[ATTW-L] #CFP: Special Issue of Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics: " Composing at the Intersections: Queer, Transgender and Feminist Approaches to Multimodal Rhetorics"

Wed Oct 16 15:03:56 UTC 2024

Dear Colleagues:

I'm excited to share a call for proposals for a special issue of *The
Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics
<http://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/cfps>, "*Composing at the
Intersections: Queer, Transgender and Feminist Approaches to Multimodal
Rhetorics," edited by Ruby Mendoza, Constance M. Haywood, Floyd Pouncil,
and myself.

The full CFP is linked here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zDkT1xl28vUZC7DR8hc8lykf1Gmwv1NxhHfg-uge0Gs/edit?usp=sharing>
and pasted below. Proposals are due using this Google Form by December 1st
2024.

Please contact us at multimodalcomposingFall2024 at gmail.com. We're happy to
talk through any ideas and are committed to mentoring contributors!

Thanks for considering!

Composing at the Intersections:

Queer, Transgender and Feminist Approaches to Multimodal Rhetorics

Call for Proposals

Ruby Mendoza, Constance M. Haywood, Floyd Pouncil, and Nick Sanders

multimodalcomposingFall2024 at gmail.com

Link to Submit  <https://forms.gle/6daFdDGJDhZ4oURr7>

While thinking about this special issue, Ruby, Constance, Floyd, and Nick
joked about the prevalence of Royster and Kirsch’s Feminist Rhetorical
Practices that showed up across several syllabi during their shared times
in graduate school. As scholars, we have come to understand the power and
utility of utilizing rhetoric and composition to do work in the world.
Multimodal composing, as a component of rhetoric and composition, when
taken alongside queer, transgender, and feminist praxis, incites a focus
from form to utility. Consider, for example, self-published activist
pamphlets circulated by the Combahee River Collective (1977) during the
1970s in Boston, Massachusetts. You might also consider the communal and
political activism embedded in the The Black Panther newspaper. More
recently, consider events like ‘chalk walks’ on college campuses that
address and engage issues of sexual violence. Or, you can take some time to
consider how online publics frequently organize around hashtags to
establish communities and coalitions of folks that strive towards the same
goal (whether that might be to organize/protest, support each other through
healing and shared experience, or else).

We can clearly see these types of multimodal compositions as materially
consequential: they compose disruption as social, civic action. As scholars
and practitioners of writing and rhetoric, we believe that our disciplines'
knowledge and practices are socially good because they do real,
consequential work in the world. In addition to the work of designing a
first year writing assessment, for example, writing and rhetoric via
multimodal composition holds the capability to create avenues that produce
grants on behalf of community activist organizations, decipher medical
processes and produce new forms and processes to help the public access
services, and even draw attention to community concerns via public art
works. Again, writing and rhetoric does work in the material world.

Additionally, we point toward scholars in rhetoric and writing who have
called to embrace queer, feminist, and trans approaches as transformational
and interventional practices for communities and institutions given our
embrace of materially consequential multimodal composition.  Royster and
Kirsch (2012), for instance, have called for “tectonic shifts” in feminist
rhetorical studies that recast paradigms around critical imagination,
strategic contemplation, social circulation, and globalizing the point of
view. In this vein, Waite (2015), drawing on Enoch (2010), has challenged
the field to reconsider its critical direction toward queer activist
communities as intervention points in methodology and pedagogy.

However, as Patterson and Spencer (2020) point out, the lumping together of
these identity categories flattens experience and enables institutional
sites to “co-opt the language of justice in order to preserve an oppressive
status quo”. They critique that scholarship engaging trans experiences
often reinforce either the “inclusion as visibility” trope in corporatized
DEI initiatives or insist upon harmful and appropriative ideas about trans
people. Similarly, we see these performative gestures illustrated in what
Sara Ahmed (2012) calls “non-performatives”, where the act of naming is
guised as action, but is actually inaction. From this vantage point,
claiming something as queer, or feminist, or trans, ascribes the notion
that institutional logics need not change. Instead, they can change as
little as possible. This idea of non-performatives harkens back to Johnson
(2001), who takes “quare” as an opportunity to identify “a critical gap in
queer studies between theory and practice, performance and performativity”.
He insists that by focusing on the intersections of queerness, we can move
“beyond simply theorizing subjectivity and agency as discursively mediated
to theorizing how that mediation may propose material bodies into action.”
Accordingly, we believe queer and transgender research should critique
institutional cistematic oppression through decolonization as a social
justice primer to amplify and liberate communities–again, in material,
consequential, real ways. As Mendoza (2024) establishes, recent proposed
legislation policies directly impacts queer and transgender bodies, and
attempts to control and govern through cistematic oppression. Meaning,
actionable multimodal rhetoric and writing is necessary to achieve civic
change through community led practices by and for queer and transgender
people across identity markers and at their intersections

Given this historic and contemporary backdrop, we invite contributors to
engage intersectional multimodal composing as actionable and disruptive
practices to the material and ideological structures of heterosexist, white
supremecist systems and also as community-accountability (Gumbs, 2012) for
those impacted by these systems. Because we see multimodal rhetoric and
writing far beyond the auspices of post-secondary writing instruction, we
call for others who are doing similar work in the field to help draw
attention to the utility of our work.  For example, Angela Haas (2007)
speaks to this in her work around wampum/beading as indigenous multimodal
practices, emphasizing the importance of writing and rhetorical theories
that push back against colonial erasure and make space for the preservation
of particular histories, lineages, and stories. Furthermore, queer artists’
use of collage post-Stonewall
<https://hyperallergic.com/341239/the-quintessentially-queer-art-of-collage/>
and through the AIDS epidemic as meditations on identity and survival
(Small, 2017). Our work is consequential and we want to highlight that in
this special issue.

Accordingly, we wanted to mention glimpses of queer, feminist, and trans
multimodal composing in our lives. When discussing this special issue, Nick
spoke of participating in Chalk Walk, a public composing project that
promoted awareness of sexual violence literally at the center of a
university campus. This project forced the reader to shift their
orientation to the presence of writing in the physical world. Floyd
mentioned facilitating the creation of a publicly-sourced cookbook
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oWcMS7BIPDvkY9nq1NedeY1xuP-sYar2/view?usp=sharing>
that invited community members to tacitly and implicitly support Black
employees/staff/community members in association with ongoing monthly
meetings that drew Black community members and their allies together at a
local community college–serving as a beacon for intersectional coalition
building among folks in the area. Ruby touched on the Digital Transgender
Archive <https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/> as an online resource
that houses transgender histories and is accessible to all. Similarly,
Constance’s research engagesaround queer and BIPOC-led social media
content/space(s) that advocate for pleasure and rest within
multiple-marginalized communities so that they might reimagine and/or
further develop their relationships with said practices.

Overall, our vision for this special issue includes multimodal
compositions, articles, manifestos, examples, and/or book reviews that
represent the work being done in multimodal rhetoric and composition. This
issue will serve to converge the work being done across disciplinary
landscapes and illuminate the how of queer intersectional multimodal
rhetorics. In particular, we seek contributions that mobilize
intersectional contributions that specifically challenge and change the
publics, institutions, and communities to labor toward concrete
transformation and liberation. We believe by contributing to this
collection we forward the necessary ongoing engagement with multimodal
composing as forms of materially consequential scholarship and conversation.

We are excited to welcome a variety of genres and submission types for this
special issue, including, but not limited to:

   -

   Digital Multimodal Compositions: Compose, arrange, and/or curate a
   digital composition, such as collages, hashtags, public arts, activist
   pamphlets etc., that addresses intersectional multimodal rhetorics as
   concrete change making.
   -

   Counterstories: Critically story an experience with intersectional
   multimodal composing as actionable and disruptive practices.
   -

   Artifacts & Reflections: Share an example of an intersectional
   multimodal composition that impacted community, coalition, or institutional
   change. Compose and audio record a short reflection providing context,
   impact, and/or lessons learned.
   -

   Dialogues: Reflect on intersectional multimodal composition that
   impacted community, coalition, or institutional change as a script or audio
   recording.
   -

   Mini-Inquiries: Select a historical artifact and examine how it engages
   intersectional multimodal composing as actionable and disruptive practices
   to the material and ideological structures of hetrosexist, white
   supremecist systems

Proposal Submissions

Please submit your 400 word proposals here by December 1st 2024: Composing
at the Intersections <https://forms.gle/oDbMh6BeiqzqJcH38>. In your
proposal form, you will be asked to include your name, contact email, title
of contribution, the overall focus and or/argument of your proposal (as
well as its relation to the special issue), and the proposed genre/form of
your contribution. Additionally, given the nature of this special issue, we
ask that in your proposal you address the 3 Ps (Positionality, Power, and
Privilege) as articulated by Walton, Moore, and Jones, (2019) insofar as it
relates to your submission. Please contact us collectively at
multimodalcomposingFall2024 at gmail.com if you have any questions now or
throughout the process. Additionally, for anything submitted, authors
should hold the rights to the work.

We are excited to receive your contributions and will be in touch soon!

Editors: Ruby Mendoza, Constance M. Haywood, Floyd Pouncil, and Nick Sanders

References:

Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional
life. In On being included. Duke University Press.

Combahee River Collective. (1977). Combahee river collective statement. In
Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Ed.), Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American
Feminist Thought (pp. 304-316). The New Press.

Digital Transgender Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/.

Enoch, J. (2010). Composing a rhetorical education for the twenty-first
century: TakingITGlobal as pedagogical heuristic. Rhetoric Review, 29(2),
165-185.

Gumbs, A. P. (2012). We have always known: Embodying community
accountability. FeministWire.
https://thefeministwire.com/2012/09/we-have-always-known-embodying-community-accountability/

Haas, A. M. (2007). Wampum as hypertext: An American Indian intellectual
tradition of multimedia theory and practice. Studies in American Indian
Literatures, 19(4), 77-100.

Johnson, E. P. (2001). " Quare" studies, or (almost) everything I know
about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance
Quarterly, 21(1), 1-25.

Mendoza, R. (2024). Toward a queer and (trans)formative methodology for
rhetoric of health and medicine: Institutional critique. Rhetoric of Health
& Medicine, 7(1).

Patterson, G., & Spencer, L. G. (2020). Toward trans rhetorical agency: A
critical analysis of trans topics in rhetoric and composition and
communication scholarship. Peitho, 22(4).

Royster, J. J., & Kirsch, G. E. (2012). Feminist rhetorical practices: New
horizons for rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies. SIU Press.

Small, Z. (2016). The quintessentially queer art of collage. Hypoallergenic.
Retrieved from
https://hyperallergic.com/341239/the-quintessentially-queer-art-of-collage/

Waite, S. (2015). Cultivating the scavenger: A queerer feminist future for
composition and rhetoric. Peitho Journal, 18(1), 51-71.

Walton, R., Moore, K., & Jones, N. (2019). Technical communication after
the social justice turn: Building coalitions for action. Routledge.

Timeline:

December 1, 2024:

Abstracts Due

December 15, 2024:

Notice of Decisions

February 15, 2025:

Drafts Due

April 15, 2025:

Feedback to Authors

June 15, 2025:

Revisions Due

August 1, 2025:

Copy edits & proofing

September 31, 2025:

Publication

Nick Sanders, Ph.D. (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Writing and Rhetoric <https://www.oakland.edu/wrt/>
O'Dowd Hall, Room 316
Oakland University
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