#4c15: Conference on College Composition and Communication: "Risk and Reward"

The 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention (AKA CCCC, or 4Cs), Risk and Reward was held March 18-21 in Tampa, Florida. In addition to my usual conference wanderings, I signed up to be a Social Media Correspondent, and got a fancy ribbon and everything! I also volunteered to livetweet the Asian/Asian American Caucus-sponsored session, chaired a session, and spent a few hours volunteering for 4C4Equality. Busy times! Plus, gorgeous, gorgeous Florida.

To make things a little easier to navigate, I've included program descriptions of the panels I attended. Also, this giant data-crunching thing says I was one of the "Top 10 Vertices, Ranked by Betweenness Centrality," whatever that means. Sounds fancy?

THURSDAY

• #genkey: Thursday Opening General Session and Chair's Address
  Joyce Locke, Sharon Crowley, Adam Banks
  Some pictures from Tuesday evening wanderings, and then the opening general session. Some encouragement was offered, some awards were given, and then Adam Banks TORE IT UP and sent us out to learn.
  
  
• #A24: Better Breathers are Better Learners
  Asao Inoue, chair; Emily Beals; Jeremiah Henry; Jennifer Consilio; Susan Naomi Bernstein, respondent
  This panel explores connections among mindfulness, meditation, and yoga with writing pedagogy to help strengthen student writing.
  
  
• #B06: Asian/Asian American Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition: Risks and Rewards (Sponsored by the Asian/Asian American Caucus)
  Terese Guinsatao Monberg, chair; K. Jyoejin Yoon; Phuong Tran, Edward Lee, Michael Pak, Scott Kaalele; Jolivette Mecenas; Linh Dich; Lehua Ledbetter; Hui Wu, respondent
  Discusses historical and emergent work in Asian/Asian American studies in rhetoric/composition to explore its risks and rewards.
  
  
• #C08: Historiographies of Risk: Missed Encounters with Islamic Rhetorics
  Richard Johnson-Sheehan, chair; Priya Sirohi; Trevor Meyer; Erin Cromer
  Attention to missed encounters with the legacy of Islamic rhetoric opens up a space for new intellectual thought in composition.
  
  
• #E01: The Rhetoric of Advanced College Writing
  Patti Poblete, chair; Sarah Banting; Eric Detweiler; Matt Baker
  Classical rhetoric provides insight into invention, arrangement, theses, and hedging, as well as the very nature of college writing.

FRIDAY

• #F44: Risk and Reward within Writing Program Ecologies
  Elizabeth Wardle, chair; Sara Webb-Sunderhaus; Kristi Costello; Mary Jo Reiff; Amy Devitt; Daniel Sanford; Kelly Kinney; Anis Bawarshi; Paul Walker
  Drawing on an ecological framework, this roundtable explores fluctuations and risk-taking within varied writing program ecologies.
  
  
• #G13: Risk or Reward?: Rhetorical Agency and the Administrative Call for Faculty of Color
  Staci Perryman-Clark, chair; Collin Craig; Aja Martinez; David Green, respondent
  This roundtable provides an open discussion about the role of racialized and gendered bodies as WPA practitioners.
  
  
• #4C4E and #K06: Postcards from the CCCC: A Workshop for Your Writing
  4C4Equality and #K06's Kathleen Blake Yancey, Nancy Sommers, Doug Hesse
  Participants will compose three parallel tasks in sequence--responding to an object, a photograph, a meal--and three postcards.

SATURDAY

• #L05: Mutha Werk: The Risk, the Struggle, the Tools of Saving and Honoring Black Women’s Lives
  Elaine Richardson, chair; Ersula Ore; Gwendolyn Pough, respondent
  This panel lays bare the risks, rhetorics, and realities of being a Black woman.
  
  
• #M16: Making Composition: The Maker Movement, Materiality, Multimodality
  John Walter; Kristin Arola; John Sherrill
  Maker Movement and writing: (material) composition, materiality, and multimodality in print and digital environments.

What a fantastic, illuminating conference. Loved it. Loved it all.