*The Wild, Wild Wiki: Unsettling the Frontiers of Cyberspace, *edited by
Matt Barton and Robert Cummings

Wikis are without a doubt one of the most interesting and radical of the
new writing media available to the wired society, yet they also one of
the most misunderstood. Many of us know of them only by encounters with
"that wacky website anybody in the world can edit," the (in)famous
Wikipedia, that is showing up more and more in our students' works cited
lists. For others, wikis represent the incarnation of the openness,
decentralization, and collaboration dreamt of by the Internet's
founders. For those of us in the computers and writing community, wikis
represent a fertile field for rhetorical analysis and one of the richest
opportunities for teaching writing in the classroom.

The time has come for an edited collection of essays on wikis entitled
*The Wild, Wild Wiki: Unsettling the Frontiers of Cyberspace.* Editors
Matt Barton and Robert Cummings would like to invite you to submit your
thoughts for a volume on the theory, politics, future, and application
of wikis for teachers of college composition (and beyond). These essays
will be organized into the following three categories:

* Theory and Politics: 12-25 page essays that discuss wiki issues from
theoretical perspectives. Such essays might examine how knowledge gets
constructed and legitimated in wikis, or how wiki users negotiate
authorship. Do wikis liberate or erase identities? What roles, if any,
should copyright laws play in the regulation of wiki discourse? Why is
that the most famous wiki happens to be encyclopedic; could other types
of discourse flourish in wikis? How do wikis remediate other media, old
or new? What can you do with a wiki that you can't do with any other
media? Should we think of wikis as related to the open source phenomenon
through Commons-Based? Peer Production and, if so, does this predict how
and where wikis will expand? Do wikis fundamentally alter the practice
of revision? The concept of collaboration?

* Applications: 8-12 page essays that examine how teachers can use wikis
in the classroom. This includes assignments involving Wikipedia, but
also creating new wikis specifically for classroom use. The essays here
will look at practical applications as well as limitations and
technological matters (How hard is it to install a wiki? What kind of
support is needed? What are the differences among the many wiki servers
now available? Can a classroom wiki achieve critical mass or low cost
content integration? What are the ethical implications of asking
students to write in a wiki where writers, other than their teachers,
make editorial decisions about their text? Do contributions by student
writers, as part of a class assignment, differ substantially from those
offered freely by self-selecting wiki contributors?)

* Lore: 6-12 page narratives that describe teachers' experience using
(or reacting) to wikis in their classrooms. How have you been using
wikis in your writing or teaching? What went right and what went wrong?
What would you do differently next time? How have you assessed writing
in wikis?

We also plan to "eat our dogfood" during this project--in other words,
we will be using wikis extensively to plan, draft, review, and revise
the essays in our collection. All authors will share in the reviewing
and editing process. We also hope to secure a publisher who will allow
us to publish under a Creative Commons license rather than traditional,
full-blown copyright. Our goal is to produce a volume of accessible and
engaging works that will help secure wikis a prominent place in composition.

Tentative Timeline:

Abstracts: October 10, 2005
Abstract acceptances: October 17, 2005
Submissions Deadline: May 1, 2006

No simultaneous submissions. We also cannot accept previously published
essays. Send your enquiries, queries, or abstracts to either of the
co-editors:

Matt Barton
mdbarton_at_stcloudstate.edu <mailto:mdbarton_at_stcloudstate.edu>
(320) 308-3061 (phone)
(320) 308-5524 (fax)
Dept of English
720 Fourth Avenute South
St. Cloud, MN 56301-3061

or

Robert Cummings
rec_at_uga.edu <mailto:rec_at_uga.edu>
(706) 542-2103 (vox)
(706) 542-2128 (fax)
Dept of English
University of Georgia
254 Park Hall
Athens, Georgia 30602-6205

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Tue Aug 09 2005 - 09:59:38 EDT