cfp.english.upenn.edu

A session on the rhetoric of the academic conference.

Once again, several hundred of us will be descending on a major metropolis to give a paper, meet up with old friends, and find out what’s new in the many fields that operate under the banner of CCCC. All the while, though, many of us may do so without thinking about the nature of professional conferences and their roles in our personal and professional lives.

This proposed session seeks to question the nature of the academic conference and the kinds of knowledges that get produced within such spaces. Additionally, papers should in some way analyze the rhetoric surrounding conferences (the way we talk about them, the way we write for them, the way they talk about themselves, etc.). That said, any aspect of conference-going would be welcome as a topic, including but not limited to:

• The conference paper as knowledge artifact
• Literacy and writing practices embodied within the conference presentation
• Performance in the conference paper
• Technology of/in presentations (Powerpoint, websites, etc.)
• The oral/written divide in conference presentation
• The role of the conference in the professional lives of scholars
• The economic implications of conference-going
• Rethinking the nature of the conference in light of the various, current “crises” in academic life
• The logistics of conference organization
• The physical spaces of conferences (social and professional)
• Conferences and the social life of the mind

Please email proposals of at most 250 words by April 30th if you would be interested in participating in this session.