Call for Presentations
In a remarkably short period of time, little more than a decade,
electronic communication has changed our understanding of writing.
Instant messaging has generated diction, grammar, and a visual
language unto itself. The most basic word-processing programs
include tools for combining visual texts with verbal information.
PowerPoint has brought images into oral presentations. And hyperlinks
on the internet have changed our ideas about organization and
about the relationship between writer and reader. Writing in
this digital culture requires verbal facility, but it requires
facility with oral and visual representations as well. This
growing respect for multiple literacies has encouraged us to
think about the expanding context in which writing takes place,
about orality, and about writing as public performance. What
opportunities and challenges do multimedia literacy and the
conceptualization of writing as multimedia performance present
to writing centers? How has computer-mediated writing changed
the relationship between the writing center and other academic
programs? How has it changed the act of writing?
We invite all members of your writing center staff—including
students—to propose a presentation for the Northern California
Writing Center Association’s 12th annual meeting, March
6, 2004, at Stanford University. The conference theme is “Acts
of Writing,” and we encourage you to interpret this theme
in whatever way speaks most meaningfully to your thoughts and
experiences regarding your writing center or writing centers
in general. The following topics and questions suggest how we
are thinking about the conference theme, but these are only
suggestions. We hope you will present at the conference whatever
is most important and interesting to you and your writing center.
How can writing centers most effectively serve as a space for
the performance of writing? For poetry slams, for fiction readings?
For oral presentation of research projects? Students who participate
in these events could offer a wealth of information about how
these experiences affect their sense of writing and the writing
center, their sense of power as students, their sense of themselves
and their community. Writing center staff members might discuss
how the conceptualization of writing as performance affects
their sense of the writing center’s mission.
How have budget freezes or reductions affected your writing
center’s ability to enact programs for the performance
of writing, for computer-mediated writing, or for other initiatives?
How have you balanced reductions in resources with the need
for new programs?
How have new writing technologies changed your writing center’s
program for tutor training?
How has your writing center responded to writing as oral presentation?
What programs do you offer for tutoring oral presentation? For
including visual elements in oral presentations?
In what ways does the writing center address the needs of creative
writing and creative writing programs?
How do you assess your writing center’s performance?
How does your procedure for writing center assessment invite
innovative writing center programs?
How does the physical design of your facility encourage writers
to expand their sense of how writing is performed? How does
it accommodate the entire community, including those members
with disabilities?
We invite presentations that address these questions, as well
as presentations on any innovations that shape the writing center
and the act of writing.
Deadline for Proposals: Please complete the
NCWCA on-line form for conference proposals and include a description
of your presentation (150-word maximum for individual presentations;
250-word maximum for panels, roundtables, and other group proposals)
by December 15, 2003. If you prefer to send your proposal by
surface mail, please print out the proposal form or request
a form by mail, and send two copies of the proposal form and
8 copies of your proposal to Stanford Writing Center, Margaret
Jacks Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
94305-2085.
For the proposal form and further information, please follow
the link to submit a proposal, email
writingcenter@vpue.stanford.edu,
or phone the Stanford Writing Center at 650-723-0045.
Proposal deadline: Monday,
December 15, 2003
