News: Composition Studies on NCTE’s Decision to De-charter CCCC

[ten grrl]

Colleagues,

I’m sharing the statement below on behalf of Jacob Babb, Zachary Beare, and the editors of Composition Studies. This may not be the first time you see this message, and I do apologize for the redundancy. NCTE’s decision to de-charter CCCC affects people across a wide range of disciplinary and professional communities, and we want to make sure the statement reaches as many of those people as possible.

Here is our statement in full:

The editorial team of Composition Studies is deeply saddened and angered by NCTE’s decision to de-charter the Conference on College Composition and Communication, a central institution for our discipline for nearly 80 years. We stand in solidarity with the CCCC membership, its leadership, and the editorial teams of CCC and the SWR book series.

The lack of transparency and the suddenness of NCTE's announcement is irresponsible and failed to acknowledge the impact that decision will have on the discipline and its members. The de-chartering of CCCC not only has implications for our discipline's largest conference and flagship journal, it also compromises the entire disciplinary ecosystem, putting stresses on other professional organizations, conferences, and journals.

As we write this statement, we do not yet know the ultimate fate of the conference, CCC, or the SWR book series. Regardless of their eventual status, NCTE’s decision delays knowledge production and dissemination, slowing the distribution of new knowledge in the field as well as putting at risk the careers of junior faculty and graduate students working to build their scholarly records. We are especially concerned for the many scholars who had work forthcoming at CCC. Eliminating or stalling CCC will have career-compromising implications for many scholars, and NCTE's failure to acknowledge this is unacceptable.

The editors of Composition Studies are already in conversation with members of the CCCC leadership and with the editorial teams at peer publications, strategizing to support CCC, CCCC members, and the scholars who had been imagining CCCC’s publication spaces as potential homes for their work. We pledge our support to efforts to imagine a new future built on the scholarly and pedagogical values of our discipline.

Jacob Babb, Co-editor
Zachary Beare, Co-editor

Bethany Mannon, Managing Editor
Wenqi Cui, Book Review Editor

If you have questions or want to respond, please feel free to reach out to Jacob (bab...@appstate.edu) or Zach (zbe...@ncsu.edu).

Please feel free to share the statement with others in your communities.  

Best,
Skyler

Skyler Meeks |  He, Him, His

PhD Candidate & Graduate Teaching Assistant

Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media

Social Media Editor · Composition Studies Journal

Research Assistant · vMLK Digital Humanities Project

Dissertation · A Place Made Holy

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