I'd like to go to the Cs next year in Chicago, but I've never been before, and I'd like to solicit a little advice. I see on the form that you can submit either a session proposal or an individual proposal. I'm curious about that. What do people usually do? Do you form your own panels before submitting, or do you just turn in individual proposals?
Also, what is this area cluster thing all about? You have to pick just one? Are there clusters in which a proposal is more likely to get accepted than others?
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
3 comments:
Sharon, people submit both panel sessions and individual proposals. The conventional wisdom suggests that panels have a slightly better chance of being approved, because the approving committee doesn't have to do the work of putting disparate proposals together. As far as area clusters and likelihood of approval goes -- well, Collin's take is smarter than anything I could add on the topic.
So I'll ask -- noting that I've learned a lot from your posts and their subesquent comments on weblogs and personal writing -- what are you thinking about proposing? Because, as my recent writing likely indicates, I'd love to do a theory (and not tech) presentation about the possibilities offered by the work of Mariolina Salvatori and Peter Elbow for personal writing, but one that I hope might intersect well with another tech presentation or two in a sort of hybrid panel of the type that Joanna describes. It might be neat (although perhaps over-ambitious), as well, to discuss the cross-institutional implications of two-year and four-year pedagogies. I often find the most diverse (in terms of genre and perspective) panels to be the most valuable, so if any of these topics sound interesting, let's think about putting something together.
I could talk about personal writing till the cows come home. I hadn't really thought about it as a conference topic, but if I were going to do that, just off the cuff, the things that I'd want to talk about are (A) cross-disciplinary theories and methods between creative writing and composition; (B) cross-institutional theories and methods and the particular problems of applying techniques designed for university classrooms in a rural community college setting.
The people I'd say influenced my own thoughts on teaching writing the most were Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, Wendy Bishop, and Wayne Booth. Wayne Booth for The Rhetoric of Fiction. I haven't read The Rhetoric of Rhetoric yet.
I'm also interested in the service learning stuff Scott has been talking about, and I was thinking I would apply that to the Oral History Project here in Mississippi and talk about this as a means of (A) professional development (back to "The Two-Year College Teacher-Scholar"); (B) getting students involved in community service/learning and writing; (C) preserving local history for future scholars; (D)disseminating what happens in the classroom and the college to the community.
I have other ideas, but I also plan to submit to AWP and TYCA-SE. I can't use up all of my ideas in one place.
I plan to do another blogging topic at TYCA because blogging is still pretty new to that conference, and I think people are interested in hearing about it. I can't imagine I could say anything about blogging at CCCC that hasn't been done, so I'm cool with a non-techie topic there.
Sharon, I'm new to your blog, but I'm thinking that there might be some possibilities for your combining your interest in blogging and personal writing for your proposal.
Also be sure to click the box (which I assume is still on the form somewhere) that says you're a first-time presenter. I think that gets you special consideration.
& good luck!
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