C&W ONLINE 2007

COMPUTERS AND WRITING ONLINE 2007

February 5 through February 9, 2007
Conference Co-Chairs:
Dr. Keith Dorwick, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Dr. Kevin Moberly, St. Cloud State University

Conference Co-Chairs Keith Dorwick and Kevin Moberly are seeking synchronous and asynchronous presentations that address a wide conception of scholarship that focuses on a range of issues that could be briefly summed as “technology and society,� or, perhaps, “technologies and societies.� Successful papers for this online conference should focus on the ways humanists read technology as a special case of cultural studies.

For years, the research of the computers and writing community has focused largely on, well, “computers� and “writing.� With the continued maturation of the sub-discipline, the community as a whole has begun to think about a wider conception of our own work, with research and teaching that focuses on a range of issues that could be briefly summed as “technology and society.� Successful presentations for Computers and Writing Online 2007 should focus on the ways we might rethink our work and move beyond composition to a larger focus on cultural studies that could include but not be as dependent on writing instruction. In particular, the conference co-chairs are interested in a conception of “technology� and the “humanist impulse� that pushes beyond contemporary American culture and its fascination with computers; we seek papers that deal with any technology or technologies in any number of historical periods from any relevant theoretical perspective.

The keynote events will consist of panels comprising first, second and third generation scholars (those who founded the subdiscipline without specific training in CW but in other areas of English studies; those trained by those first wave scholars specifically in CW; and those new voices trained by specialists by training and research now graduating and entering their careers) and other online events that focus on where we’ve been and where we need to go.

For both asynchronous and synchronous events, eight page papers will be due in .doc, .rtf, .pdf or hypertext and placed on the computersandwriting.org website for pre-conference reading by Jan. 31, 2007; discussions will follow during the conference period. The conference will be held February 5 through February 9, 2007. Synchronous events will be held in AcadianaMOO at http://acadianamoo.org; asynchronous events on the Computers and Writing website.

One page conference proposals due to kdorwick@louisiana.edu by midnight, Friday November 17, 2007.