Current Issue
Special Issue: Undergraduate Research
Call for Webtexts: Summer 2011 Special Issue on Undergraduate Research (October 1, 2009)
Guest Editors: Shannon Carter, Texas A&M-Commerce and Bump Halbritter, Michigan State University
The subject of this multimodal work will address rhetoric, technology, pedagogy, and writing studies—the same scope published in the recurring issues of Kairos. The limits of what counts as scholarship will be drawn no more tightly than they are around Kairos submissions more generally. We want to publish projects that are intellectually rigorous, engaging, and important. Due to our experiences in working with multimediated texts, we come to this collection with some expectations for what such scholarship looks and sounds like; however, we remain open to submissions that challenge these preconceptions as well. We are hopeful that these submissions will expand the field's understandings of “digital scholarship” and “writing instruction”—both in content and in form. We are also hopeful that this issue will promote further integration of new media in the undergraduate curriculum by sharing exemplar examples of student work and offering the tools for instructors interested in assigning and supporting this kind of work.
(Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric is calling for submissions that will make use of four sections of Kairos—Topoi, Inventio, Praxis, and Reviews. The primary difference between Topoi/Praxis and Praxis/Inventio submissions is how tightly the topic of the student text adheres to the topics of rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes. Student texts that fall outside of usual Kairos topics should include a student-authored Inventio component. See below for further descriptions.
1) Topoi/Praxis submissions: collaboratively-authored webtext comprised of the following two subsections: a) student-authored Topoi webtexts on issues tightly related to rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes, and b) a teacher-authored Praxis webtext that situates the student's work within the pedagogical aims of the assignment that invited the student's work. Student-authored Topoi texts should be mediated as appropriate, and may include, but are not limited to, any combination of text, hypertext, images, digital video, and/or sound.
Instructor-authored Praxis texts should articulate the instructional context that shaped the text (assignment, course, learning objectives, revision/feedback structure, institutional infrastructure). In other words, the instructor-generated Praxis text should complement the student Topoi submission by providing the context from which the multimodal project emerged, but the undergraduates remain the stars of this feature so the Praxis texts needn't be more significant than a description of the assignment itself and a brief discussion of other relevant contexts.
2) Praxis/Inventio submissions: collaboratively-authored webtext comprised of the following three subsections: a) a student-authored, multimedia text of any topic or genre (in other words, texts not tightly related to topics Kairos typically publishes), b) a teacher-authored Praxis webtext that situates the student's work within the pedagogical aims of the assignment that invited the student's work, and c) a student-authored Inventio webtext that discusses the rhetorical decisions, contexts, influences, and material resources that directed the production of the multimedia work the student submits.
3) Reviews: In addition to the above multimodal contributions, we invite reviews (by students or by whole classes) of student-produced work that is circulating in or outside of the academy.
Collaborations among groups of student authors are encouraged on all submissions. For more information regarding these four sections and the kinds of submissions they usually attract, please see the Kairos page on submissions. All media included in these submissions must be cited and used fairly. Please see Kairos' copyright policy for more details. If you have any concerns about copyright or which section to submit to, please contact the guest editors. We welcome any chance to help potential authors work through these issues. Instructors and the student authors with whom they are collaborating are encouraged to contact the special issue editorial staff early in their project's development.
All authors accepted to the issue will be invited to submit Disputatio texts in response to the work of their special-issue peers for possible publication in a subsequent issue of Kairos.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should come from students and be submitted in a single word-processing document and emailed to the two guest editors below. The proposal should include
• Author name(s) and full contact information
• Section for which the proposal should be considered (Topoi/Praxis, Praxis/Inventio, or Reviews). If you are unsure, just ask! We'll be happy to help you find the best place for this submission.
• Instructor's name and full contact information.
• Instructor's brief description of the context, assignment, and/or course from which the proposed project emerged/will emerge. (If this is unavailable, student may submit a note stating that he/she was an undergraduate when he/she first composed this piece.)
• One-page description of the project you wish to develop for this special issue, including information about how far you are in the process and what you will need to develop the project you propose.
You are welcome to include a prototype (i.e., sample URL, screenshots, audio or video excerpt, etc.) to accompany your description. We cannot accept attachments over 2 megs via email. If your submission is larger than that, email us at least a week prior to the submission deadline so we can suggest alternative modes of delivery. Prototypes are not required, however, so please don't feel you must be that far along with a project to consider submitting it. A written proposal is all that is required. Deadline for proposal submission is October 1, 2009.
Email submissions as attachments to guest editors at:
• Shannon Carter, Shannon_Carter@tamu-commerce.edu
• Bump Halbritter, drbump@msu.edu
Timeline
- October 1, 2009 Proposals due
- November 15, 2009 Authors notified of proposal acceptance
- February 1, 2010 Full webtexts due
- June 2010 Authors notified of webtext status
- August 1, 2010 Revised webtexts due
- May 15, 2011 Publication date
