Upcoming Conferences and Events

Description:

 Ninth Bi-annual 2008 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference

The University of Texas at Austin is proud to host the 2008 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference. The event will feature panelists and speakers from around the world (TBA).

This year’s conference will focus on how WAC professionals articulate theories and practices, the benefits of inter-disciplinary work, and the translation of our work for students, academic staff, administration, and those outside the academy. Read the Call for Papers for more details. Proposal deadline is Friday, September 28, 2007.

WAC 2008 will be held in the Radisson Hotel and Suites on the shores of the Colorado River in downtown Austin. History, nature, scholarship, fine arts, warm weather, the world’s largest urban bat colony, and any kind of music you can think of are all within a short walk or bus ride.

Register before March 7, 2008, for lowest rates. Registration opens end of January, 2008.

(Added by Dan Melzer on April 8, 2007 | Last Updated on April 9, 2007)

Description:

 Open Call for Proposals

 

(please also see http://cattw-acprts.mcgill.ca/conference2008/en/cfp.htm)

[La version française suivra bientôt.] 

The Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (CATTW)/L'Association canadienne de professeurs de rédaction technique et scientifique (ACPRTS) is inviting proposals for its interdisciplinary international conference "Writing Beyond Borders—Writing Studies Across Disciplinary and National Borders," to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from June 1-3, 2008 in collaboration with the 2008 Congress of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS).

Rationale for the Conference

In line with the Congress theme of "Thinking Beyond Borders—Global Ideas: Global Values," the conference addresses recent changes in writing as a multifaceted knowledge-making practice across diverse academic, workplace, and national communities —changes that result from the recent shift toward a more digitally-mediated globalized community. Global ideas are very much created and maintained through written arguments, and they are intimately connected with global values—the values and beliefs that form the warrants for arguments about global issues such as sustainability, human rights, international trade, and the environment. Since writing studies is one of the key fundamentally interdisciplinary areas of study, research in writing is crucially important to efforts to understand global discourse.

Our conference theme—"Writing Beyond Borders—Writing Studies Across Disciplinary and National Borders"—points to the ways in which writing is used to mediate and construct discourse about the global ideas and values. It also encourages conference participants to examine the metaphorical borders of research in writing studies: rhetoric, composition, discourse analysis, cognitive psychology, writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines, linguistics, and English studies.

Conference Objectives

For this purpose, the conference organizers invite proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, or workshops that examine how writing practices have changed in varying academic, workplace, and global communities.  Proposals are also encouraged to examine the implications of these changes for the study and teaching of academic and professional writing and communication.

We encourage presenters to propose papers that extend beyond those borders to connect ideas from outside the disciplinary (writing studies) and national territories.  Suggested themes and questions include, but are not limited to the following:

• How do ideas from linguistics, sociology, cultural theory, gender studies and other fields in the humanities and social sciences inform research and knowledge making in technical communication?
• How can learning about current research in other countries spark new ideas or perspectives on research currently being done in Canada? Conversely, in what ways can research conducted in Canada contribute to the development of writing studies in the global community?
• What is or should be the role of writing studies in the discourse that surrounds sustainability, including environmental issues?
• How can the Canadian community of scholars involved in writing studies collaborate with scholars from other nations?
• In what ways can research and teaching (using participatory action research and service-learning initiatives and other innovative approaches) help us think beyond the borders of our campuses and extend our work to the communities that fund our work at universities and colleges?

Presentation and Proposal Formats

The conference organizers value diversity in approaches, perspectives and presentation formats, including 15-20 minute individual papers, 90-minute panels of 3 - 5 speakers, roundtables, or 90-minute workshops.

For individual presentations and panels, we are interested in both research reports and state-of-the-art papers that engage the literature and theories to derive new research questions, agendas, and directions. In either case, proposals should include the research question to be addressed, its significance for advancing research in the field, the conceptual framework and methods or approach used to address the question, and key findings or directions as well as their implications for practice, teaching, or future research. Proposals for individual papers should not exceed 150 words (+references). Panel proposals should include a brief (<100 words) description of the panel, its rationale and objectives, as well as brief descriptions of up to 150 words (+ references) of each paper to be presented and discussed on the panel.

Roundtable proposals should raise a provocative, but critical question for the study and teaching of writing, specify the names and contributions of at least 5 individuals who have agreed to participate in the roundtable. Proposals should also outline the rationale for the roundtable, its objectives, and the suggested discussion points. Proposals should not exceed 150 words (+references).

Workshop proposals should provide a 150-word description (+references) of the workshop, its rationale, objectives, research base, facilitators, procedures, and logistical requirements (e.g., computer labs, software, hardware, etc.).

Opportunities for submitting papers to peer-reviewed scholarly publications will be available (more information to follow).

Deadlines

We plan to apply for SSHRC funding for travel grants. If you would like to apply for reimbursement for travel funding, please send your proposal to us by September 20, 2007. If you do not need travel funding, please send your proposal to us by September 30, 2007.

Where to Submit Proposals

Please email proposals with your complete contact information to the program co-chair, Heather Graves, at hgraves@rogers.com.

(Added by Dan Melzer on August 28, 2007 | Last Updated on August 28, 2007)

Description:

Writing Program Administration and/as Learning

 

Denver Grand Hyatt Hotel
Denver, Colorado
July 10-13, 2008

Deadline for proposals: March 15, 2008
 

The conference will begin Thursday evening, July 10, and continue through Sunday morning, July 13. We invite proposals for individual presentations, panels, workshops, forums roundtables and other sessions addressing the conference theme, "Writing Program Administration and/as Learning."

We also invite attendees to prepare poster presentations or other exhibits of their programs' special initiatives, research projects, or signature areas.

To allow conference attendees to begin planning as soon as possible, review of proposals for individual presentations, concurrent session panels, roundtables, poster sessions, and multimedia presentations will occur on a rolling basis after February 15, with notifications also sent on that basis. Proposals received after March 15 will be considered on a space-available basis only.

Explanation of Conference Theme

Our goal is to examine WPAs as learners - as teachers – and as learned contributors to students’ lives, to knowledge, and to higher education. We will come together in Denver to work toward a better understanding of WPA work as an intellectual and a pedagogical activity with a rich and complicated history. I invite you to think about some of the following topics and questions. --Joe Janangelo, Program Chair

This list is suggestive. You are welcome to propose any ideas not explicitly tied to the conference theme but important to writing program administration. WPA work occurs in multiple and intersecting spheres and arenas. Hence, these questions are meant to be generative, not exhaustive. We welcome your ideas and approaches!

• What have been our key or catalytic learning moments as individuals and as a profession?
• What have been—and should be—our sources of learning?
• How have evolving technologies and new media influenced our learning?
• How can we put our learning into practice with students, colleagues, administrators, accrediting agencies, the media, and the public?
• How can we best learn from the feedback—both laudatory and critical?
• How is student learning marked and (mis)measured?
• What have you had to “un-learn” or re-evaluate?
• Thinking about readiness, receptivity, and resistance, how does learning relate to timing?
• How can WPAs learn from failure and trauma? Thinking about learning as an ongoing and recursive process, how might we chart growth or development when it is attended by difficulty and setbacks? How can tension, censure, or failure contribute to learning?
• How can we better document, preserve, protect, and share our learning?
• How does WPA scholarship (e.g. conceived contextually as the work we do on campus as well as in grants, multimedia projects, and publications) reflect our learning as an intellectual community? How does it influence, direct, or constrain knowledge making?
• What are key differences between personal and programmatic learning? How can we bridge or reconcile them?

Once again, this list is suggestive. You are welcome to propose any ideas not explicitly tied to the conference theme but important to writing program administration.

(Added by Dan Melzer on February 6, 2008 | Last Updated on February 6, 2008)

Description:

 

Second Biennial 2008 Writing Critical Thinking Conference
Friday, Nov. 21 to Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008
College of Liberal Arts, Quinnipiac University

Call for Conference Presentations

Proposal deadline is June 18.

Notification of acceptance sent by July 25

Writing Across a Critical Thinking Continuum
The College of Liberal Arts announces its second biennial conference, "Writing Across a Critical Thinking Continuum." The 2008 conference investigates the relationships between Critical Thinking strategies to writing processes across curricular and disciplinary domains.

The Critical Thinking community argues that students must internalize universal intellectual standards of reasoning as they progress in their academic and professional lives. Remarkably, as the WAC movement seeks greater integration between Critical Thinking and writing activity, many Critical Thinking proponents make almost no mention of writing's role in meeting intellectual goals. Because thinking and writing are not separable, but instead mutually contain and continuously stretch our teaching and students' learning, this conference explores the dynamic possibilities of assessing and promoting writing and thinking across a continuum.

Given the dynamic possibilities of teaching, learning and assessing our practices of writing and thinking across a continuum, we encourage participants to propose presentations in the instructive, yet provocative spirit suggested by our conference keynote speaker, Jonathan Monroe, of Cornell University. His address is titled: "Is Critical Thinking a Liberal Art? Writing in the Disciplines and Contemporary Poetry in (as) 'Higher Education.' "

We invite individual and panel proposals from every institutional, disciplinary, curricular, pedagogical and programmatic formation that would investigate, question, experiment with, and celebrate the critical stretch and creative tension between thinking and writing. Proposals might focus specifically on a particular community as they offer existing or emerging WAC and WID connections to Critical Thinking.

• Faculties
• Students and Majors
• Administrators

Participants should also consider the following questions as they craft their proposals:
1. If teaching and curricular practices are informed by WAC methods or training, what then is the extent of the pedagogical continuity between "writing to learn" and "writing to communicate" assignments? How do we measure, if not assure, "critical" thinking within a "WAC" or "WID" Continuum established over time? What issues of (dis)continuity prevail between teachers and departmental colleagues, or between teaching and a curriculum in need of a new metaphor for critically rethinking its mission and major?

2. Conversely, if pedagogical practices are less informed, even un-informed, by the WAC movement, and take their lead instead from Critical Thinking, how do we ensure a continuous expression of such thinking? What are the central curricular features of our pedagogical deployments and assessment if "writing" isn't the necessary measure of critical or creative thinkers? And how do collegial and departmental commitments advance or impede our sense of a critical and creative thinking continuum?

3. Outside of our departmental and immediate collegial communities, what independent-or interdependent-role does the Writing Center, the Learning Center, the Faculty Collaborative, or the WPA play in our sense of a University continuum? Do the various entities and organizations devoted to more creative and critical teaching and learning hang together by virtue of consensual tenets drawn from WAC, from CT, or from hybridized standards from both movements? If instead, a given institution struggles to achieve some logical or pedagogical continuity-some critical-creative tension-across all ongoing initiatives, presenters might entertain how this might be achieved through a review and re-adaptation of tenets from both movements.

Participants are welcome to fit their sense of the conference thematic, along with any of the many suggestive leads suggested by Monroe's keynote address title, into some of the familiar and prevailing areas where a critical and creative thinking continuum continues to demand innovation:

• Developmental literacies and cognitive stages
• Communicative forms and disciplinary genres
• Program development, faculty training, assessing continuity
• Cross-institutional or cross-cultural initiatives
• Web-based, distance or hybrid learning
• Portfolios, partnerships and capstones
• Professional and service learning
• On discontinuities and discontinuations

Both the framing questions and the proposed areas only begin to delineate the possibilities for proposing individual or collaborative findings. Feel free to stretch both the tenets and the tendencies suggested by the theme and the call. While we are most interested in proposals that are practical, we welcome more theoretical proposals--as long as they address pedagogical or programmatic issues of developing and assessing the conference theme. Accepted presentations should plan for interaction and provide "take away" materials for participating colleagues. Please consider students' work--and their actual presence--when planning your proposals.

We reserve the right to group presenters who explore or share a similar approach, and we are eager to join WAC types with CT types into panels yet to be envisioned by ourselves or the presenters. Proposals must be submitted on line - maximum length of one page (300 words) - in Microsoft Word.

For Information on the Conference-Click Here

Submit your proposal here and provide us with the necessary information about your proposed paper.

If you should have questions regarding your submission, please contact us atquwac08conf@quinnipiac.edu.

Or phone Valerie Boyle at (203) 582-8976

(Added by Timothy Dansdill on May 5, 2008 | Last Updated on May 5, 2008)

Description:

 

Ubiquitous and Sustainable Computing
@ School @ Work @ Play

 

 

Call for Papers:

Computers and Writing 2009

University of California, Davis
June 18-21, 2009

 

Computers and Writing 2009 seeks papers that explore the complex social, pedagogical and institutional dynamics around ubiquitous and/or sustainable computing. Because computing technologies continue to extend their reach, we encourage proposals that explain the impact and challenges of ubiquitous and sustainable computing in different contexts: in educational settings, in workplaces, and even into (real or virtual) leisure spaces. We are especially interested in accounts of how teachers and students, workers and writers use computers and other technologies in their lives at school, at work and at play.

 

When Computers and Writing began, the desktop revolution was just beginning and mainframes were a not-so-distant memory. Since 1983 computers have gotten smaller and faster and more portable, and have therefore become more embedded in our lives. Computing has become ubiquitous. We find computers in more homes, in more workplaces, and in more schools, though the uses and meanings of technology can differ greatly across these contexts. Our interactions with technology have also expanded from the keyboards, mice, and screens of desktop computers to cell phones, microphones for speech to text input, PDAs that recognize handwriting, digital cameras, digital audio recorders, GPS navigators, and other ever-emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs). Today's ubiquitous computing is not quite the utopia imagined by Howard Rheingold or Mark Weiser nor is it the dystopia predicted by Clifford Stoll or Philip K. Dick; it is a rather more interesting, nuanced, and complex world than we’d imagined. 

 

Ubiquitous computing has produced a series of challenges for educational institutions. Sustainable computing means finding ways to meet current technological needs without sacrificing future innovation. As teachers and scholars of writing, how do we avoid the curse of technological obsolescence, even as computing rapidly evolves and expands into new corners of lived experience? How do our uses of technology move beyond short-term interventions, and contribute to sustained and sustainable learning across the life-span of our students? Finally, how do we employ these technologies ethically, given their potential impact on a local and global scale? Ultimately at stake is not just the sustainability of computing, but also how computing can help us lead more sustainable lives.

 

Submissions Open: Monday, April 28, 2008

Submission Deadline: Friday, September 19, 2008
Submit Proposals (250 words or less) at http://conferences.ucdavis.edu/cw09

(Added by Dan Melzer on March 31, 2008 | Last Updated on March 31, 2008)