The Scholar Electric

CCDP Digital Fellow Wenqi Cui talks with Derek Mueller, Rachel Gramer, and Logan Bearden about their process of editing Radiant Figures.

Computers and Composition Digital Press seeks graduate students to serve as CCDP Digital Fellows. As a fellow you will assist in the creation of digital materials to promote Press titles, and curate social media campaigns and initiatives for the 2021-2022 academic year. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to learn firsthand the ins and outs of helping with the public-facing side of a digital Press.

Duties may include:

• Conducting interviews with CCDP authors
• Contributing to the CCDP Scholar Electric Blog
• Serving as CCDP Ambassadors at professional conferences
• Soliciting book reviews of CCDP titles
• Contributing to CCDP social media initiatives
• Collaborating with the CCDP editors on other projects
• Opportunities to develop creative projects that will enhance Press publications

Applicants should be graduate students with research interests in digital rhetoric, digital publishing, and/or social media. Experience in blogging or maintaining professional social media accounts a plus.

Time Commitment

This is a one-year appointment with the possibility of renewal for an additional year. CCDP fellows can expect to work on two small projects per semester – i.e., a blog post, interview, or social media campaign. Fellows are also required to participate in monthly Zoom meetings with the other CCDP Fellows and the Program Directors.

Benefits

This is a volunteer role; however, this position will give the Fellows experience working with a leading digital press, connecting with scholars in the field, and gaining early access to upcoming scholarship. Fellows are also encouraged to use their experience with CCDP in their own scholarship and teaching.

About Computers and Composition Digital Press

Founded in 2007 by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, Computers and Composition Digital Press publishes peer-reviewed digital projects with the intellectual contribution of a book. Press titles have been recognized with the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award, CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, the CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award, and the CCCC Research Impact Award. The Press is committed to open access scholarship, and all press titles are available online through ccdigitalpress.org.

To apply, please send a CV and a letter of interest to the CCDP Digital Fellows Program Directors, Amber Buck at ambuck@ua.edu and Ja’La Wourman at wourmajj@jmu.edu. Applications are due on October 8, 2021. Please direct all questions and inquiries to Amber Buck or Ja’La Wourman.

Welcome to the second installment of the Crowdsourcing with CCDP blog series! As we discussed in our first installment, this Scholar Electric series celebrates CCDP readers. Especially, it showcases the ways in which our readers have taken inspiration from CCDP publications, carrying our authors’ ideas into a variety of spaces. We are featuring in our Scholar Electric blog pedagogical documents–like lesson plans, activities, and assignments–that were inspired by CCDP publications.

The Rhetoric of Participation: Interrogating Commonplaces In and Beyond the Classroom was inspired by the work of the late Dr. Genevieve Critel. In a recent interview with CCDP Digital Fellow Charles Woods, co-editors Paige V. Banaji, Lisa Blankenship, and Katherine DeLuca describe the way in which Dr. Critel, as their graduate instructor, carried her scholarship into the classroom. In The Rhetoric of Participation, Dr. Critel’s former students carried her ideas into their scholarship. As Lisa Blankenship shared with Charles,

I think there are just so many directions you can take this work. And I’m so pleased that this is a legacy coming from her work and life.

In our second showcased piece, Steven J. Corbett and his students Amanda Bender, Emily Simon, and Jackii Ingros forge two more links in this chain of inspiration. Corbett brings ideas from The Rhetoric of Participation into his upper-level Writing and Rhetoric course. He and his students co-wrote and compiled a unique pedagogical document: a narrative about the course, penned by participants. Check out Corbett’s description of this co-authored piece below, followed by a link to the full document! And if you have an activity inspired by a CCDP title, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact CCDP Digital Fellows Savanna Conner (savanna.conner@asu.edu) and Mandy Olejnik (olejnimr@miamioh.edu) to submit assignments and ideas.

References

Banaji, P. V., Blanekship, L., DeLuca, K., Obermark, L., * Omizo, R. (Eds.) (2019). The Rhetoric of Participation: Interrogating Commonplaces in and Beyond the Classroom. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/rhetoric-of-participation

Woods, Charles. (2020, April 13). What does it mean to participate? Computers and Composition Digital Press. https://ccdigitalpress.org/blog/2020/04/13/what-does-it-mean-to-participate

Peer Pedagogies: Curricular Adventures in Peer-Centered Writing, Speaking, and Learning

Steven J. Corbett, University Writing Center Director and Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M University - Kingsville
with Amanda Bender, Emily Simon, and Jackii Ingros, George Mason University

Peer Pedagogies, because it narrates a course experience from four different perspectives, is an extensive document. We encourage you to read it in its entirety here. Below, find Corbett’s explanation of that document—how it was inspired by The Rhetoric of Participation, his experience working with student-participants, and what each part of the document offers.

We are delighted you’re joining us as we reflect back on our Spring 2015 term together at George Mason University. Peer Pedagogies is designed to walk fellow teachers of writing and rhetoric day-by-day through a course centered on peer-to-peer writing, speaking, and learning.

Readers will follow a peer writing group of three students—Amanda Bender, Emily Simon, and Jackii Ingros—and their instructor (Steven Corbett) through a sixteen-week semester of an upper-level course designed for Writing and Rhetoric majors and minors, “Situational Rhetoric: Writing and Speaking with Purpose and Passion.” During the journey, we will offer a detailed narrative unpacking of the course syllabus, all assignments, and a day-by-day enactment of the course and curriculum. Readers will see and hear the first-hand thoughts and reflections of all four participants.

Our resource is inspired by the multimodal richness of the Computers and Composition Digital Press collection The Rhetoric of Participation: Interrogating Commonplaces In and Beyond the Classroom. Themselves inspired by Genevieve Critel’s 2012 dissertation “Investigating the Rhetoric of Student Participation: Uncovering and Historicizing Commonplaces in Composition Studies” editors Paige V. Banaji, Lisa Blankenship, Katherine DeLuca, Lauren Obermark, and Ryan Omizo write: “Perhaps the central lesson from Critel’s research is that participation, as a performed act, an assessed category, and an ongoing expectation in academic and public spheres, is complicated, undertheorized, and often messy.” The editors draw on Critel’s four commonplaces of participation—community, assessment, embodiment, and technology—to theorize and organize the chapters of their collection.

Our own contribution here, touches upon all four of Critel’s commonplaces, especially in relation to students’ perspectives on participation. For example, the extensive reflections offered by the students in our course—Amanda, Emily, and Jackii—details overlapping points of view expressed by students in the Rhetoric of Participation chapter “A Curation of Student Voices on Participation in the Writing Classroom” by Lauren Obermark. Amanda, Emily, and Jackii join the curated chorus of students Obermark interviewed—in terms of motivation, effort, connection, comfort-level, support, and identity—in their own unique ways.

Our resource guides readers through all peer-centered aspects of the course, including peer review and response, in narrative fashion. It is divided into five chapters/units that revolve around our collaborative interactions on the course’s major assignments and activities.

Chapter 1
Beginning Well: Taking the Time to Get to Know Each Other

Chapter 2
Whispering Words of the Self and Others (Loud and Clear): Major Paper One

Chapter 3
Keep Calm and Love Rhetorical Analysis: Major Paper Two

Chapter 4
Communicating the Rhetoric of an Important Topic or Idea in Your Field: Major Paper Three

Chapter 5
Ending Even Better: Debates and ePortfolios

The Appendices offer the full syllabus and course calendar, all assignments, and several other course documents.

We hope you enjoy hearing about our adventures together in the writing and speaking classroom!

Link to full PDF document housed in Google Drive

When the cohort of 2019-2020 Computers and Composition Digital Press Digital Fellows were planning digital initiatives and projects for the academic year, it did not take me long to identify the genre in which I wanted to work: the podcast. The main reasons I wanted to produce a podcast for the CCDP were because it is a genre that is familiar to me and a genre that is familiar to the Press. The initial cohort of Digital Fellows in 2018 worked in a range of genres to produce their digital projects, one of which was a video podcast created by Lacy Hope and Brian Gaines. I wanted to build upon their previous podcast work, so I chose to produce a podcast on a recent CCDP title, The Rhetoric of Participation: Interrogating Commonplaces In and Beyond the Classroom.

The Rhetoric of Participation is a text that extends the legacy of Dr. Genevieve Critel. In devoting their book to the research of Dr. Critel, the authors of the text uniquely invite new audiences to engage with her work and to reconsider how participation is theorized and assessed in the classroom. My motivations in creating a podcast featuring a discussion with the authors of The Rhetoric of Participation were similar: I wanted to extend the reach of the Press to new audiences, particularly those interested in podcasts. The authors of the text pose the question, what does it mean to participate? For me, participating in the Fellows program meant participating in a variety of digital spaces—email threads, Skype calls, audio-editing software—to produce a podcast with the authors of The Rhetoric of Participation. And while my participation builds upon the work of Hope and Gaines, it captures the essence of the text: participation is unique and different for everyone in every space.

Last fall, I reached out to the authors of The Rhetoric of Participation and Drs. Paige V. Banaji, Lisa Blankenship, and Katherine DeLuca agreed to chat with me via Skype. One of the great things about serving as a CCDP Digital Fellow is that you get to join a network of scholars with similar passions and similar interests. These nuanced interactions are quite different from a bustling conference experience. It was quite nice to have my coffee and Skype with rhetoric and composition scholars from Manhattan to the Midwest on a rainy December morning and learn about their research and their passions for teaching.