Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words

As you likely know, the CCCC's Executive Committee decided to continue with the 2018 national convention in Kansas City, with some major changes to the program and convention structure to include more safety measures for our members and more activist and social justice oriented activities and work while at the convention. While many of these activist activities and convention structures will be unique to KC, many may become permanent convention structures. For sure, this coming national convention in KC will be special, as we'll as have a larger budget to work with than what is normal or sustainable in future years. This larger budget is due to the NAACP's travel advisory in Missouri . If you want to know more about our nearly two-month process to this decision, you can read the CCCC 2018 Update letter that went out to all the members during the second half of the process.  As promised and as part of the EC's decision, I formed a new task force, the Task For...

Dear friends and colleagues, As of this morning, I have seen the good feedback and discussions that several CCCC members have posted in various places on FB and on the G'form I set up to gather your ideas for 4C18 in response to the NAACP's Missouri Travel Advisory . Much of the discussion has been frustration around the CCCC's statement on the travel advisory's lack of concern over people of color's safety, especially black members, in Missouri, that this is yet another version of the way white supremacy works. It prioritizes monetary loss or gain over the very real bodies and lives of people of color. I hear this. From a personal standpoint, I agree. I am one of those bodies. I know, first-hand how traveling in particular spaces can be unsafe, make one feel anxious and unsure about everything. None of this shit is fair. I know, really. I care deeply about our black members and the black communities in Missouri, and painfully realize that any decision we ma...

Recently, it came to my attention that the system we use to gather proposals for the CCCC convention sent demographic information back to those who registered by email. This was information that proposers provided when they submitted their online proposals. If the proposer used their institutional email, technically this may give that institution access to the proposer’s personal information, which they may not wish to share with that institution. Once this information was brought to our attention, NCTE quickly initiated changes to prevent the proposal system from sending the demographic information as part of the submission confirmation email. As of about 2:00 pm on Monday, May 08, the system stopped doing this. Again, this will NOT happen from this point forward. We are very sorry to those this may have affected. I’d like to explain why we are trying to collect this information and what we’ll do with it. Because of how NCTE and CCCC information is structured, we cannot just find out ...

This post is meant to help those who plans on proposing a panel, workshop, poster session, or individual presentation for the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication (#4C18), which will be in Kansas City, MO. There some important changes this coming year. You can find the CFP online and be sure to look carefully at it, as well as the criteria reviewers will use to rate proposals . Below I'll highlight a few new things that can affect the way you write your proposals this year. There are differences from past years' conferences. No Clusters, but Hashtags There are no clusters , instead, we have hashtags , which I’m hoping will be used in a variety of ways on social media. The hashtags are a bit broader. Up to 3 hashtags can be associated with any proposal, but all proposals must have at least 1 hashtag. These hashtags will be used to organize the conference program in a similar fashion as the old clusters, but because I won’t use the hashtags to funnel ...

Well, yesterday, day 3 of 4C17 was a very busy, but wonderful day. I had more packed sessions. I saw some former students, and of course, I received my book award. My first session was a small one with Lisa Ede and a number of others, a cultivate session on mentoring. It was a stimulating and informal, just the way I like things. As I sat in our circle talking with the group and listening to people's ideas about mentoring, I couldn't help but realize how wonderfully collaborative, engaged, and filled with goodwill most of the folks in our field are. It made me feel a very fortunate to have found the field of Rhetoric and Composition to work in and for, and Lisa herself has no small part in me finding my way to Rhetoric and Composition. She was an early mentor herself to me at Oregon State. Meredith, Piper, Kelly, and me Next, I chaired a super-full session on mindfulness with Emily Beals (a former student of mine), Donna Strickland, Christie Wenger, and Jennifer Consili...