[ATTW-L] CFP: Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work: Theories, Methods, and Topics

[Rebecca Walton]

Dear Colleagues,

Godwin Agboka and I are excited to announce that we are inviting chapter
proposals for an edited collection titled "Equipping Technical
Communicators for Social Justice Work: Theories, Methods, and Topics."

If you have questions or would like to discuss your ideas for a chapter,
please feel free to contact us.

Proposals are due *December 30, 2018*. The full CFP is pasted below the
sig, and you can view a digital copy as a Google Doc
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ber2tzzCHCGb4W7PJSgWZF-IZqlY70QKVLu6Q5E6D_o/edit?usp=sharing>.
Please share widely and let us know if you have any questions!

Rebecca and Godwin

Rebecca Walton
Editor, Technical Communication Quarterly
Associate Professor, Technical Communication & Rhetoric
Department of English, Utah State University
Preferred Gender Pronouns: she/her/hers

_______________________________


Edited Collection Call for Chapter Proposals

Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work: Theories,
Methods, and Topics


Themes of social justice have appeared in technical and professional
communication (TPC) scholarship for more than two decades. However, it was
not until around the 2000s that scholars began to explicitly interrogate
theories, methodologies, practices, and the institutional and disciplinary
challenges of enacting social justice (e.g., Agboka, 2013/2014; Colton &
Holmes, 2016; Haas, 2012; Jones, 2016a/b; Jones & Walton, 2018; Jones,
Moore, & Walton, 2016; Leydens & Lucena 2017; Leydens, 2014; Walton, 2013;
Walton, Zraly, & Mugengana, 2015). As Williams (2013) describes: “These
scholars are taking the traditional description of technical communication
as a field that advocates for the user to a new and exciting level by
focusing on historically marginalized groups and issues related to race,
class, gender, and sexuality...” (pp. 87–88). This scholarship has spurred
a social justice turn in the field of TPC in which the focus on
critical analysis
which informed the cultural turn of the 1990s extends into a focus on
critical action.

In TPC, social justice research “investigates how communication, broadly
defined, can amplify the agency of oppressed people—those who are
materially, socially, politically, and/or economically under-resourced. Key
to this definition is a collaborative, respectful approach that moves past
description and exploration of social justice issues to taking action to
redress inequities” (Jones & Walton, 2018). This kind of work is
burgeoning, with considerations of social justice informing conference
themes, conference roundtables, journal special issue topics, and
award-winning scholarship.

Social justice scholarship in TPC has explored, among many other topics,
the complexities of navigating and engaging unenfranchised contexts
(Agboka, 2013/2014; Dura, Singhal, & Elias, 2013; Walton, Price, & Zraly,
2013; Walton, Zraly,& Mugengana, 2015); issues of race and programmatic
diversity (Jones, 2014; Jones, Savage, & Yu, 2014; Savage & Mattson, 2011;
Savage & Matveeva, 2011); the interstices of gender, sexuality, rhetoric,
and technical communication (Cox, & Faris, 2015; Frost, 2015; Petersen,
2014); and considerations of translation and localization (Gonzales &
Turner, 2017; Rose & Racadio, 2017; Shivers-McNair, 2017). The apparent
implication is that TPC is a field actively engaged in decolonial,
advocacy, and civic work.

While we are excited by this important and necessary scholarship, we are
concerned that relatively few resources are available within the field to
directly support and inform it. In other words, despite a wave of social
justice scholarship in the field, a number of TPC scholars—both emerging
and established—have limited understanding of social justice or feel ill
equipped to pursue it in their work, wondering, “How do I incorporate
social justice into my technical communication courses? How can I uphold
principles of social justice in my research? What theories are well suited
to framing and informing socially just TPC? How could considerations of
social justice inform practices of, say, UX or content management or
technical editing?”

To address these types of questions, we put forth this call for chapters
for the edited collection: “Equipping Technical Communicators for Social
Justice Work: Theories, Methodologies, and Topics.” For this edited
collection, we envision each chapter honing in on a particular theory,
methodology, or topic and explicating both its promise and its threats to
socially just technical communication. We encourage potential contributors
to consider how a theory (e.g. sociotechnical systems theory, queer
theories, critical race theory, etc.), topic (e.g. UX, medical rhetoric),
or research methodology (community action research, decolonial research)
informs or shapes social justice work in any TPC-relevant context (e.g.
classroom, corporate, civic).

Proposal Requirements

In approximately 500 words (not including references), please convey the
following:

   -

   Theory/methodology/topic: What is the tool, lens, or resource with which
   you seek to equip readers interested in conducting more socially just
   technical communication?
   -

   Relevance to social justice: In what ways does your
   theory/methodology/topic relate to social justice? Why is it a promising
   tool, lens, or resource for the work of social justice? What concerns or
   cautions might you give technical communicators interested in social
   justice who are approaching this theory/methodology/topic?
   -

   Relevance to technical and professional communication: How will your
   chapter contribute to existing scholarly conversations in TPC? What
   considerations of the field will this chapter address? On whose scholarly
   shoulders will this work stand?
   -

   Application: What are some promising sites of application for socially
   just technical communication involving your theory/methodology/topic? For
   example, university undergraduate classrooms? Non-traditional workplaces?
   Field research with vulnerable populations?

Submission Guidelines
Please attach chapter proposal submissions as a Word file and email to both
Rebecca Walton (rebecca.walton at usu.edu) and Godwin Agboka (agbokag at uhd.edu).
We encourage potential contributors to email proposal ideas and questions
well in advance of the submission deadline. We’re happy to talk through
ideas with you.

Timeline

Dec. 30, 2018: Chapter proposals due

Jan. 31, 2019: Proposal decisions

May 1, 2019: Chapter manuscripts due

July 15, 2019: Reviewer feedback and publication decisions

Sept. 1, 2019: Revised manuscripts due
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