ATTW Bulletin

Much of the literature on community writing research and teaching responds to the pragmatic need for community writing projects to accomplish real work with community partners, students, and other stakeholders. The “functionality” of community work is also a by-product of the evolution of community literacy work in rhetoric and composition: this “public turn” is relatively new and has established itself by way of projects, initiatives, and pedagogies.

Community writing work has reached a moment when it is necessary to build theory so that we can understand what, conceptually, informs our work and can identify new directions for research and practice. We invite theoretical considerations of outreach, engaged scholarship, public intellectualism, public work, and service learning. How can we theorize community writing, and how can we employ, adapt, or create theories to help us understand how community-based writing contributes to knowledge making, the academy, culture and the body politic?

We are interested in conceptual pieces that describe, inform, or guide community-based work, especially representation from the technical and professional writing community. We invite manuscripts that consider questions currently important to community-engaged writing in its many forms:

What do we know about how community-based work is best conceptualized and conducted?
To what extent, where, and how might we theorize transformation and change?
How might we best reflect, critically, on community-based work—with and for various partners and audiences?
In what ways do technologies and other infrastructures change the nature of and possibilities for community-based work?
What does theoretically informed community writing work entail?
Which theories offer the richest explanations of current practices?
What new directions emerge from a theoretical consideration of community-based work?

These questions are part of larger discussions of the changing nature of engaged university work that concern engaged scholarship, public intellectualism, public work, outreach and service learning. We want this issue of Reflections both to engage these larger discussions and to invigorate conversations closer to home.

We seek papers of 20-25 pages that offer theoretical explorations of outreach in university/community/workplace collaboratives. We are particularly interested in papers that explore the intersection of cultural, digital, and critical praxis.

Manuscripts should follow MLA guidelines and should include a 75-100-word abstract. Please send inquiries and/or electronic submissions (in MS-Word or RTF) to Ellen Cushman ( cushmane@msu.edu ) and Jeff Grabill ( grabill@msu.edu ) by September 1, 2008.