Below you'll find a call for proposals for a Pre-Conference Feminist
Workshop at next years 4Cs convention in New York City. We hope to
continue the tradition of planning for a workshop that will engage,
challenge, and build connections among those who are interested in the
relationships between feminism and composition studies.
We have crafted a proposal to establish a general theme for discussions,
but we offer this only as a prompt. The session title is: Feminist
Narratives of Connection and Displacement: Painful Transformations.
Submissions should be e-mailed to both of us; the deadline is April 13,
2002.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
CCCC 2003 Pre-conference Feminist Workshop
SESSION TITLE: Feminist Narratives of Connection and Displacement:
Painful Transformations
The 2003 CCCC conference invokes "Theme for English B" by Langston
Hughes to establish a rubric for conference papers, and suggests that
Hughes's poem be read as a statement about how instructors and students
are "implicated within each other," and that "in order to learn--we must
learn together, from and with each other." This happy conclusion,
however, is troubled by the question of who learns what from whom, and
who gets to decide what counts as a recognizable sign of learning.
Indeed, Hughes's poem examines how specific, lived experiences impact
our expectations about whether and how language enables us to
communicate. The poem's speaker, a student, responds to an assignment to
write an essay using an "authentic" voice by invoking his specific
experiences as an African-American male living in Harlem. The poem asks
if that context will affect not only what the student writes, but also
if it will affect how the teacher comes to evaluate the essay. Hughes
draws attention to textual anxieties produced by competing cultural
values. His poem suggests that we are "implicated within each other" in
multiple and not necessarily equal ways.
In next year's workshop, we hope to address the question of how
feminists should sort through the multiple and unequal ways that "we are
implicated within each other." The question of how to learn from each
other and draw connections is not only problematic in the
student/teacher relationship, but also extends to feminists as well. Can
feminist teachers learn from each other if each of us brings different
experiences to the table? How should feminists sort through the unruly
and vast question of who learns what from whom? In what ways can
procedures that appear to be equitable and inclusive result in
establishing exclusions?
We plan to arrange a full-day session that will retain much of the
organizational structure of previous years in terms of combining formal
presentations with informal round table discussions. We would like to
retain the flexibility that marked last year's workshop, so, as stated
above, all proposals relative to feminism and composition are welcome.
At the same time, we hope to solicit lead off speakers who will directly
address the issues raised in the prompt. We are interested in papers
that bear witness to the difficulties that may be encountered as we
attempt to do the work required of us as composition instructors in
academic environments. Those difficulties implicate how we define our
work in the classroom, with our colleagues, with organizations that earn
our affiliations, and within the relationships we have with those who
are not affiliated with the academy. In what ways does Langston Hughes's
poem ask us to think about how we evaluate and render judgments about
the work that we do and expect from others? Should we devise new methods
of evaluation? How should feminists testify to the relationship between
the specific lived experience and speaking for general groups?
Please let us know if you would like to speak directly to any of these
issues and be considered for one of the lead off positions.
We are working with a cruelly short deadline. Please don't get
discouraged!
Here are some guidelines:
-We need to receive proposals by April 13.
-cc your proposal as an MS Word attachment to both chairs since we are
working long distance: Leanne Warshauer [leannebw@optonline.net] and Eve
Wiederhold [wiederholde@mail.ecu.edu].
- Proposals should include:
name
institution
home address
office phone
email address
fax
indicate if first-time presenter at CCCC
Title of your presentation
Summary of presentation (as long as you would like)
A one or two sentence ABSTRACT for us to use in our collective proposal
to NCTE.
We hope to hear from you soon,
Leanne Warshauer, Lecturer, SUNY Stony Brook
Eve Wiederhold, Assistant Professor, East Carolina University
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From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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