Call for Proposals for a Special Issue of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Writing, Composing, and Circulating Sound for Social Change

Click for Downloadable .PDF of CFP

_______________________________________________________________

Editorial Team

Shewonda Leger
Eric Rodriguez
Ja’La Wourman
Shannon Kelly
Benjamin Lauren

 

Audio CFP

 

Audio CFP Transcript

[Music fades in]

Shewonda: This special issue of Kairos is titled: “Writing, Composing, and Circulating Sound for Social Change.” Recent scholarship in writing studies signals that ethical and effective sonic practices are an important element of community work. We also contend that sound has the potential to circulate experiences of othered or ignored people. For this special issue, we invite proposals for webtexts focused on writing, composing, and circulating sound as a means of enacting social change. 

[Mash up of voices that fade into dialogue]

Eric: I want this issue to be able to legitimize alternate composing forms that don’t really center the page, and speak to my own ways of knowing. I was changed by the cassette tapes that I would get from friends with recordings of local punk bands…

Shannon: This sounds obvious, but sound invites us to listen. And I’m excited for the ways listening invites participation; by asking someone to listen we then also have to make space for people to participate. And this listening, sharing, participating is a way that social change can happen.

Ja’La: Social change is about having an awareness of the issues and concerns affecting people at large, and also making intentional decisions with the work that we do to attack those issues at face value. It’s all about doing something about it.

Ben: Social change is something that is incremental. I think often we talk about wide, sweeping social change, and that is important, but I also think that incremental changes that have big impacts matter quite a bit. 

Eric: Most movements for change have a soundtrack, so, why not ours?

[Music fades out. Audio CFP ends.]

 

Description

In our everyday experiences, there is a near ubiquitous ability to encounter and engage with sound-based compositions (including podcasts, recorded music, broadcast radio, film and video game scores, and so on). Recent scholarship in writing studies signals that ethical and effective sonic practices are an important element of community work (Butler, 2018; Ceraso, 2018; Danforth, Stedman, and Farris, 2018; Del Hierro, 2018; Hawk, 2018; Sano-Franchini, 2018; Wargo, 2018). We agree with this scholarship that sound has the potential to circulate experiences of othered and/or ignored people. For this special issue, we invite proposals for webtexts focused on writing, composing, and circulating sound as a means of enacting social change.

 

Accessibility

Your proposal should include a section that positions accessibility as a foundational concern of your  webtext (see Janine Butler, 2018; Sean Zdenek 2018). Said another way, how do you plan to deliver the webtext for multiple sensory experiences in its design and delivery?

 

Topic Areas

We are particularly interested in webtexts in the following areas:

  • Topoi: Webtexts that offer both theoretical and methodological approaches to soundwriting to enact social change with communities. We encourage proposals to specifically attend to issues of creating sound compositions in/with communities, as well as the way these relationships influence both theoretical and methodological frameworks.
  • Praxis: Webtexts that focus on the intersections of why, how, when, and in what ways soundwriting happens and can enact social change in rhetoric and writing learning spaces.
  • Disputatio: Short webtexts that forward ideas about the circulation of sound in communities for social change as a kind of manifesto or argument.
  • PraxisWiki: Short wiki entries offering teaching narratives, collaborations with students, assignments, and digital pedagogy pieces related to writing and circulating sound.
  • Interviews: 15-20 minute sound-based discussions with sound scholars or practitioners, including indie songwriters, podcasters, sound artists, or other practitioners in soundwriting.
  • Reviews: Short sound-based pieces that review work on sound design, songwriting, live sound, audio production, and other soundwriting technologies both within and beyond writing studies.

 

Proposal Requirements

Proposals submitted for consideration for the special issue should

  • be 800 – 1000 words, not including references (for Topoi or Praxis)
  • be 300 – 500 words, not including references (for Disputatio, PraxisWiki, Interviews, or Reviews)
  • note which section of the special issue you would like your proposal considered for
  • offer a clear statement of positionality about your work with your community
  • include a discussion of multimodal (emphasizing sound-based) features
  • include a brief descriptive section on how accessibility is foundational to your work
  • use Kairos’s modified APA style guide to format your citations
  • email proposals as .PDF files to srg.msu@gmail.com

 

Timeline

  • Proposals are due by August 1, 2019
  • Decisions by September 1, 2019
  • First Drafts of webtexts by December 15, 2019
  • Reviews by March 15, 2020
  • Revisions by August 1, 2020
  • Special Issue Publication Date August 15, 2021

References

Butler, Janine. (2018). Embodied captions in multimodal pedagogies. Composition Forum, 39. Retrieved from http://compositionforum.com/issue/39/captions.php

Ceraso, Steph. (2018). Sounding composition: Multimodal pedagogies for embodied listening. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Danforth, Courtney, Stedman, Kyle, & Farris, Michael.(Eds.). (2018). Soundwriting pedagogies. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. Retrieved from http://ccdigitalpress.org/soundwriting

Del Hierro, Victor. (2018). DJs, playlists, and community: Imagining communication design through hip hop. Communication Design Quarterly. Retrieved from https://sigdoc.acm.org/cdq/djs-playlists-and-community-imagining-communication-design-through-hip-hop/

Hawk, Byron. (2018). Resounding the rhetorical: Composition as a quasi-object. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Sano-Franchini, Jennifer. (2018). Sounding Asian/America: Asian/American sonic rhetorics, multimodal orientalism, and digital composition. Enculturation, 27. Retrieved from http://enculturation.net/sounding-Asian-America

Wargo, Jon M.(2018). #SoundingOutMySilence: Reading a LGBTQ youth’s sonic cartography as multimodal (counter)storytelling. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 62(1), 13-23.

Zdenek, Sean. (2018). Designing captions: Disruptive experiments with typography, color, icons, and effects. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 23(1). Retrieved April 15, 2019, from http:/​/​kairos.technorhetoric.net/​23.1/​topoi/​zdenek/​metacaptioning.html