Call for Abstracts: Pedagogy and the Working Class

Here’s the CFA for this book project as a word doc: CFA–Working-Class Collection

The text is also below. Deadline for abstracts is March 15, 2014.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Pedagogy and the Working Class
An edited collection by
William H. Thelin and Genesea Carter

We invite abstracts of 500-1000 words for our proposed edited collection, Class in the Composition Classroom: Pedagogy and the Working Class. Our goal is to supplement the existing literature on teaching working-class students with a volume dedicated to the specifics of teaching writing to college-level working-class students from differing regions, cultures, and backgrounds.  We are looking for contributions that are theoretically informed in both working-class studies and composition pedagogy and that bring discussions of teaching writing to working-class populations to a concrete level so that readers can see specifics in terms of classroom dynamics, instructor decisions, student performance, or any other relevant focus concerning the teaching of writing.

We feel that the current scholarship regarding social class in Composition Studies has not focused enough on the application of class understandings to first-year writing instruction. Some volumes have focused on the backgrounds of working-class academics. Some scholars have discussed the teaching of class theory to students. A few articles and books have outlined pedagogical practices toward emancipatory goals. We would like Class in the Composition Classroom to stand alongside such scholarship but to contribute to the field in different ways.  Given the variations in working-class populations and institutions of higher education across the nation, we do not want articles that merely give advice on what to do, as easy importation of a pedagogy from one group to another violates our pedagogical beliefs.  Rather, we would like to see what happened in your particular location and why something you designed for a working-class population succeeded or failed.  We are also interested in why certain theories should be implemented (or disregarded) given the particulars of any specific population.

We envision the collection to be broken into three parts:

Part One: The Working Class Student: Region, Education, Labor, and Culture
Part Two: Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom
Part Three: What Our Students Say

Within these three parts, specific themes you might want to address include:

*How to identify working-class students and/or the complexity of identifying working-class students.

*Responding to working-class students’ values and perceptions about literacy, language, and education.

*Challenges working-class students face with contemporary composition pedagogy.

*Case studies or ethnographies that illustrate and/or complicate the different facets of working-class students’ identities. These facets can include, but are not limited to, students’ gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion; students from military families or who are veterans; immigrant and heritage students; students from particular regions; first-generation college students; and students with developmental and learning differences.

*Curriculum developed for a specific working-class population, including implementation, difficulties, and results.

*Theories or research that highlights issues of access (financial, technological, print, etc.) for working-class students.

*Specific assignments and activities that help students talk about class and/or help students understand how class affects their worldview.

We would like to see abstracts by March 15, 2014, and would be pleased to talk with anyone about contributions during the meeting of the Working-Class Culture and Pedagogy group at this year’s Conference on College Composition and Composition (CCCC) in Indianapolis.  Send abstracts or inquiries to Genesea Carter at genesea.carter@gmail.com<mailto:genesea.carter@gmail.com> or Bill Thelin at wthelin@uakron.edu<mailto:wthelin@uakron.edu>.

Genesea Carter
Assistant Professor, Department of English and Philosophy
University of Wisconsin-Stout

About Steve Mentz 1263 Articles
I teach Shakespeare and the blue humanities at St. John's in New York City.

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