CFP: Writing Studies and Accessibility in “Unprecedented Times”

Anti-Ableist Composition Call for Papers

“Writing Studies and Accessibility in “Unprecedented Times'”

Link to Google Forms Submission Form

Deadline: EXTENDED TO September 30, 2021

Editors: Psyche Z. Ready & Adam Hubrig

Since March 2020, instructors of college writers have had to completely restructure our classrooms. Most of us had to transition in-person courses to online, a monumental change, and in the months that followed, as COVID continued to spread and social unrest surged in the US in response to police violence and systemic racism, many of us transformed our courses even further to better support the shifting needs of our students and ourselves. We revised or removed late policies and attendance requirements; we included more thoughtful and compassionate accommodations/access statements; we developed more flexible or multimodal writing assignments; we generated new activities and practices; we reduced workload and word counts. In short, we thoughtfully, carefully, and compassionately revisited course content and policies to increase access. While our courses have always been iterative and evolving, 2020 accelerated and amplified this process. It is the intention of this collection to recognize and acknowledge this generative labor, and to collect and curate a repository of its fruits.

Further, one of the assumptions of the editors of this collection is that many of the 2020 changes to coursework are in alignment with the principles and best practices of Disability Theory, Universal Access, and Anti-Ableist Pedagogy, which disabled communities have been advocating for for years. Our hope is that this collection will gather this knowledge to encourage instructors to implement these practices in their classrooms permanently: including those that increased access and better supported the lives and labor of both students and instructors. The collection will be open-access, housed on the Anti-Ableist Composition blog. We don’t want this wisdom–and our and our students’ hard work–to be forgotten.

We seek submissions from all educators/instructors of Rhetoric/Composition, Writing Studies, Technical Communication, and related disciplines, and encourage submissions from BIPOC, graduate students, and contingent faculty; we are especially interested in the perspectives of disabled and neurodivergent people. We encourage submissions that draw connections with or discuss recent, relevant scholarship in Disability Studies or Writing Studies and/or discuss intersectionality and the ways your changes impacted students of different identities. 

Submission Guidelines

Because we want to collect your stories this summer while they are still fresh in your mind, we are requesting short, informal submissions of 500-1000 words. Please submit in two parts: 

1. a description of activity, assignment, course policy, access statement, etc. (500-1000 words)
2. a rationale for the changes (why were these changes made?) and a reflection on the results (how did it go?) (200-1000 words)

Editorial Procedure

There will be minimal changes to your original submission. The changes or revisions that may be suggested will consist of ensuring that the writer is aware that what they are submitting will be public-facing and open access. There will be no gatekeeping or editorial changes to the content of the writer’s work. This is a writer-focused space. If you would like your work to be published anonymously, that is welcomed in this space, however, you will need to include a name and email address in order to correspond about your submission when necessary. 

Note on Compensation

As of right now, submissions will not be monetarily compensated due to a lack of resources. However, we are currently working toward small stipends for authors’ work featured on this website–updates will be shared as they develop.

If you have any questions about this CFP and project, please feel free to email psyche.ready@uconn.edu.

If you have any questions about the Anti-Ableist Composition Collective, please email antiableistcomposition@gmail.com, or contact us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AntiAbleistComp.