Difference and Inclusion:
Writing Centers as Sites for Change
Call for Proposals - NEWCA 2014
Bryant University
Smithfield, RI
March 1-2, 2014
Proposals due by December 4, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Vershawn Young
University of Kentucky
Call for Proposals/Essay Contest
In April of 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) officially approved a position statement that affirmed "students' right to their own language-to the dialect that expresses their family and community identity, the idiolect that expresses their unique personal identity." The resolution goes further to “affirm the responsibility of all teachers…to provide the opportunity for students to learn the conventions of what has been called written edited American English [and to have] students understand the nature of American English and come to respect all its dialects.” Writing Centers by their very ideals have been inclusive and are arguably engaged in institutional ethnographic work that “makes[s] the invisible visible,” those who are and can be marginalized. However, our very ideal of inclusiveness can mask the lines that divide us – as workers, students, and members of a college/university community.
To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of this groundbreaking resolution, the 2014 NEWCA Conference invites proposals that explore the range of ways writing center work intersects with the tenets articulated in Students' Rights to Their Own Language. Proposals may address a range of questions concerning difference and inclusion, including:
1) How can tutors and directors foster a diverse and inclusive Writing Center environment? How can Writing Center directors work to create an atmosphere of inclusion among staff members?
2) How do Writing Center workers and their clients work with the differences they might have from each other- social identity, language, age, learning styles, and more?
3) How can Writing Centers more effectively honor students’ own languages?
4) Code-switching is the integration of two languages in the context of conversation, as: "Esta haciendo mucho frio! I should have worn my sweater!" Code-meshing is defined as the combining of local dialects and vernacular with standard English into academic writing assignments.
How do writing centers and the clients they serve already experience the tensions between code-switching and code-meshing, or mixed voices? How do these concepts that Vershawn Young writes about provide names for the multiliteracies and multimodal practices that students, consultants, faculty and administrators already engage? What might it mean to continue to perpetuate flattened notions of correctness in a discursively diffuse linguistic environment?
5) How has your center or graduate students used ethnography or autoethnography in the past? How has this changed your center, pedagogy, and insights?
6) How can Writing Centers create opportunities for students to use their own languages?
7) What kind of partnerships can Writing Centers form that work toward social and political change?
8) What kinds of alliances are already being formed between Writing Centers, faculty, disability Services and other campus organizations to promote inclusion and acceptance?
9) In what ways do online tutorials (online conferences, online writing center work) change the ways sociocultural identity affects the dynamic between writer and tutor?
10) How can/should/do Writing Centers integrate awareness of difference and inclusion into tutor training? What kind of tutor training is needed to address the ever changing demographic?
11) Faculty expectations for college-level writing/ institutional norms and students’ needs and abilities, combined with their own individual experiences with writing, are often two opposing forces. How do tutors work to reconcile institutional values of language with students' own languages?
12) How might writing centers become sites or their professionals and tutors become agents for challenging institutional practices that run counter to multilingual values and pedagogy?
13) In what ways do our staffing practices and hiring decisions disrupt larger and local systems of domination and structural difference?
Proposal Guidelines
Successful presentations are dynamic exchanges between audience members (peer tutors, graduate students, and other writing center professionals and faculty). We welcome presentations of original scholarship and research that foster dialogue with conference participants. In order to include more voices and perspectives in our ongoing discussions, we especially encourage tutors and first-time presenters to send in proposals, as well as writing center workers from community college and high school writing centers.
Please prepare a 250- to 500-word proposal and a 75-word abstract for a 20-minute individual presentation or a 75-minute interactive workshop, roundtable, or panel. Your proposed workshop, roundtable, or panel must actively involve the audience. As a result of feedback from recent conferences, we continue to encourage proposals for the facilitation of roundtable discussions.
Please include the following information in your proposal:
1. Proposer’s name, position (i.e., tutor, director, etc), institution, institutional or home address, telephone number, and email address
2. Presenters’ names with title and contact information, as above
3. Title of presentation, a 250- to 500-word proposal, and a 75-word abstract for inclusion in the conference program
4. Type of session (i.e., individual presentation, panel presentation, roundtable discussion, workshop presentation)
5. Specific audiovisual and technical requests (NOTE: Presenters should plan to bring their own laptop computers and adapters).
6. Plans for encouraging interaction and involving the audience in the presentation. This may be included in the presentation description.
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of relevance to the conference theme and application to a broad audience of writing center tutors and administrators. Submissions will also be reviewed on the basis of originality (novel perspectives, approaches, and methods), interactivity (audience participation vs. oral delivery of an essay), and clarity.
Proposal Submission
Electronically submit your proposal by December 4, 2013, to the co-chairs of the NEWCA Proposal Reading Committee, Susan DeRosa, at , Jan Robertson at or or Siu Ng at . You may submit your proposal as an MS Word attachment or in the body of the email. For more information about submitting proposals, please contact one of the co-chairs at the addresses above.
For More Information
For more information about the conference, registration, or scholarship opportunities, including the 2014 NEWAAC meeting held at the conference, visit NEWCA ONLINE at http://northeastwca.org. For other questions related to the conference, email the NEWCA Chair, John Hall, at .
NEWCA 2014 ESSAY CONTEST
At the suggestion of this year's keynote speaker, the NEWCA Steering Committee invites essays that take up Dr. Young's theorizing on the concept of code-meshing, a commingling of dominant, vernacular, and subcultural discursive practices in writing and speaking that exists in tension with other notions of teaching and learning about literacy. Some advocate adherence and internalization of standard or academic English, while others advocate strategies that involve switching ("code-switching") between linguistics practices of discourse communities, of filial or disciplinary collectives of practice, or the signifying practices of home. Young and others argue that these concepts of "code-switching" render hegemonic the dominant forms, mark the non-dominant as Other, and make invisible the inevitable hybridity of everyday and professional language use that is always evolving and contingent.
Student essays that take up code-meshing ought to offer up personal experiences, case-studies, or challenges to the theory or how it is experienced in writing centers or related spaces for mentoring writers. The top essays submitted will be featured in a panel at NEWCA and announced at our award ceremony; essayists will also receive monetary recognition of their work.
Essayists should submit their short essay (approximately 800-1000 words) to John Hall at by Feb. 1, 2014.
NEWCA ONLINE:
The resource on writing scholarship, writing consultation technique, and writing center administration in the Northeastern United States:
1. http://northeastwca.org
a. Read information about this year's conference
b. Register for this year's conference (mail-in form and online registrationc. View/download important documents and key dates
d. View links to NEWCA recommended resources, articles, and blogs
e. Read up on NEWCA history and leadership bios
2. http://facebook.com/northeastwca
a. Ask questions and get quick responses
b. Chat with other tutors, academics, administrators, and writing center lovers
c. Participate in discussion boards
d. View and post articles, blogs, and links
e. Look at and upload writing center pictures
3. http://twitter.com/northeastwca
a. Keep up to date with NEWCA's daily happenings
b. Enjoy posts on writing scholarship, writing center news, and more
Want to share a link, blog, or article with NEWCA ONLINE?
Email <> today!
We hope to see you at NEWCA 2014!