CCCC at 75 Years
Engaging Our Abundant Past, Present, and Future
Guest Editors: Jennifer Sano-Franchini & Donnie Johnson Sackey
The 2024 CCCC Annual Convention in Spokane, Washington, marks 75 years since the first CCCC was held in Chicago in April 1949. For more than the past seven decades, CCCC has adapted, developed, and changed given the evolving needs of its members and the changing contexts within which we work. For instance, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Students’ Right to Their Own Language, which was adopted at CCCC and published in CCC in 1974. In 1993, the organization took a significant step forward with the establishment of Scholars for the Dream, an initiative aimed at promoting diversity and equity within our field by supporting graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014, CCCC further cemented its commitment to honoring excellence and promoting diversity with the institutions of the Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award, which recognizes the promise of graduate students who push disciplinary boundaries by making meaning out of sexual and gender minority experiences. In 2015, there was an effort to extend CCCC’s capacity as a trusted public voice on issues of writing and writing instruction, leading to the creation of the Emergent Research Award, which has since provided vital support to projects that address pressing societal challenges and contribute to the public discourse on literacy. Today, CCCC offers numerous Research Grants and Travel Awards in an effort to support members’ ability to conduct cutting edge research and to attend the in-person annual convention. In addition to these initiatives, CCCC has had the privilege of elevating 33 exemplars, individuals whose exceptional teaching, research, scholarship, and service to the profession have left an indelible mark on the discipline. Yet these important moments remain only a snapshot of the history of the organization.
For 75 years, CCCC has served as a platform for sharing transformational research, discussing teaching and learning strategies in changing times, considering emerging research trends, and nurturing interdisciplinary dialogue. To recognize and reflect upon these milestones, as well as to examine the spaces between and around them, we invite short essays, retrospectives and reflections, conversations, photo essays, and other multimodal pieces that speak to CCCC at 75 years. These pieces may touch upon any number of questions and topics, including but not limited to:
I. Histories
CCCC Organizational Histories
-
- The impacts of organizational work and service of members, including but not governance revision, efforts to increase transparency, the development of various statements, etc.
- The more recent history of the identity-based caucuses, building on the work of Parks, Kirklighter, and Blackmon’s Writing and Working for Change project.
- Discussions of published histories of NCTE/CCCC (Lindemann; Parks, Kirklighter, Blackmon; Bird)
- The historical trajectory and rhetorical work of the Annual Convention over time.
- The relationship between CCCC and other disciplinary organizations like TYCA, ATTW, IWAC, CWPA, IWCA, MLA, RSA, NCA, CFSHRC, C&W, etc.
- Brief pieces on members’ favorite CCCC memories
CCCC Rhetorical Histories
-
-
- What might a corpus analysis of CCCC Statements, or Annual Convention Programs or CFPs yield?
- How have themes and discourses at the Annual Convention reflected broader trends in composition and rhetoric?
- What lessons can be learned from CCCC’s responses to past crises and challenges?
- Experiences and reflections by those who’ve done service work for and on behalf of the organization, e.g., former Executive Committee members, Officers, Task Force members, and Committee members, Scholars for the Dream, etc.
- The role of the Social Justice at the Convention (SJAC) committee, or other CCCC Task Forces and Committees.
- The ongoing work of the CCCC member groups, including the caucuses, Special Interest Groups, and Standing Groups.
-
II. CCCC in 2024
-
-
- What is the state of the organization today? What are current priorities, challenges, and initiatives?
- Why and how does the organization and the work done by its members matter? What are the stakes and affordances of a large professional organization committed to research and teaching in composition and writing studies broadly?
- Responses to recent and ongoing issues such as COVID-19, generative AI, and austerity in higher education.
- Reflections on the organization’s impact, relevance, and potential in current times.
- How does/can CCCC collaborate with other disciplinary organizations, and what are the benefits of these collaborations?
-
III. Looking to the Future
-
-
-
- Where should CCCC go?
- What resonant issues must be highlighted at this moment in time?
- What roles or issues do you see CCCC encouraging members to take on, beyond the perceived boundaries of our discipline? And what resources are needed to make these futures a reality?
- How might the organization sustain itself at a time of cuts to travel budgets alongside increases in the costs of travel?
- What are the risks and benefits of different conferencing approaches and modalities that CCCC might consider?
- What steps might the organization take to strengthen its partnerships and collaborations with related organizations?
-
-
Spark is the ideal journal for this special issue, not only because of its online and openly accessible and multimodal format and its scholar-activist ethos, but also because it emerged from a CCCC initiative, where graduate student members saw a concern with the Convention and moved toward action. Ultimately, we hope to not only encourage reflection on the organization and its history, but also to create an opportunity that might benefit teacher-scholars in the field, whether or not they are able to attend the 2024 CCCC Annual Convention.
Formats
-
-
- Short Research Essays: Under 4000 words
- Retrospectives and Reflections
- Conversations & Interviews
- Photo Essays
- Other multimodal pieces
-
Submitting a Proposal
Send your 200-word proposal to Jennifer Sano-Franchini (jennifer.sano-franchini@mail.wvu.edu) and Donnie Johnson Sackey (donnie.sackey@austin.utexas.edu) by Tuesday, April 30, 2024. In your proposal, please include your title, format, and a description of the piece, including how it connects to the special issue theme of CCCC at 75 Years.
Projected Timeline
CFP shared: Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Proposals due (200-words): Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Decisions sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Full drafts due: Thursday, September 5, 2024
Reviews sent: Monday, December 2, 2024
Revisions due: Wednesday, February 7, 2025
Copyediting, proofing, and processing: February–March 2025
Special issue released: April 2025
Works Consulted
Bird, Nancy Kenney. The Conference on College Composition and Communication: A Historical Study of Its Continuing Education and Professionalization Activities, 1949-1975. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1977.
Blackmon, Samantha, Cristina Kirklighter, and Steve Parks. Listening to Our Elders: Working and Writing for Change. Utah State University Press, 2011.
Davis, Marianna W. History of the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English. National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.
Faber, Brenton. “Rhetoric in Competition: The Formation of Organizational Discourse in Conference on College Composition and Communication Abstracts.” Written Communication 13.3 (1996): 355–384.
García, Romeo, and Iris Ruiz, eds. Viva Nuestro Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of Our Caucus. Parlor Press, 2019.
Lindemann, Erika. Reading the Past, Writing the Future: A Century of American Literacy Education and the National Council of Teachers of English. National Council of Teachers of English, 2010.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Jean C. Williams. “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 563–84.
Sano-Franchini, Jennifer, Terese Guinsatao Monberg, and K. Hyoejin Yoon, eds. Building a Community, Having a Home: A History of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Asian/Asian American Caucus. Parlor Press, 2017.