom? Why was timing important? How did it impact your understanding of the writing classroom? Consider Maraj's concept of writing classes as "deep ecologies" where a classroom represents "sites of rhetorical encounters where bodies produce/negotiate meaning through exchanging power dynamics" (Maraj, 2020).
Writing Program Emergencies
In March 2020, most WPAs had to implement immediate plans to transition all classes to remote delivery. Faculty had to get online certified, they needed reliable internet connections and updated machines; students needed hotspots, mental health support, loan forgiveness. Grants provided hand sanitizer and some laptops, but not much else. At the same time, those of us in open-access institutions often faced students and sometimes colleagues in precarious situations, living in poverty, with mental health issues and who faced material challenges to their engagement with college. All types of writing program emergencies showed up, and became the responsibility of teams of program decision-makers, administrators, and instructors. Some of these emergencies demand(ed) immediate action involving groups across campus from the counseling center to campus security or police (sometimes those entities themselves create emergencies).
§ How do writing program/literacy program coordinators act both thoughtfully and decisively in the face of 'emergency' situations--with instructors, students, budgets, deans, or other forces?
§ What challenges or barriers exist to right action in the face of program emergencies?
§ What resources can WPA/literacy program coordinators marshal to support them in times of emergency?
Please submit chapter proposals of approximately 500 words describing the focus, goals, and approach of the chapter by March 1st, 2023, using the following link: https://forms.gle/7KGopnqCCHbbba3s5. Questions can be directed to Kate Pantelides (kate.pa...@mtsu.edu) or Holly Hassel (holly....@ndsu.edu). We anticipated that complete chapters will be between 5,000-6,000 words.
Timeline:
§ March 1, 2023: Proposals Due
§ April 15: 2023: Authors notified of chapter acceptance
§ November 1st, 2023: Completed manuscripts due to editors
§ February 1, 2024: Feedback to authors sent
§ May 1, 2024: Final revisions due to editors
Sources
Ahmed, Sarah. Willful Subjects. Duke UP, 2014.
Berg, Maggie and Barbara Seeber. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the
Academy. U of Toronto P, 2016.
Fink, Lisa. "Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing" National Council of Teachers of English.
https://ncte.org/blog/2018/10/beliefs-about-writing/. 21 Oct. 2018.
Huot, Brian. "Toward a New Theory of Writing Assessment." College Composition and
Communication, vol. 47, no. 4, Dec. 1996, pp. 549-566.
Keller, Daniel. Chasing Literacy: Reading and Writing in an Age of Acceleration. UP of
Colorado, 2014.
Langdon, Lance. "Composition Forum Special Issue: Emotion." Summer, 2016.
https://compositionforum.com/issue/34/
Lotier, Kristopher. Postprocess Postmortem. WAC Clearinghouse, 2021.
Maraj, Louis. Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics. Utah State Up,
NCTE's "Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing." 28 Feb 2016.
https://ncte.org/statement/teaching-writing/
Smagorinsky, Peter, ed. Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of
Change. Teachers College P, 2005.
Wooten, Courtney Adams, Jacob Babb, Kristi Murray Costello & Kate Navickas. The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration. Utah State UP, 2020.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Utah State UP, 1998
Holly Hassel, Ph.D.
Professor of English and Director, First-Year Writing Program, NDSU
Chair, Faculty Senate General Education Committee
Immediate Past Chair, Conference on College Composition and Communication
We collectively acknowledge that we gather at NDSU, a land grant institution, on the traditional lands of the Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Lakota, Nakoda) and Anishinaabe Peoples in addition to many diverse Indigenous Peoples still connected to these lands. We honor with gratitude Mother Earth and the Indigenous Peoples who have walked with her throughout generations. We will continue to learn how to live in unity with Mother Earth and build strong, mutually beneficial, trusting relationships with Indigenous Peoples of our region.