In the last few days, there's been some good, thought-provoking discussion of the CCCC review process. The posts, in order: Jeff, Jenny, Jenny, Collin, Jenny, Jeff. Jenny, Jeff, and Collin are critiquing the conference for its tendency to accept panels on the same topics every year (service learning, plagiarism, "what I do in my classroom"), and while CCCC still presents a good opportunity to socialize, it lacks intellectual force and vitality, due in part to the review process. I agree, and I've heard others express similar frustration. I've been thinking about the panels I attend at Cs, and as one would expect, I attend panels based on my interests: technology (especially blogs and wikis), feminist rhetorics, and intellectual property. During blocks of time when no panels on these topics are offered, I usually attend the Featured Session with Great Big Name or a history of rhetoric panel or sessions on subjects I don't know much about, such as high-stakes testing or environmental rhetoric. Sometimes I attend friends' presentations just to be a friendly face in the audience, but it's rare (I know! I'm terrible!).
My point is, I, too, flip through the program and see many sessions that elicit the response, "absolutely not." And that's a problem. The proposal Jenny, Jeff, and Geoff had submitted sounds very exciting to me: writing the city, and each person had planned to talk about his or her city (Austin, Detroit, Minneapolis) and their students' engagement with these cities. This is important work, intersecting with geography and cultural studies, scholarship that not only presents a challenge to the ways writing is being taught, but also challenges disciplinary boundaries. Perhaps that's one problem with Cs; for a long time, scholars in rhetoric and composition have struggled to establish rhetoric and composition as a discipline, to procure legitimacy for it, and now that rhet/comp enjoys a status above fledgling (or does it? Taking the long view, I must admit it's no psychology, sociology, or anthropology.), the program chairs and reviewers want to hold our position? I'm not trying to suggest that program chairs and reviewers consciously think this, only that the impulse toward disciplinary coherence is strong, and proposals on new, unfamiliar topics might be at a disadvantage for this reason.
My view here is informed by Berkenkotter and Huckin's (1995) research; Collin, Jeff, and Jenny's posts inspired me to pull my copy of Genre Knowledge off the shelf and re-read the "Gatekeeping at an Academic Convention" chapter, which is all about 4Cs. In the chapter, Berkenkotter and Huckin interpret data from a longitudinal corpus study of a total of 441 4Cs abstracts from 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1992. They've got a lot to say, as you might expect, and I'm not going to go over it all in detail here. They comment on rhet/comp's status as a discipline:
Rhetoric and composition is a highly interdisciplinary field, not yet a true discipline unto itself, and the theme statements from recent CCCC conventions, including some we have not covered in this study, all reflect this fact. It is a field made up of diverse elements and interests, held together in an ever-changing constellation. But there seem to be at least three constants in the field: training in literary/humanistic studies, a commitment to pedagogy, and an interest in grounded (situated) research. (p. 114)
They provide some history of the conference, specifically that it started in 1949 and instituted blind review in 1992, and some details about the review process. They corroborate John's comments on Jeff's first post that the program chair has a great deal of authority and can not only, as John says, accept a proposal rejected by the reviewers, but also reject a proposal accepted by the reviewers. At the time of the study, reviewers were required to give each abstract a 1 (Weak), 2 (Adequate), 3 (Good), or 4 (Excellent). Berkenkotter and Huckin add, "A high score makes it likely that the paper will be included in the program, but does not guarantee it: Other factors, such as a balance of topics, broad geographical representation, and the program chair's particular interests, can intervene" (p. 97). The procedure may not be the same now, but Berkenkotter and Huckin's analysis of the criteria for acceptance stands. They point out that the reviewers look for topics "of current interest to active, experienced members of the rhetoric and composition community," a clearly defined problem, a framing of the problem "in a way that would be seen by experienced insiders as novel and therefore interesting," and "an insider ethos through the use of terminology, special topoi, and/or explicit or implicit references to the scholarly literature" (p. 102).
I find the "novelty" criterion to be the most germane to the critique being made here. It would seem the reviewers don't want groundbreaking research; they only want analysis that slightly extends existing scholarship and maintains disciplinary cohesion. The example Berkenkotter and Huckin provide is a high-rated proposal from 1990 on the concept of voice, which Berkenkotter and Huckin call "a timeworn topic familiar to all compositionists" (p. 110). The author of the proposal addresses the Derridean critique (and the critics) of "voice" and attempts to reconcile it with the position of those who are invested in "voice" as a pedagogically useful concept. She makes a distinction between using the term "voice" warily, which is good, and nervously, which is undesirable and unnecessary. Basically, they want novelty with a little n, not a big N. :)
I hope to find out what others think about the 4Cs review process. Do you think the review process is in need of reform? Collin, in his post, offers what I think is a superb idea: Establish a database of reviewers who truly are experts in their particular areas, instead of simply being friends with the program chair. It's a no-brainer, really; it would make the program chair's job easier, it would make the process fairer for the applicants, and it would improve the overall quality of the scholarship at the conference. Should we go even further and rethink the whole conference? Jenny reflects,
I almost like the idea of making it a huge conference of SIGs and letting the paper/panel model die. Maybe we could just propose and add our names to four or five SIGs and attend those. Everyone and anyone could participate in at least one SIG (thereby getting that all important "name on the program") and attend all the others you want.
You know, that's the way they did it at last year's BloggerCon, and by all accounts, it was great. Daisy might have some comments on this model, having attended BloggerCon.
UPDATE: Collin and Steve have follow-up posts well worth reading.
