Call for Proposals — Due February 15, 2011  

Note: The call for proposals has concluded. Accepted presenters are asked to register for the conference by June 1, 2011, to indicate their commitment to attend and to secure their place in the conference schedule. Registrations received from speakers after June 1 will be accommodated as much as possible into the program schedule; however, speakers who register by June 1 will have greater priority.

Both individual and panel proposals are encouraged.

Individual proposals: submit an abstract (250 words) that includes your name, paper title, professional affiliation, institution name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address via e-mail attachment to rhetoric2011@outreach.psu.edu.

Panel proposals: submit the following via e-mail attachment to rhetoric2011@outreach.psu.edu.

(1) an abstract (250 words) describing the theme and objectives of the panel that includes the panel title as well as the panel coordinator's name, institutional affiliation, and contact information

and

(2) an abstract (250 words) for each presentation in the panel that includes the name, institutional affiliation, and contact information for each presenter.

During April 2011, you will receive e-mail notification regarding abstract acceptance. Persons whose abstracts are accepted should register for the conference by June 1, 2011.

Scholars in rhetoric and composition have increasingly recognized that communication today involves an engagement with multiple languages and literacies. This realization has been motivated by developments in globalization, new media technology, and postcolonial perspectives, all trends in the field that have called attention to the transnational flow of people and texts and to the hybridity of language itself. Practitioners now acknowledge that developing proficiency solely in Standardized Written English is inadequate for contemporary communicative needs. Further, practitioners also realize that judging the competencies of second language writers and rhetors according to native English speaker norms fails to do justice to the rich resources multilinguals bring to communication.

The ability to address these emergent needs is hampered by the monolingual assumptions informing our disciplinary discourses and pedagogical practices. Such assumptions have included the following: that writers acquire rhetorical competence one language at a time; that rhetorical proficiency is made up of separate competencies for separate languages; that texts are informed by rhetorical values unique to the different languages in which they are constructed; and that only one rhetorical tradition provides coherence for a text at a given time. In light of such trends, scholars in rhetoric and composition now call for the study of the cross-language relations of writers and writing in order to reconfigure the discourses and practices of our discipline.

To pursue this mission, conference participants are invited to address the following questions:

  • What are the unique strategies multilingual speakers bring to rhetoric and writing?
  • How can text be conceptualized differently in order to accommodate hybrid codes and conventions?
  • How do we conceive of rhetorical and written competence if contact between languages is the norm in today’s society?
  • What rhetorical resources help one communicate across language boundaries?
  • What are the new genres evolving in the linguistic contact zones?
  • What pedagogical strategies facilitate productive engagement with multilingual texts?
  • How should our assessment rubrics, rhetorical norms, and writing standards be revised to accommodate language diversity?
  • What curriculum and policy changes may help schools and universities make spaces for the rhetorical resources multilingual students bring to classrooms?

Although the program committee has highlighted the questions above, it also welcomes more broadly defined topics related to rhetoric and composition.

Questions regarding abstract submission should be directed to:

Suresh Canagarajah
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor in English and Applied Linguistics
303 Sparks Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park PA 16802
E-mail: asc16@psu.edu