[ATTW-L] CFP for an Edited Collection on Professionalizing Multimodal Composition

[Shyam Pandey]

Hi all!



We are now accepting proposals for an Edited Collection on Professionalizing
Multimodal Composition: Faculty and Institutional Initiatives! Please
consider contributing or help us circulate it widely across networks.



Call for Proposals



*Professionalizing Multimodal Composition: Faculty and Institutional
Initiatives*

https://bit.ly/2t8h0wv
<https://bit.ly/2t8h0wv?fbclid=IwAR0BulLsxbE4yMkLTO-5x-m33qk6gZ9D_ri8CifoQRzsGoElnFgrBc-icUo>





Edited by

Shyam B. Pandey, Purdue University

Santosh Khadka, California State University Northridge



Multimodal composition can be defined as communication practices employing
more than one mode that work synergistically in a meaning-making process.
It has been associated with multiple forms of representation, such as
images, web pages, movies, sound, and graphics in addition to print, both
in isolation and in combination. Multimodal composition is becoming
increasingly popular in writing classrooms these days because faculty and
students have come to recognize that old and new technologies have enabled,
and even demanded, the use of more than one composing mode to communicate,
solve problems, and keep up with the latest discourse (Lutkewitte, 2014).
As such, in the last two decades, many faculty members, scholars, and
administrators from various institutional contexts and disciplinary
perspectives have consistently advanced their positions on multimodality.
However, as different faculty members and programs are situated in their
own specific institutional contexts, their recognition and implementation
of multimodality varies drastically.

In fact, as Santosh Khadka and Jennifer Lee in their recently edited
book, *Bridging
the Multimodal Gap: From Theory to Practice, *succinctly note: “Attempts at
implementing multimodal approaches are sporadic at best” (2019, p. 04).
They further maintain that despite increased productivity in scholarship,
attempts at integrating multimodal/digital projects into the curriculum
have been limited to a handful of individual faculty and programs across
the country. This glaring gap between theory and practice can be attributed
to a number of factors, including complex and differing understandings of
what writing is and what goals the writing courses should have, varied
professional development opportunities for faculty across institutions, and
wide ranging programmatic and institutional support for faculty to pursue
multimodality in their scholarship and in their classrooms.

To bridge this theory-praxis gap, institutional, programmatic, and faculty
level initiatives to professionalize writing instructors to engage
multimodality is a must. Specifically, there is a pressing need for more
in-depth study on: 1) faculty impetus or preparedness to take on
multimodality in their courses; 2) institutional support and initiatives to
professionalize faculty to incorporate multimodal composition in their
curricula; and 3) faculty (TAs, part-time, full-time) and administrators’
feelings of security/insecurity when encountering and embracing
multimodality in different levels of their writing courses and/or programs.

The goal of this Edited Collection is to bring together some implementation
perspectives and practices of multimodal composition in various contexts
and programs by discussing writing faculty preparedness in undertaking
multimodal/digital composition at different levels of higher education. With
a primary focus on professionalizing multimodal composition, this
collection will explore the individual faculty and programmatic as well as
institutional initiatives to human resource development to embrace and
enact multimodal composition in various writing courses and programs. We
invite proposals for essayistic and empirical works that address, but are
not limited to, the following questions:

●      It has been almost two decades since Cynthia Selfe (2004) warned,
“If our profession continues to focus solely on teaching alphabetic
composition–either online or in print–we run the risk of making composition
studies increasingly irrelevant to students engaging in contemporary
practices of communicating” (p. 72). What progress have we made since then
to embrace and implement multimodality in our writing programs? How do
university, department or  writing program administrators go about
professionalizing multimodal composition in their respective units? What
struggles and successes have they realized?

●      How has multimodal composition been part of faculty development
programs? Has it received any priority in faculty hiring processes?

●      How are, can, and should graduate teaching assistants be trained to
engage multimodality in their coursework, teaching, and scholarship? To
what extent do they feel prepared to incorporate multimodality in their
course syllabi upon completion of their degree?

●      What challenges, struggles, and successes have been identified to
integrate multimodality in First-Year Composition and other upper division
writing or writing intensive courses across the curriculum or disciplines?
How can writing faculty better integrate multimodality in their curricula?

●      How are writing faculty trained to utilize multimodality to teach
the diverse student population more effectively? How do the different
variables, such as age, sex, class, access, abilities, literacy level, and
socio-economic status of students play into the successes and failures of
adopting multimodal composition pedagogies in writing classrooms?

●      To what extent are writing instructors prepared to implement
multimodal pedagogies in multilingual and online spaces? What challenges
and opportunities are identified in those spaces?

●      What departmental and institutional challenges to and opportunities
for studying and teaching multimodal composition exist in today’s higher
education settings? How can those challenges be turned into opportunities?

We welcome individual submissions, but also co-authored pieces by graduate
students, faculty, and/or administrators that invoke the professionalizing
experiences of various stakeholders in the rhetoric and composition,
Writing Studies or closely aligned fields.




Please submit your 500-word proposal via this form:
https://forms.gle/NxLX2pyqDYciBt4KA. Feel free to contact the editors,
Shyam B. Pandey at pandey24 at purdue.edu and Santosh Khadka at
santosh.khadka at csun.edu with any queries.



*Timeline*

29 February 2020: Proposals Submitted

30 March 2020: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection and Call for Chapter
Manuscripts

31 August 2020: Manuscripts Due

30 October 2020: Response from Editors

30 December 2020: Revised Chapters Due

15 January 2021: Full Manuscript Submitted to the Publisher

*Editor Bios*

*Shyam B. Pandey *

Shyam Pandey is a PhD student in the Department of English at Purdue
University. His research areas include multimodal composition, professional
and technical writing, non-western rhetoric, digital writing, multilingual
writing, and world Englishes. Shyam has published several articles in
journals and co-edited two creative writing books sponsored by the U.S.
Embassy in Nepal. His works have also been published by MinneTESOL Journal,
TESL-EJ, the Second Language Writing Interest Section of TESOL, and
Multilingual Matters. He is currently co-editing a special issue of a
journal, and his collaborative chapter, “Introducing World Englishes to
Multilingual Writers in a First-Year Composition Course,” is forthcoming in
an edited collection from Utah State University Press.

*Dr. Santosh Khadka *

Santosh Khadka is an Associate Professor of English at the California State
University Northridge. His research areas include multimodal composition,
digital writing, and transnational rhetoric. He has authored a
monograph, *Multiliteracies,
Emerging Media, and College Writing *Instruction (Routledge, 2019), scores
of journal articles, and co-edited two volumes on multimodality: Bridging
the Multimodal Gap: From Theory to Practice (Utah State UP
<https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press>, 2019), and Designing
and Implementing Multimodal Curricula and Programs (Routledge, 2018). He is
currently working on his second monograph and co-editing a special issue of
a journal and two new books.



**See attached CFP PDF**

Best,

Shyam & Santosh

-- 
_____________________________________
*Shyam Pandey*
PhD Student | Department of English
Business Writing Instructor
President, ESL GO!
Purdue University | West Lafayette, IN, USA, 47907
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://attw.org/pipermail/attw-l_attw.org/attachments/20200111/8780becc/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: CFP_ Professionalizing Multimodal Composition.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 113974 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://attw.org/pipermail/attw-l_attw.org/attachments/20200111/8780becc/attachment-0001.pdf>