WAC Clearinghouse Announces Three Paid Fellowships

  • Jun 1, 2023

The WAC Clearinghouse is delighted to announce fellowship opportunities for new and early career scholars who are interested in expanding their editorial and administrative experience through involvement in one or more of our publishing venues. 

The fellowship positions represent 6- or 12-month appointments. Fellowship stipends are $1,000 for 6 months and $2,000 for 12 months (stipends will be paid when the work for the fellowship has been completed). Clearinghouse fellows will shadow members of their assigned editorial team to learn about publishing. Each fellow will take on at least one project to advance the work of the Clearinghouse. Prior to starting the appointment, fellows will be informed of expectations of the fellowship, anticipated work schedule, and deliverables. 

Eligibility: Fellows may not be members of the WAC Clearinghouse editorial board or editorial team. Doctoral students must be in good standing at an accredited institution. Preference will be given to doctoral students and full- or part-time faculty or independent scholars who have graduated within the past five years. 

To Apply:

  1. Submit a statement of interest (1000-word maximum) to Ann Blakeslee (ablakesle@emich.edu) that directly mentions the project or projects (refer to 2022-23 Fellowship Project Roster below) to which you wish to be assigned and explains your interest in and emerging ideas for contributing to the project or projects you’ve selected. 
  2. Attach a CV that includes the names and contact information for three references who are able to speak to your scholarship and/or service to your home institution or the field. 

Your statement and CV should be included as attachments (Word or PDF only). The deadline to apply is Monday, June 26, 2023.

Applications will be screened by representatives from the WAC Clearinghouse and editors from each publication, and selected applicants will be contacted for an interview via Zoom by July 14. Interviews will take place in late July and early August, and fellowship decisions will be announced no later than August 15, 2023. For additional questions, please contact Ann Blakeslee, Associate Publisher for Books, WAC Clearinghouse (ablakesle@emich.edu) or Michael Pemberton, Associate Publisher for Journals (michaelp@georgiasouthern.edu). 

2022-23 Fellowship Project Roster

Across the Disciplines – The Susan H. McLeod New Scholar Fellowship

Across the Disciplines seeks an editorial fellow for a funded 12-month fellowship working with the ATD editorial team to update the journal's style guide. The stipend for this fellowship will be $2,000. We hope that the fellow's work will address several areas: 

  • Incorporating American Psychological Association style guide updates made since the last ATD style guide revision was completed more than 10 years ago.
  • Developing conventions for source types and attributes not substantially addressed by the APA, for example, archival work, correspondence, scriptural texts, etc., and dealing with cases where the authorship/provenance/etc. of sources is contested, providing guidance for authors where documentation entails political and theoretical questions.
  • Developing policies for copyediting that address the issues of linguistic justice that can arise in the copyediting stage of scholarly publishing. As Cagle et al. (2021) note in Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices, the peer review process has historically perpetuated linguistic racism and other related forms of language oppression related to class, multilingualism, gender, ability, and other identities. In this revision of the ATD style guide, we hope to build on the work of Cagle et al. and incorporate the recommendations of position statements like Baker-Bell et al.'s (2020) This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! to include specific guidelines for copyediting as the final stage of the publishing process to provide principles and transparency for copy editors working with authors on editing, layout, formatting of visuals, accessibility features, and other aspects.

The WAC Journal – The Will Hochman New Scholar Fellowship

This 12-month funded fellowship has a stipend of $2,000. It consists of two main parts: 

  • The creation and oversight of a special section in The WAC Journal’s regular issue. The fellow will be able to select a theme, create a call for papers, and be in charge of the review and editing processes with assistance from the journal’s editorial team. 
  • Arranging a mini conference around the topic of the special section to help promote the journal. The details of the conference can be arranged between the editorial staff and the fellow at the start of the fellowship. Other duties include assisting with regular production of the journal as needed.

The goals for this project are to increase the visibility of The WAC Journal, continue working with guest editors, and provide an additional conference opportunity for WAC scholars to gather outside of the biennial IWAC conference.

The main point of contact for the fellow will be the managing editor (Allison Daniel) who will hold regular meetings with the fellow to monitor progress and offer professional advice. The meetings will occur at least once a month. To make the integration more seamless, the fellow will participate in the journal’s regular editorial process. The editorial staff is open to suggestions from the fellow on how to best meet their needs and expectations.

Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition Book Series – The Charles Bazerman New Scholar Fellowship 

The fellowship recipient working with the Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition series will design and circulate a survey to explore the themes and approaches to narrating the field that readers would like to see in the series. The survey will focus on what readers find useful in the series (which provides comprehensive surveys of topics in the field) and what ideas readers have for reimagining the series (to include multiple interventions and alternative narratives or counterstories). Drawing on Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices (2021), the survey findings will help the editors consider questions such as: How does the naming of topics in the field reflect and reproduce dominant frameworks? How do we tell the stories of our field without reproducing and normalizing its dominant histories and exclusions? How do we honor our field while sharing alternative narratives and ways of imagining foundations and futures?

The fellowship position is a 6-month appointment, with a stipend of $1,000. 

  • During the first month of the fellowship, the fellow will research survey designs used by other publishing companies that factor in issues of diversity, inclusion, and accessibility; in consultation with the editors, they will design the survey, compile a list of participants, and determine a method for circulation. 
  • During the second month, the fellow will circulate the survey, send out follow-ups, collect, and aggregate the data. 
  • The analysis and synthesis of data will take approximately two additional months, with the remaining two months spent on presenting the data and applying the results to the series website and guidelines, which will be revised/rewritten.   

The fellow will work closely with the series editors, who will consult with the fellow and provide guidance and feedback on survey design and analysis of results. The fellow will expand their editorial experience as they collaborate with the series editors to consider how the survey findings will inform the series description, call for proposals, and proposal and reviewing guidelines.