2022 Colloquium: The Next Three Years: Listening, Learning, and Looking Forward

In a previously published version of our 2022 Unconference CFP, we failed to acknowledge that “A Just Use of Imagination” by Natasha Jones and Miriam Williams (2022) is embedded within an ecology of racial equity work accomplished explicitly within ATTW through the leadership of scholars including Laura Gonzalez and Angela Haas. We also neglected to recognize how that work was central to the 2022 ATTW Virtual Conference chaired by Donnie Johnson Sackey, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, and Kristen Moore. Moreover, we failed to honor how Jones and Williams’ piece and much of the work we cite in our CFP is grounded in the lived experiences, cultural and intellectual traditions, and labor of their BIPOC authors, who have taken personal and professional risks to share their knowledge and expertise–risks that most of us have not. These errors undermined our efforts to center BIPOC scholars, particularly women, as leaders in the work we planned to undertake.

We apologize to Jones, Williams, Sackey, Sano-Franchini, and Moore, to the rest of the ATTW leadership and membership, and to the other BIPOC authors we cite in the CFP for previously omitting this essential context and therefore contributing to the very legacies of racism and erasure we seek to challenge. We commit to learning from our mistakes and designing conference planning protocols to ensure that this does not happen again. We also reaffirm our commitment to making the 2022 CWPA Colloquium a space where we can work as individuals and as a community to make our professional organizations and writing programs more equitable and inclusive.

CFP: 2022 Colloquium: The Next Three Years: Listening, Learning, and Looking Forward  CFP 

Amid mounting inequality and amplified demands for social justice, CWPA’s organizational policies and practices have come under increased scrutiny, manifesting in widespread calls to revise the WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Writing (e.g., Institute of Race, Rhetoric, and Literacy, 2021) and remake the organization as a whole. The past decade has seen an increasing number of scholars of color interrogating the racism they’ve experienced in our writing programs, institutions, and organization and laying out pathways toward a more just future (Carter-Tod, 2020; García, 2017; García de Müeller & Ruiz, 2017; Green, 2018; Kynard, 2015; Perryman-Clark & Craig, 2019; “Special Issue: Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racist Projects in Writing Program Administration,” WPA, 2021, edited Carter-Tod & Sano-Franchini; “Symposium: Challenging Whiteness,” 2016). In 2011, for instance, Collin Craig and Staci Perryman-Clark reflected on the racism they encountered as BIPOC WPAs and as graduate students while attending the CWPA conference. In their 2016 follow-up, they noted, “the more things change, the more they still stay the same,” yet they also observed that “through rhetorical action, we can engage in the kinds of coalition building that bring awareness to inequities and racial microaggressions in strategic ways” (p. 20), and they close by “propos[ing] CWPA as the next intellectual space that engages whiteness as a call to action” (p. 25).

In light of lessons learned through these and other critiques of CWPA, our ongoing organizational culture audit, the pandemic, and other organizations who have achieved new ways of collaborating, we are deliberately moving away from the traditional online conference format to ensure ample space and time to address the challenges facing our organization and discipline.

We invite you to join us for an Open Colloquium, dedicated to hearing from our members, delegates, and external auditing firm One Eight Create about what/where CWPA needs to be and which directions it should take over the next three years. 

Key Dates

• September 1: Proposals due
• September 15: Notification of acceptances sent
• October 3: Colloquium schedule and website published. Registration opens.
  • Sessions will run from 27 to 29 October. To accommodate our West Coast and international members, sessions will not begin before 1 pm EST.
  • During Saturday's Town Hall, we will hear from our organizational culture change consultants, OneEightCreate

The Colloquium link will be emailed to all registrants closer to time. 

What Will Happen at the 2022 CWPA Colloquium?

Keynote

Our keynote will be delivered by Dr. Natalia Ávila Reyes. https://educacion.uc.cl/facultad-a/cuerpo-docente-aux/325-natalia-avila 

Town Hall Facilitated by OneEightCreate, with the opportunity to register for listening sessions at a later date

The DEI professionals leading our audit (OneEightCreate), will give a brief update on the audit thus far and engage with our membership to consider thoroughly what types of antiracist and equity-minded actions will enable us to transform this organization, our writing programs, and the experiences of BIPOC colleagues in all professional spaces.

Active Learning Sessions Facilitated by Attendees

We encourage you to engage with our problem-exploring sessions and workshops, offered in both synchronous and asynchronous mode.

For Inquiries

If you have any questions, please contact one of the following members of the Executive Board:

For registration issues, contact Kelly Blewett, CWPA Secretary: cwpasecretary@gmail.com

For website issues, contact Amanda Presswood, CWPA Website and Social Media Coordinator: amandapresswood@brandeis.edu 

For general queries about the colloquium or CWPA, contact Susan Thomas, CWPA President: cwpapres@gmail.com. 

References

Carter-Tod, S. (2020). Administrating while black: Negotiating the emotional labor of an African American WPA. In C. A. Wooten, J. Babb, K. M. Costello, & K Navickas (Eds)., The things we carry: Strategies for recognizing and negotiating emotional Labor in writing program administration (pp. 197-214). UP Colorado.

Carter-Tod, S., & Sano-Franchini, J. (2021). Black lives matter and anti-racist projects in writing program administration [Special issue]. WPA: Writing Program Administration, 44(2).

Craig, C. L., & Perryman-Clark, S. M. (2011). Troubling the boundaries:(De)constructing WPA identities at the intersections of race and gender. WPA: Writing Program Administration, 34(2), 37-58. http://162.241.207.49/archives/34n2/34n2craig-perryman-clark.pdf

Craig, C. L., & Perryman-Clark, S. M. (2016). Troubling the Boundaries Revisited: Moving Towards Change as Things Stay the Same. Writing Program Administration, 39(2), 20+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A569114270/AONE?u=anon~1d5bf48b&sid=googleScholar&xid=6d770cb8

García, R. (2017). Unmaking gringo-centers. Writing Center Journal, 36(2), 29-60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44252637

García de Müeller, G. G., & Ruiz, I. (2017). Race, silence, and writing program administration: A qualitative study of US college writing programs. WPA: Writing Program Administration, 40(2), 19-39. http://associationdatabase.co/archives/40n2/40n2mueller_ruiz.pdf

Green, N. A. (2018). Moving beyond alright: And the emotional toll of this, my life matters too, in the writing center work. The Writing Center Journal, 37(1), 15-34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537361

Institute of Race, Rhetoric, and Literacy. (2021, June 11). Abbreviated statement toward FYC goals. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A0YO3K4IVIJLJTNSBGl5HJKOdddAK73spe2GbOmJn1w/edit

Kynard, C. (2015). Teaching while Black: Witnessing and countering disciplinary whiteness, racial violence, and university race-management. Literacy in Composition Studies, 3(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.21623/1.3.1.2

CWPA Colloquium 2022 Schedule 

President's Welcome

This year's colloquium is sponsored in part by Macmillan Learning.

(Please note all times are EST.)

Thursday, 27 October

1:00-2:45 Workshop Session

 Zoom link: https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/5105415919 

Discussion Session on Consultant-Evaluator Service 

Shirley Rose and Michael Pemberton

3:00-3:45 Regular Session 

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Nyaya Argumentation System and implications for assessment

Shreelina Ghosh

4:00-4:45 Regular Session 

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Writing program at EWU and its implications for anti-racist assessment practices.

Megan Crowley-Watson

5:00-6:30 Colloquium Keynote and Discussion 

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Natalia Ávila Reyes 

Natalia Ávila Reyes is an Associate Professor of Education at Pontificia Universidad Católica de  Chile.  After establishing one of the pioneering writing programs in Chile, she earned her PhD in Education with a specialization in Language, Literacy and Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is interested in writing across educational levels and in the disciplinary emergence of Writing Studies in Latin America. Her most recent research explores university students’ experiences with writing in contexts of increasing diversity. She is one of the founding members of the Latin American Association of Writing Studies in Higher Education and Professional Contexts, ALES.

Friday, 28 October

1:00-2:45 Workshop Session

Zoom link: https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/5105415919 

WPA Journal Anti-racist Reviewing Principles, Challenges, and Solutions

Wendy Sharer, Chair

3:00-4:45 Workshop Session

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Report on “First Year in the Two Year” Study, followed by Discussion

Holly Hassel and Joanne Giordano

5:00-6:30 Awards Reception

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Saturday, 29 October

11:00-12:45 WPA-GO  Workshop 

Zoom link: https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/5105415919 

1:00-2:45 Breakfast Buddies (Hosted by WPA-GO)

Zoom link: https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/5105415919 

3:00-5:00 Town Hall (with Remarks by OEC and an opportunity to sign up for listening sessions with OEC)

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/6962921733 

Registration is FREE, but we still ask you to register to assist us with our record keeping.

You can register for the Colloquium at the link below. You need not be a CWPA member. You can create an account and register for the Colloquium without joining the organization.

Click HERE to Register Online!