A slew of recent rhet/comp blog posts have had to do with rejections from this year’s CCCCs  As usual, a number of very interesting and worthy panels have been rejected, including Debbie’s stuff on animals in the history of rhetoric (so cool), and Rebecca Moore Howard’s report on her Citation Project, and Chris D’s proposal for an innovative mentoring panel. Debbie suggested that she thought historical panels were perhaps less well presented than in past years (she cites 2007, specifically, when Cheryl Glenn was program director), while Rebecca suggests that perhaps empirically driven research is on the decline in our field at a time when it is precisely this type of research that garners the most support outside our field.

I thought I’d do a bit of empirical work myself to check out these questions, so I went through and tallied up the number of panels in each of the traditional CCCCs areas for 2009 and for 2007 (the year Glenn was in charge of the program). Here’s what I have:

 101 – Practices of Teaching Writing

2007 – 114 panels

2009 – 174 panels

102 – Composition Programs

2007 -66

2009 – 78

103 – Theory

2007 – 74

2009 – 61

104 – History

2007 – 43

2009 – 40

105 – Research

2007 – 38

2009 – 51

106 – Information Technologies

2007 – 48

2009 – 56

107 – Institutional and Professional

2007 – 58

2009 – 61

108 – Language

2007 – 16

2009 – 21

109 – Creative

2007 – 16

2009 – 8

110 Professional and Technical Writing

2007 – 19

2009- 20

111 – Community, Civic, & Public

2007 – 42

2009 – 54

(Notes: in 2007 there was a category for “International” with 31 panels included. In 2009 this category does not exist. In 2009 there is a category of “academic” with 20 panels listed, but this category does not appear in 2007).

So overall it would appear that the sheer numbers do not indicate a steep decline in history panels, which Debbie fears. However, while browsing through that category in the online program I did notice that many of the panels (perhaps even most?) focused on women’s rhetorics (much of it 19th and 20th century), while a smaller portion seemed to focus on non-Western rhetorics. . This could indicate that those who are working towards more inclusive histories of rhetoric, like the Coalition of Women Scholars, have achieved some success in broadening the scope of our historical investigations. But, surely no one would suggest inquiry into ancient rhetorics of the Western variety should be neglected as a result, especially when so much interesting research continues to emerge in other venues.

As for the “research” category, it is difficult to tell from a cursory glance whether all of these panels involve the kinds of empirical research Howard is doing, but the sheer numbers do suggest that this type of work is better represented, numerically at least, in comparison with the 2007 CCCCs. Of course, the review process itself (based on abstracts rather than finished papers) makes it difficult to ascertain the quality of the research behind it.

What struck me from my sortie into empirical study of the issue, though, was that the number of panels devoted to “practices of teaching writing”  was significantly higher on the 2009 program as compared to the 2007 program (174 to 114). While these types of panels are useful and important to the body of CCCCs attendees, perhaps the preponderance of panels in one category (“practices of writing” is by far the largest) might have something to do with the scattered attendance at much of the CCCCs AND with the rejection of some very interesting panels in other categories?Perhaps we as CCCCs members should lobby for a different distribution between these different types of panels?

Perhaps a broader discussion of the purpose of our organization is at stake. Yes, we are teachers of writing. But I subscribe to the argument that limiting our field to “teaching writing,” especially in the first year class, limits our scholarly interests and our influence and reputation outside our field. I for one would like to see the CCCCs program reflect more accurately the Mission Statement we’ve adopted:

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) supports and promotes the teaching and study of college composition and communication by 1) sponsoring meetings and publishing scholarly materials for the exchange of knowledge about composition, composition pedagogy, and rhetoric; 2) supporting a wide range of research on composition, communication, and rhetoric; 3) working to enhance the conditions for learning and teaching college composition and to promote professional development; and 4) acting as an advocate for language and literacy education nationally and internationally.

(Sorry,for some reason this text decided to copy itself in huge bold letters).

At any rate, to me this statment would suggest that we need more presentations on rhetoric (since it is listed in 1) but seems poorly represented at the CCCCs overall), 2) more research projects that deal with issues outside the first year composition classroom (and even on writing outside of the university).  In terms of the program, this would mean more panels on history, theory, research, professional and technical writing, and community writing. I’d love to see a more balanced distribution so that the panels weren’t weighted so heavily to “practices of teaching writing.” But who knows? This could just reflect the distribution of proposals submitted to the conference.