The Conference on Community Writing: Building Engaged Infrastructure
Boulder, CO | October 16-17, 2015
http://www.communitywriting.org/


Update: Sub­mis­sion dead­line is now Feb­ru­ary 2, 2015

"This is not your aver­age con­fer­ence, and the theme, Build­ing Engaged Infra­struc­ture, isn't just a concept—it's a chal­lenge, a call to action."

How do we, on a local and a national scale, cre­ate engaged infra­struc­ture? What does that look like? What bar­ri­ers do we fore­see? What resources and sup­port struc­tures do we need?

The goal of this con­fer­ence is to cre­ate a national net­work of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple, ideas, and sup­port struc­tures to make the work we do in and about our com­mu­ni­ties more sus­tain­able, impact­ful, reward­ing, and rewarded.
Focused on interaction and outcomes, our format will con­sist of pre­sen­ta­tions, dia­logues, network communication, work­shops, FlashLabs, and action-oriented Deep­Think Tanks — bringing together schol­ars, teach­ers, and com­mu­nity lead­ers to build part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions to inves­ti­gate, cre­ate, and imple­ment strate­gies for engagement.

Call for Participation

The con­fer­ence theme, Build­ing Engaged Infra­struc­ture, chal­lenges atten­dees to build eth­i­cal and durable community-university part­ner­ships through teach­ing, research, and com­mu­nity writ­ing, simul­ta­ne­ously chal­leng­ing fac­ulty who do community-engaged work to find sup­port within uni­ver­sity depart­ments. The theme also explores how to build insti­tu­tional sup­port for depart­ments them­selves as they become more com­mit­ted to community-engaged instruc­tion and schol­ar­ship across the cur­ricu­lum. Build­ing that infra­struc­ture of sup­port, resources, and rela­tion­ships is essen­tial if the work is to be sustainable.

We wel­come pro­pos­als from aca­d­e­mics of all lev­els involved with engage­ment activ­i­ties and com­mu­nity mem­bers involved in work­ing for social change for indi­vid­ual papers, pan­els of 3–4 pre­sen­ters, work­shops, and dig­i­tal "poster" displays that will help us under­stand how writ­ing func­tions socially to inform, to empower, and to trans­form and how to build infra­struc­ture to sup­port engaged research and ped­a­gogy.

We invite pro­pos­als related to Build­ing Engaged Infra­struc­ture on the fol­low­ing topics:

• Writ­ing in the community
• Pub­lic and civic rhetorics
• Community-engaged ped­a­go­gies, includ­ing service-learning
• Lit­er­acy studies
• Dig­i­tal activism, such as dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling and mul­ti­modal pub­lic rhetorics
• Social entre­pre­neur­ship and business/professional writing
• Community-based schol­ar­ship and research
• Race, class, gen­der, and diversity
• Writ­ing and social justice
• Cre­ative non-fiction and journalism
• Sus­tain­abil­ity and food studies
• Com­mu­nity publishing
• Admin­is­tra­tive work with and sup­port for community-engaged writ­ing and research

Pro­pos­als should be no longer than 500 words.
Please feel free to con­tact the con­fer­ence com­mit­tee before propos­ing with any ques­tions about pre­sent­ing or ideas for workshops.
View more information & updates, connect with colleagues, and post proposals on our website: http://www.communitywriting.org/