Recollections from an Uncommon Time: 4C20 Documentarian Tales
Edited by Julie Lindquist, Bree Straayer, and Bump Halbritter
Copy edited by Don Donahue. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
This collection of original essays was occasioned first by the 2020 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Annual Convention, and then, later, by the cancellation of it. As originally planned, Documentarians (attendees in a newly created role) would share their experiences of the CCCC Convention. After the meeting was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection became a means for the Documentarians to share a common experience in this uncommon time.
As the volume editors write, “Expect to have some of the tales resonate with your experiences and others to depict a process of sensemaking that might not align with your own. Some of the tales, and the learning they depict, are still in process—they’re still happening. All of this is to say that this collection of Documentarian Tales might challenge your sensibilities . . . it might not fall together quite how you expect or even how you hope it may. But really—given its mission, its diverse sites of origin and diverse authorship—how could it? We ask you to take a moment, read, and listen to each other.”
The essays in this collection relate the shared experience of disruption in our work lives—which, as it turns out, also teaches us how deeply the terms of our work are implicated in our experiences of home, family, and everyday routines.
Table of Contents
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Introduction, Julie Lindquist, Bree Straayer, Bump Halbritter
1. A Sweet Spot, a Safe Space, Adrienne Jankens
2. Other Disseminations, Erika Luckert
3. Seeking Shelter in the Eye: What We Can Get out of the Storm, Xiao Tan
4. Navigating the Ph.D., and Everything Else, in a Pandemic: A Storied Reflection on Precarity, Affect, and Resilience, Nancy Henaku
5. Risk and Refuge: The Role of the Commonplace in Navigating Crisis, Lynn M. Ishikawa
6. "Yes, and . . .": Confronting Work, Miscarriage, and Grief during a Pandemic, Morgan Hanson
7. On Choosing, Lindsey Albracht
8. Pondering the Quiddities: A Lexical Analysis of COVID-19 CCCC Documentarian Notes, Miriam Moore
9. Scholarship Interrupted: How Unsettling Compartmentalized “Normal” Can Inspire Wholehearted Insight, Cheryl Price-Mckell
10. Pandemic Life: Adventures in the Virtual World, Xinqiang Li
11. Some Lessons and Tales: Moving Classes Online in the Advent of a Crisis for Which No One Signed Up, Isaac Ewuoso
12. Building Strength in an Uncommon Time, Catherine Lamas
13. Feminist Mishmash: COVID-19 CCCC, Heather McGovern
14. Growing Up Again (and Again), Shauna Chung
15. Documenting Our Solastalgia: A New Landscape, Maggie Christensen
16. Self-Reflexivity Is/As Resistance, Soha Youssef
17. “Tending to My Life”: On Resilience and Academic Work, Charlotte Asmuth
18. A Controlled Freak-Out: Mentoring, Writing, and Parenting during COVID-19, Katrina M. Powell
19. Harnessing the Magical Properties of Collaboration for Transforming the Neoliberal University, Shelagh Patterson
20. Hitting Pause on Productivity: Finding Mindful Labor in Quarantine, Gabrielle Isabel Kelenyi
21. “You Good, Fam’?”: Mindful Journaling and Africana Digital Dialogic Compassionate Rhetorical Response Pedagogy during a Pandemic, Rachel Panton
Afterword. People Always Clap for the Wrong Things, Or, Labor, Time, and Writing Have Always Been a Feminist Issue, Holly Hassel
Afterword. Moments and Reflections from WPA Scholars on Race, Staci M. Perryman-Clark and Collin Lamont Craig
About the Editors
Julie Lindquist is Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of First-Year Writing at Michigan State University. At MSU, she has taught courses in first-year and professional writing, and graduate courses in cultural rhetoric, research methods, and pedagogy. She is author of A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar (Oxford) and, with David Seitz, Elements of Literacy (Pearson). Her writings on rhetoric, class, literacy, and writing pedagogy have appeared in College Composition and Communication, College English, JAC, and Pedagogy, as well as in edited collections, including Keywords in Writing Studies. She has co-authored several articles on literacy research, writing pedagogy, and reflective learning with Bump Halbritter, her colleague at MSU. Her article, co-authored with Bump (“Time, Lives, and Videotape: Operationalizing Discovery in Scenes of Literacy Sponsorship,”), received the Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English in 2013. Julie was elected in 2018 to serve as Assistant Chair for the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and as Program Chair for the 2020 Convention in Milwaukee, WI.
Bree Straayer graduated in 2020 with her PhD in Rhetoric and Writing with a Cultural Rhetorics Emphasis and a Specialization in Women and Gender. Her dissertation, Once I Believed: Critical Thinking and the Process of Change focuses on the intersections of religion, sexuality, and education. Bree has also conducted research on language acquisition and writing program administration. Her research on international student experience is included in a collection which came out in January 2022 entitled International Students’ Multilingual Literacy Practices. Bree works in the non-profit sector with English language and adult basic education learners as a Family Literacy Program Director at The Literacy Center of West Michigan.
Bump Halbritter is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and former Director of First-Year Writing (FYW) at Michigan State University. His research attends to teaching and learning in FYW and to the integration of audio-visual writing into scenes of college writing and scholarly research and production. Bump’s long-term collaboration with Julie Lindquist has yielded many articles and chapters, including their 2013 article, “Time, Lives, and Videotape: Operationalizing Discovery in Scenes of Literacy Sponsorship,” which received The Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English. Bump’s book, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, received the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award for 2013. Bump has served on the CCCC Executive Committee and many CCCC working groups.
Publication Information: Lindquist, Julie, Bree Straayer, & Bump Halbritter. (2023). Recollections from an Uncommon Time: 4C20 Documentarian Tales. National Council of Teachers of English; The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/swr/documentarian/
ISBN: 978-0-8141-39530 (PDF) | 978-0-8141-00677 (ePub) | 978-0-8141-39523 (pbk.)
Publication Date: January 25, 2023
Contact Information:
Julie Lindquist: lindqu11@msu.edu
Bree Straayer: bstraayer@literacycenterwm.org
Bump Halbritter: drbump@msu.edu
Studies in Writing and Rhetoric
Series Editor: Stephen Parks, University of Virginia
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Copyright © 2023 by the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English. 262 pages, with notes and references. This book is available in print from National Council of Teachers of English as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in PDF and ePub formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.