Tag: CFP

Call for Proposals for a Special Issue of Composition Forum: “Contemplative and Mindful-Based Pedagogies for Writing Ourselves and the World”

Posted by Shane Wood – July 11, 2022

Guest editors: Paula Mathieu, Boston College, and Angela Muir, Boston College

Amid another academic year shaped by the pandemic, a crumbling economy, and a critical human rights movement, professors struggle to align to a pedagogy that is both supportive and rigorous. The latest Healthy Minds survey shows that mental health issues such as anxiety and depression are at a record high of 47% among students, and an outstanding number of those students are reaching out to their professors for support. In a recent roundtable at Boston College on Trauma-Informed Contemplative Pedagogies, Professor Oh Myo Kim (CDEP, LSEHD) responded, “Class time is not therapy, but can be therapeutic.” Resources on contemplative pedagogies and contemplative practices have been increasingly highlighted in higher education. 

Contemplative practices (also sometimes referred to as mindfulness or awareness practices) in the classroom are getting headlines because they help students increase focus, calm their sympathetic nervous systems, and address the sense of overwhelm experienced within the wake of an ongoing global pandemic, increased attention to escalating racial violence, shifts between online and in-person learning, and intensifying climate disasters. Certainly, writers and their instructors need to be able to cultivate a calm presence in order to work, trust, and learn together. In addition, as this special issue will argue, contemplative pedagogies represent an important intervention in this current moment, not only to help equip individuals with greater resilience, but as a vital tool to help people engage the hard work of racial reckoning, engaging political differences, and healing our planet. In other words, we see contemplative pedagogy as a way to help writing achieve the transformative potential that composition theorists (Berlin, Trimbur, Schor) have long advocated.

This special issue of Composition Forum will address the what, why, how, and why now of contemplative writing pedagogy, while tracing its long roots within the history composition and writing studies:

  • How do we define contemplation and what are the assumptions, traditions and ideas underlying its many pedagogies?
  • What do contemplative pedagogies aim for? What do they accomplish? How do they contribute to other writing pedagogies?
  • Why and how might one adopt contemplative approaches to writing? What are the theoretical, neuroscientific, and writerly reasons to explore contemplative pedagogies?
  • Why do contemplative pedagogies seem especially urgent in this historical moment? How can contemplative approaches help support anti-racist, anti-ablist, and environmental approaches to writing instruction?

This issue will build upon and extend the argument Robert Yagelski made in Writing as a Way of Being (2011), which contends that writing instruction in secondary and post-secondary schools fails to live up to its progressive promises, despite advances in pedagogical theories.  He argues that “conventional writing instruction and assessment continue to operate on the assumption that writing is a sometimes challenging but relatively straightforward conduit for meaning” (24). Even social and post-process theories, argues Yagelski, fall short of their radical potential because of a tacit embrace of Cartesian dualism, which posits the self as an autonomous being, the world as separate and knowable from the knower, and language as a relatively unproblematic conduit for thought (45).  


Contemplative pedagogies aim to help students see writing as part of how we learn to be in the world, as a tool for living, and as a collaborative means of shared inquiry toward intersubjective truth, both within educational settings and without.

The nature of contemplative practice is fluid, so we are open to creative and experimental forms. In addition to scholarly articles, we are interested in interviews, personal reflections, book reviews, and course designs. 

You are welcome to submit a proposal of 250 to 500 words, final drafts should be between 2500 to 6000 words. Send all submissions to contemplativecomp@gmail.com. 

Timeline:

Proposals: September 1, 2022

Drafts: January 1, 2023

Feedback Distributed: March 2023

Final Drafts: May 1, 2023

Paula Mathieu is an Associate Professor of English at Boston College and director of the university’s First-Year Writing program. She has been speaking and publishing about mindfulness and contemplative pedagogies since 2013. She is the 2021 recipient of the Coalition for Community Writing Engaged Scholar Award.

Angela Muir holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. She is a 200 RYT in Hatha and Tantra from the Hawaii School of Yoga and has taught yoga, meditation, yoga philosophy and creative writing courses in San Francisco and Seattle. She is currently a graduate student and teaching fellow at Boston College pursuing research on contemplative pedagogies.

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Call For Papers: Composition Forum Special Issue: Public Writing in Composition

Posted by Web Editor – August 10, 2016

The editors of Composition Forum are pleased to announce a call for papers for an upcoming special issue on Public Writing in Composition guest edited by Christopher Minnix. Please send 300 to 500 word proposals for articles and Program Profiles by September 15, 2016 to Christopher Minnix (cminnix@uab.edu). See below for a complete timeline.

Special Issue CFP: Public Writing in Composition
Guest editor: Christopher Minnix (cminnix@uab.edu)

Twenty years ago Susan Wells introduced us to the story of Arthur Colbert—a Temple University student who crafted a powerful and effective public response to being falsely accused, detained, and beaten by two Philadelphia policemen—in the introduction to her seminal article “Rogue Cops and Health Care: What Do We Want from Public Writing?” Writing six years after Wells, Christian Weisser predicted that public writing could become “the next dominant focal point around which the teaching of college writing is theorized and imagined” (42) in Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public Sphere. Over the past twenty years, public writing has indeed become a major focus in composition and a major initiative in many composition programs. At the same time, rereading Arthur Colbert’s story in our contemporary moment, a moment marked by significant police brutality but also by powerful and savvy rhetorical responses, such as we see from movements like #BlackLivesMatter and Dreamers Adrift, underlines the continued importance of teaching public writing, while returning us to the perennial question articulated by Wells: “what do we want from public writing?”

This special issue of Composition Forum calls on public writing teachers to respond to this question in our current disciplinary and political moment. The editor invites work that examines and explores critical issues in the theory and teaching of public writing within the discipline of composition studies, but also invites studies that examine how contemporary public discourse, such as the rhetoric of social movements, collective activism, or advocacy, might shed new light on enduring controversies in public writing research and provide new theoretical and pedagogical approaches to teaching public writing.

Research on public writing has theorized and critiqued understandings of the classroom as public space, debated the authenticity of public writing assignments and genres, theorized and outlined multimodal public writing pedagogies, developed the use of rhetorical case studies of public rhetoric in teaching public writing, argued for the role of community literacy and community publishing work in fostering students’ public knowledge and agency, and theorized composition studies as a public. The past 20 years have also witnessed the development and increasing accessibility of new media genres, multimodal composing platforms, and digital networks that have expanded our students’ opportunities for composing and circulating public arguments. These developments have challenged scholars in public writing to explore the relationship between access and opportunity for public writing and the potential influence or public efficacy of students’ public writing. Both the expansion of opportunities for public writing and the development of public writing theory and pedagogy have served as catalysts for numerous writing programs across the country to “go public” by crafting public writing curricula and defining public writing as part of their outcomes.

To revisit the question “what do we want from public writing?” in our contemporary moment, authors are encouraged to engage and revisit the tensions and problems that have defined public writing pedagogy in composition, while also exploring and defining new areas of inquiry. Authors might pursue issues such as the following, though they should not feel limited by them:

  • emerging genres and mediums of public writing and their pedagogical applications.

  • materiality and public writing pedagogy, including investigations of material rhetoric in the public writing classroom and explorations of the relationship between materiality and the composition and circulation of public writing.

  • students’ prior knowledge of genres and mediums of public writing and the potentials and constraints of this knowledge for the public writing classroom.

  • case studies or analyses of public writing—social movement rhetoric, activist rhetoric, advocacy rhetoric, etc.—with pedagogical implications for the public writing classroom.

  • spatial or place-based perspectives on public writing, including work that examines rhetorical ecologies of public writing

  • new approaches to service learning and community-based projects that foster students’ public writing and agency.

  • interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives applicable to public writing in composition, such as work in civic media, youth political participation, civic gaming, etc.

  • approaches to the problem of authenticity in public writing classrooms, including work that examines authentic public writing assignments.

  • work that expands our understanding of what counts as public participation in the public writing classroom, including explorations of participatory acts that often fall outside of the category of persuasion, such as sharing information across social networks.

  • approaches to assessing public writing and public writing programs.

  • public writing pedagogy that engages global contexts and exigencies.

  • theoretical and pedagogical approaches to multimodal public rhetoric.

  • approaches that revisit or explore public writing and theories of the public or publicity—public spheres, counter-publics, etc.

  • work that explores the intersections and divergences of public writing and civic education, particularly contemporary pedagogies such as “the new civics.”

  • analyses of initiatives to integrate public writing into community college and university writing programs.

  • approaches and possibilities for teaching public writing across the curriculum or in the disciplines.

  • teaching public writing in Basic Writing classrooms.

  • discussions of resistances—institutional, faculty, departmental, student—to public writing in composition.

Topics other than those listed above are enthusiastically encouraged, and articles on a broad range of issues and topics that fall within the broad project of public writing theory and pedagogy will be considered.

The guest editor also seeks two Program Profiles that focus on several important aspects of public writing programs, including, but not limited to, the following: the development and implementation of public writing courses and curricula, the role of community partnerships in public writing programs, the institutional perception and politics of public writing in specific universities or community colleges, and the role of writing program administration in advocating for public writing programs. Of particular interest are profiles that focus on the benefits and risks of integrating public writing into the curriculum at the level of writing programs. Interested contributors are invited to submit 300-500 word proposals to the guest editor, Christopher Minnix (cminnix@uab.edu), by September 15, 2016.

For more information on submitting articles or Program Profiles, visit http://compositionforum.com/submissions.php.

Timeline

August 1, 2016 – CFP released

September 15, 2016 – Deadline for proposals (300‐500 words)

September 25, 2016 – Notification of acceptances

January 25, 2017 – Deadline for completed MSS

March 15, 2017 – Review complete, revisions requested

May 30, 2017 – Final versions of MSS due

June 2017 – Editing, manuscript preparation, etc.

July 2017 – Special issue published

Please contact Christopher Minnix (cminnix@uab.edu) with inquiries.

CFP: Undergraduate Writing Majors: Fourteen Program Profiles

Posted by The Editors – March 5, 2011

Composition Forum readers who appreciated Lori Ostergaard and Greg A. Giberson’s “Unifying Program Goals: Developing and Implementing a Writing and Rhetoric Major at Oakland University” will be pleased to learn they are editing a collection which continues their research.

Call for Proposals: Undergraduate Writing Majors: Fourteen Program Profiles

Editors: Greg Giberson, Ph.D., Oakland University
Jim Nugent, Ph.D., Oakland University
Lori Ostergaard, Ph.D., Oakland University

During the 2010 CCCC convention, fifteen contributors to What We Are Becoming: Developments in Undergraduate Writing Majors (Utah State University Press, 2010) participated in a roundtable discussion about the growing interest in the writing major. At least sixty people attended the standing-room only session and almost every question posed to the panel was practical in nature, representing some variation of the question “How do we do this?” The proposed collection is conceived as a follow up to What We are Becoming and attempts to answer this very question.

The proposed collection will provide a snapshot of the major through fourteen profiles from various types of institutions (liberal arts, MA, doctoral, etc.), different programs (having varied departmental configurations, sizes, and disciplinary homes), and curricular orientations (such as writing studies, professional/technical writing, new media, creative writing, etc.). The program profiles will:

  • overview the history of the program, institution, department, etc.; describe the program and the rationale for its structure;
  • provide a narrative explaining the local contingencies that helped/hindered the program’s implementation;
  • provide insight into the deliberations, arguments, and comprises that were made in developing the program;
  • include a “Connections” section explaining where the program fits in the university and how it relates to other programs such as first-year composition, WAC, writing centers, etc.;
  • include a “Reflection” section explaining what the author(s) learned about developing, implementing, running, and revising such a program;
  • include a “Looking Forward” section discussing the future of the program; and
  • offer brief supplementary materials as necessary (such as checklists, course descriptions, etc.).

While not an exhaustive list, each chapter should address these aspects of the program thoroughly. While all institutions have their own histories, cultures, and contexts, we believe the knowledge and experiences gathered in this collection will be an indispensable resource for those who find themselves asking “How do we do this?”–whether now or in the years of growth ahead.

The editors seek 500-word proposals for chapters of 5,000 to 7,000 words in length. The deadline for proposals is May 10, 2011. Please email questions and proposals in Microsoft Word or RTF format to: giberso2@oakland.edu.

CFP: Service-learning in the Composition Classroom

Posted by cbd – June 18, 2008

Call for Papers: Service-learning in the Composition Classroom

Submissions are sought for a professional development book for both new and experienced composition teachers that will focus on the role of service-learning in the composition classroom. The book will be part of the Fountainhead Press X Series for Professional Development. Essays are sought that provide practical ideas for using service-learning pedagogy in the classroom; however, stuff the practical application should build on a pedagogical discussion that frames the teaching/learning activities. In other words, prostate do not only tell how, seek but also why.

The specific audience includes

  • New teaching assistants, adjuncts and instructors teaching composition courses, including technical writing
  • Service-learning/Community Literacy personnel
  • Writing Program administrators interested in the creation of professional development courses or programs
  • Writing Center personnel
  • Writing Across the Curriculum personnel

Possible topics include

  • Pedagogical pros and cons of using service-learning in the composition classroom
  • Collaborative models for working with community partners
  • Management of service-learning projects – planning documents, designating roles for community partners/teachers/students, designing legal documents to protect student interests and ownership/use of final products, forming/managing work teams, etc.
  • Designing course schedules with flexibility, utilizing regular class meetings versus engagement time with community partners
  • Models for working with profit/not-for-profit organizations
  • Assessment models/assessment implications/role of community partners in assessment
  • Strategies for gaining administrative/community support for projects
  • Strategies for gearing service-learning approaches to programmatic needs
  • Implications of service-learning related to community literacy
  • The role of technology in service-learning and the learning opportunities presented
  • Implications for the role of teacher in service-learning
  • Strategies for dealing with ethical implications of service-learning engagement/products/expectations/responsibilities
  • Discussions of end products developed through service-learning activities
  • Discussions of student/teacher/programmatic/community partner attitudes about the reasons for service-learning activities

You are strongly encouraged to provide samples of

  • Student writing
  • End products
  • Forms
  • Syllabi
  • Assignment descriptions

Submissions written collaboratively with students/administrators/community partners are especially encouraged. Submissions should be around 5,000 words and should follow MLA style. Please refer to http://www.fountainheadpress.com/english/xseries.html for series style guide. Submit essays in digital form (Word/rtf) by October 1, 2008 to susan.garza@tamucc.edu.