[ATTW-L] #ATTW2024 CFP Released

[Lisa Dusenberry]

 We’re excited to announce the CFP <https://attw.org/cfp-2024/> for the
#attw2024 conference! The theme is "Building Community and Coalitions
through Liberatory Pedagogies in Technical Communication". Submit your
proposal by March 18, 2024!

Building Community and Coalitions through Liberatory Pedagogies in
Technical Communication

The ATTW 2024 conference will take place virtually on June 10-12, 2024.

As an organization committed to social justice, at a time when Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and anti-racist efforts are under attack via
book bans, anti-critical race theory bills, and through the defunding of
public education, ATTW recognizes the impact of liberatory pedagogical
practices that centralize community and coalitions. These concepts, if they
are to be realized, require work from all of our community members. In
particular, liberatory pedagogical practice asks community members to
rethink, re-envision, and reimagine our roles as educators and scholars.
This means interrogating our curricula and reflexively considering how our
shared values show up in our programs, as well as acknowledging and
addressing the relationality of our work. bell hooks (1994) pushes us to
transgress and resist neoliberal, capitalist ideals of education and
instead make liberation a collective educational goal. Further, building
strong communities and coalitions requires community members to understand
the sociopolitical nature of our work and seek ways to redress injustices
and inequities through advocacy, accountability, and action. All of these
factors are important in technical communication classrooms, where we can
shape the future of the field through community and coalition with our
students, collaborators, and programs. As hooks (1994) reminds us, the
classroom is always, already a communal space (p. 8).

With these ideals in mind, for this year’s conference, we invite technical
communication teachers, scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners
to deeply engage with hooks’ (1994) conceptualizations of transgressive
teaching, engaged pedagogy, and education as a liberatory practice, as
outlined in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.
We draw together these concepts and interrogate our justice-oriented
approaches to pedagogies and our commitments to community and collective
action. hooks (1994) asserts that community is an act of resistance, and
collective resistance has led to community building in technical
communication studies. Moreover, Walton, Moore, and Jones (2019) evidence
that technical communicators have the agency and skill to innovate forms of
community building and coalitions that can lead toward positive change.

Our organization and conference embraced innovation in 2020 and remains
online to acknowledge ongoing pandemics, increase accessibility across our
field, and reduce environmental, public health, and financial impacts of
location-based academic meetings. However, we aim to continue innovating
ways to connect and build the community and coalitions essential to the
future of our field. Centralizing accessibility for the most vulnerable
members of our communities and acknowledging the importance of strong
coalitions for those at the margins, we seek ways to connect with our
students and develop strategies for grasping injustice “at the root”
(Davis, 2016). As such, we return to the root and origin purpose of our
association–community and teaching–and we ask:

   - How can we create and sustain community in our technical and
   professional communication undergraduate and graduate programs and
   curricula?
   - How can we better support our undergraduate and graduate
   students–especially those who are marginalized and multiply marginalized–as
   they enter into our programs, classes, and academic organizations?
   - In what ways can we center liberatory education as we reimagine our
   curricula and provide opportunities for students in undergraduate,
   graduate, and certificate programs?
   - What are models of mentorship that centralize care, accountability,
   and liberation–and what do those look like in practice?
   - How do we identify, define, and develop educational opportunities that
   are liberatory and/or transgressive in nature? How can we transform
   pedagogy approaches in technical and professional communication?
   - What have we learned about DEI and anti-racist initiatives in our
   field, and how can we protect and support these initiatives in relation to
   our research, service, and pedagogy?
   - How do we remain connected both to our students, our communities, and
   to the needs of technical communication industries?
   - How do we develop technical and professional communication pedagogies
   and mentoring practices that connect our communities through effective
   design, user experiences, writing, and collaboration?
   - What do community and connection mean in contemporary technical and
   professional communication contexts?
   - How can we build coalitions with and among our students?

For the 2024 ATTW Virtual Conference, we welcome innovative assignments,
frameworks, and concepts that illustrate how technical communication
pedagogies can be liberatory in nature and foster community and coalitions
in contemporary contexts. To encourage dialogue and mentoring for and
alongside graduate student presenters, we invite proposals for 6-8-minute
“lightning talks” that focus on a technical and professional communication
assignment, concept, or framework.

Your brief proposal (approximately 350 words) should:

   - 1) state the assignment, concept, or framework that you will introduce;
   - 2) explain why that assignment, concept, or framework is relevant to
   the technical communication community; and
   - 3) list 3-4 takeaways that the audience may learn from your
   presentation.

We strongly encourage collaborative proposals and will give priority to
proposals that include students, contingent faculty, and community or
industry partners

Please submit your proposals via email to attwcon at gmail.com by March 18,
2024. Acceptances will be sent out by the end of April.

Please direct your inquiries to conference co-chairs Josie Walwema, Natasha
Jones, and Laura Gonzales (attwcon at gmail.com).

References

Davis, A. Y. (2016). Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine,
and the foundations of a movement. Haymarket Books.

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of
freedom. Routledge.
Walton, R., Moore, K. R. & Jones, N. N. (2019). Technical communication
after the social justice turn: Building coalitions for action. Routledge.

--
Lisa Dusenberry, Ph.D. | she/her/hers
ATTW Communications Team
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