CCCC 2012, St. Louis
From Deborah Mutnick and Shannon Carter, Co-Chairs:

We hope you can join us at CCCC 2012 for "Writing Democracy 2012: Envisioning a Federal Writers’ Project for the 21st Century," an afternoon workshop in conversation with Jeff Grabill, Kathi Yancey, Steve Parks, Catherine Hobbs, Laurie Grobman, Brian Hendricks, and others, with co-chairs Deborah Mutnick and Shannon Carter (see complete description at http://writingdemocracy.wordpress.com/cccc-2012/).

Congratulations to Jill McCracken, whose article "Street Sex Work: Re/Constructing Discourse from Margin to Center" Vol 4, No 2 (2009), has been selected and reprinted in The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals 2010.

Editors: 
Sara Webb-Sunderhaus, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne;

Kim Donehower, University of North Dakota

We invite previously unpublished essays that challenge earlier work and claim new paradigms for discussing the literacy beliefs and practices of Appalachians. We’re looking for qualitative pieces that add nuance and sophistication to our understanding of Appalachians and their relationships with print literacy (in both paper and digital forms). We actively seek pieces that represent Southern, Central, and Northern Appalachia, as well as diverse cultures within the region, including but not limited to Affrilachians, Latinos, Melungeons, and gays and lesbians.

We would like to include work from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, such as composition and rhetoric, literacy studies, education, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. Possible approaches include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Historical analyses of Appalachian literacies and/or programs designed to teach literacy in Appalachia;
• Research that explores the realities of Appalachian literacies against pervasive stereotypes that overlook race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or religion;
• Analyses of the ways technologies impact, and are impacted by, Appalachian literacies;
• Rhetorical studies of representations of Appalachian literacies within academic scholarship, the media, or popular culture;
• Critiques of earlier works on Appalachian literacies;
• Classroom-based research involving Appalachian students;
• Ethnographic and other qualitative research on Appalachian literacies;
• Analyses of educational practices, policies, and pedagogies that affect Appalachian students;
• Arguments for new methodologies for researching and interpreting Appalachian literacies.

Please submit a CV, an abstract of no more than 500 words, and complete contact information to Sara Webb-Sunderhaus by May 26, 2011, at webbsusa@gmail.com. Feel free to contact the editors with any questions you may have about the project.

NEW deadline for proposals: January 15, 2011, with notification soon after. For expedited review, submit by January 7. You'll receive notification before January 15!

Writing Democracy: A Rhetoric of (T)Here
For the 2011 Federation Rhetoric Symposium, we invite proposals for panels (3-5 presenters), individual papers, poster presentations, video presentations, or other formats that address any aspect of the conference theme, especially with respect to the shifting dimensions of the local rhetorical landscape in an increasingly global world.

Keynote Speakers include Nancy Welch, University of Vermont, David Gold, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, John Duffy, University of Notre Dame, David Jolliffe, University of Arkansas-Lafayette, and Michelle Hall Kells, University of New Mexico, Elenore Long, Arizona State University, and Jerrold Hirsch, Truman State University. Please note conference updates for details about confirmed speakers and other items of interest.

March 9-11, 2011
Commerce, Texas

Conference website: http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/

CFP at http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/cfp.html

Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy is accepting applications for the Editor’s position. The term of appointment will be three years, beginning in March 2011.

Reflections, a peer reviewed journal, provides a forum for scholarship on writing, service-learning and community literacy. Originally founded as a venue for teachers, researchers, students and community partners to share research and discuss the theoretical, political and ethical implications of community-based writing and writing instruction, Reflections publishes a lively collection of essays, empirical studies, community writing, student work, interviews and reviews in a format that brings together emerging scholars and leaders in the fields of community-based writing and civic engagement.

Interested applicants should send a cover letter/vita outlining their goals for the journal a well as potential institutional support from their home institution.

All applications should be sent by December 1st, 2010 to:

Steve Parks
Writing Program, Syracuse University
235 HB Crouse
Syracuse, New York 13244
sjparks@syr.edu

Applications will be reviewed by Ellen Cushman, Michigan State University; Tom Deans, University of Connecticut; Barbara Roswell, Goucher College.

Interested candidates are encouraged to contact Steve Parks (sjparks@syr.edu) for additional information about the journal.

Full-text PDFs of issues 4.1 (Special Issue on Community Literacy & Sustainability) and 4.2 are available as free downloads:

Issue 4.1 PDF (4.2MB)

Issue 4.2 PDF (3.3MB)

Working Title: Director, University of Michigan Dearborn Academic Service Learning Center
Job Classification Title:  Lecturer III – discipline open
Department: Academic Affairs
Salary Range: Competitive
Posting Dates: March 22, 2010 to May 1, 2010
Anticipated start date will be June/July 2010 or September 2010

The University of Michigan – Dearborn (UM-D) is one of the three campuses of the University of Michigan.  UM-D is a comprehensive university offering high quality undergraduate, graduate, professional, and continuing education to residents of southeastern Michigan and attracts more than 8,600 students.  The campus is strategically located on 200 suburban acres of the original Henry Ford Estate in the Greater Detroit Metropolitan region.

The director assumes leadership of the new UM-Dearborn Academic Service Learning Center (formerly the Civic Engagement Project) and reports directly to the provost.  In addition to teaching two courses per academic year in his/her discipline, this Lecturer III will serve as the primary resource for service learning across the campus and administer academic programming around community-based teaching/learning. 

While this is a new position, civic engagement/academic service learning has been a formal component of the undergraduate experience for five years. With the hiring of a director, the scope and depth of these efforts will be broadened.
 
To apply, please send a letter of interest and your curriculum vitae to William DeGenaro, Search Committee Chair, Department of Language, Culture, and Communication, CASL, 4901 Evergreen Rd, Dearborn, Michigan 48128. [Read full description]

Jennifer deWinter, Assistant Professor and Co-Director Professional Writing at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, joins us as Book & New Media Review Editor. Among Jennifer's goals for the Book & New Media Review section: " I will be instituting a "Keywords" essay in the book review section. Currently, there is more literature available than we are able to review in a semi-annual publication. As such, we at the journal have decided to include a thematic synthesis essay organized under key themes in the field of community literacy: community literacy (obviously), methodology, service learning, international service, youth programs, and so forth.

"These essays will serve the purpose of collecting the sources and putting them in conversation with one another in order to appreciate where we have been as a field of study and where we will go."

If you are interested in writing one of these essays -- or submitting book & media reviews -- please contact Jennifer at jdewinter@wpi.edu.

"This conference advances the understanding that our teaching, learning, scholarship, and service are enriched when we integrate the often fragmented dimensions of our institutions and greater society."

Visit the conference site.

The DALN invites people of all ages, races, communities, backgrounds, and interests to contribute stories about how they learned to read, write, and compose meaning and how they continue to do so. We welcome all kinds of texts, both formal and informal: diaries, blogs, poetry, music and musical lyrics, fan zines, school papers, videos, sermons, gaming profiles, speeches, chatroom exchanges, text messages, letters, stories, photographs, etc. We also invite contributors to provide samples of their own writing (papers, letters, zines, speeches, etc.) and compositions (music, photographs, videos, sound recordings, etc.).

Visit the (DALN) site to learn more about using this valuable resource.

Issue 3.2 has been published in our Online Journal System. Visitors can review the Table of Contents  and abstracts, and subscribers may download and read articles via PDF.

Subscription instructions.

The Community Literacy Journal invites your photo art for future covers. We especially would like to feature cover photos that evoke diverse communities, the complexities of communities, the visuals, text, and rhetoric of communities, and the importance of communities.

Submission requirements:

Prints should be no larger than 8.5" (tall) x 11.25" (wide) with a 1/4" bleed for printing.

Our professional printer, KAP Graphics, suggests that, to allow for accurate spine size and placement, that you create and edit your art in Photoshop, but add and edit your text in InDesign, which will result in a vector image. That way, the printer can make adjustments as needed, protecting the integrity of your image, should the spine size change during pre-production and printing.

300 DPI or higher
Digital files should be saved as .JPG or .TIF.
Larger files can also be submitted via snail mail, on a CD-ROM, flash drive, etc..

We offer five complimentary copies of the journal and publish your Artist's Statement; your copyright remains with you.

Sara Webb-Sunderhaus's "A Family Affair: Competing Sponsors of Literacy in Appalachian Students' Lives"
(CLJ issue 2.1) is included in the upcoming Norton Book of Composition Studies.

Webb-Sunderhaus's article was part of a special issue on Appalachian Literacies, edited by Katherine Vande Brake and Kimberley Holloway. Congratulations, Sara!

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) awarded the CLJ the Best New Journal Award at MLA Conference in December in San Francisco. The journal is published collaboratively between Michigan Technological University's Department of Humanities and the University of Arizona's Department of English.

In her remarks at the awards ceremony, Joycelyn Moody, Vice President, Council of Editors of Learned Journals and Editor of African American Review noted that judges "expressed admiration for the far reaching scope and visually pleasing design of Community Literacy Journal as well as its democratic approach to literacy studies. About its focus on the important but under-rated aspect of literacy studies, the judges found that Community Literacy Journal makes an original contribution using a compelling presentation."

Finally, the judges remarked CLJ’s fearless reach beyond “the usual boundaries of academia to topics of interest out in the wider world.”

Elenore Long's Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics is available from from Parlor Press. From the description: the book "traces common values in diverse accounts of 'ordinary people going public.' Long offers a five-point theoretical framework used to review major community-literacy projects that have emerged in recent years:

1) the guiding metaphor behind such projects;
2) the context that defines a 'local' public, shaping what is an effective, even possible performance,
3) the tenor and affective register of the discourse;
4) the literate practices that shape the discourse; and, most signficantly,
5) the nature of rhetorical invention or the generative process by which people in these accounts respond to exigencies, such as getting around gatekeepers, affirming identities, and speaking out with others across difference.

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics also examines pedagogies that educators can use to help students to go public in the course of their rhetorical education at college. the concluding chapter adapts local-public literacies to college curricula and examines how these literate moves elicit different kinds of engagement from students and require different kinds of scaffolding from teachers and community educators. A glossary and annotated bibliography provide the basis for further inquiry and research."

From the February 25, 2008 issue of The Nation magazine: "Positioned among smoky factories and aging row houses on Chicago's West Side, the immaculate Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) serves as a constant reminder to community residents of what collective action can produce. Concerned that 70 percent of neighborhood students traveled to different parts of the city for high school, parents organized vigorously for the construction of a new facility in their backyard.

After initially approving the plans, city officials stalled construction, claiming that funds had to be diverted to other projects. In response, the community redoubled its efforts, culminating in a nineteen-day hunger strike at the site of the proposed building, referred to by supporters as Camp Cesar Chavez."