Tag: cccc2011

CFP: CCCC 2011 Session: “Contesting This Space, Contesting This Knowledge: A Session on Conferences”

Andrew Pilsch and I went to Georgia Tech together before he went off to Penn State, and I went across the pond to the University of Liverpool and then back again to Kent State. During that time, Andrew has been, I think, methodically forming a humanities vanguard to critique, challenge, and shake up the academy to the aid of graduate students such as ourselves. Maybe he’s doing all of those things, or none of those things. I don’t mean to write a manifesto for his work, but he has posted a brilliant session cfp for CCCC 2011 on “Contesting This Space, Contesting This Knowledge: A Session on Conferences.” I’ve included his cfp below. Please email Andrew if you’re interested in taking part in what I believe will be a fantastic discussion. I have a feeling that Andrew’s work here will lead to constructive rethinking of the conference perhaps through his own plans or by getting others to reflect on what it is we do by conferencing in big and small ways. Just check out his calculations on the collective distance of all CCCC 2010 participants on his Twitter feed here to get a hint of what he’s working on.

CCCC 2011 Session: “Contesting This Space, Contesting This Knowledge: A Session on Conferences” (4/30)

full name / name of organization:
Andrew Pilsch / Pennsylvania State University
contact email:
atp128@psu.edu
cfp categories:
rhetoric_and_composition

A session on the rhetoric of the academic conference.

Once again, several hundred of us will be descending on a major metropolis to give a paper, meet up with old friends, and find out what’s new in the many fields that operate under the banner of CCCC. All the while, though, many of us may do so without thinking about the nature of professional conferences and their roles in our personal and professional lives.

This proposed session seeks to question the nature of the academic conference and the kinds of knowledges that get produced within such spaces. Additionally, papers should in some way analyze the rhetoric surrounding conferences (the way we talk about them, the way we write for them, the way they talk about themselves, etc.). That said, any aspect of conference-going would be welcome as a topic, including but not limited to:

  • The conference paper as knowledge artifact
  • Literacy and writing practices embodied within the conference presentation
  • Performance in the conference paper
  • Technology of/in presentations (Powerpoint, websites, etc.)
  • The oral/written divide in conference presentation
  • The role of the conference in the professional lives of scholars
  • The economic implications of conference-going
  • Rethinking the nature of the conference in light of the various, current “crises” in academic life
  • The logistics of conference organization
  • The physical spaces of conferences (social and professional)
  • Conferences and the social life of the mind

Please email proposals of at most 250 words by April 30th if you would be interested in participating in this session.

Original cfp available here.