CFP: Virtual Urbanism -- Computers and Writing 2007

May 17-20, 2007
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan

Deadline for proposals: midnight, December 20, 2006.
Website for proposal submission and information:
http://englishweb.clas.wayne.edu/~cw07/cw07

Featured Speakers:
Geoffrey Sirc, Professor of English, University of Minnesota
Hellen Liggett, Professor of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University
Richard Doyal, Professor of English, Penn State University

The conference theme juxtaposes computers and writing with contemporary city life, representations of the urban, and the virtual encounters we create when technology and textuality are introduced into our places of work, study, and pleasure. Detroit, Michigan offers a unique opportunity to consider the effects of rhetoric and writing on the urban experience, an experience constantly shaped and reshpaed by emerging and existing technological issues, from the birth of the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company to the introduction of techno music. Today, new kinds of projects, like the New Center's Digital Detroit and Wayne State University's concept of TechTown, are creating new kinds of urban experiences.

In addition to the featured keynote speakers, Computers and Writing 2007 will feature local artists, webloggers, and activists who explore the assemblages of technology, writing, and city space. Through the participation of keynote speakers, featured guests, and conference presenters and participants, Computers and Writing 2007 will integrate issues of virtual urbanism with those concerns writing and rhetoric professionals face today.

Participants may speak on any topic normally relevant to computers and writing, but we will encourage papers which speak to the issues raised by the juxtaposition of the urban, technology, and space.

We encourage participants to generalize outward from Detroit to think creatively about relationships among city spaces, writing, and technology.

While all submissions will be considered, we encourage submissions in response to the following:

• What are the relationships between place and digital writing?
• What are the places we write in and communicate within?
• How has the urban changed, maintained, complicated understandings of technology?
• What are the new writing spaces for pedagogy and research?
• What do we mean by virtuality or space?
• How has the university become or not become a virtual space of learning?
• What kinds of virtual pedagogies can we imagine for our future work in the profession?

Following previous Computers and Writing conferences, we strongly encourage proposals for workshops, which will take place on May 17.

We will also accept proposals for "@Get Info: A Preview of Conference Papers at the CW07" A successful event at CW06, @Get Info gives presenters the chance to sell, seduce, enchant, thrill, educate, influence, and persuade conference participants to attend their session - all in a 60-second "show and tell."

During @Get Info, presenters can do anything they wish to encourage attendance at their sessions, from showing video clips, animation, still images, Power Point slides, and sound files, to performing skits and routines. Presenters who attempt to go beyond their allotted time are given the "buzzer" and sent off the stage by the moderators.

We look forward to seeing you in Detroit.

Please direct any questions to
Jeff Rice
Assistant Professor English
Wayne State University
jrice@wayne.edu

Vol. 11 Iss. 1 Fall 2006