Call for Paper
Re-Mixing and Mashing: Multilingual and Multimodal Composing
Steven Fraiberg and Xiaoye You are seeking contributors to an edited collection, Re-Mixing and Mashing: Multilingual and Multimodal Composing. In the area of literacy and language studies, scholars have called for crossing geographic and disciplinary borders in order to understand the ways English is being taken up, resisted, and transformed in relation to other languages and globalization. Responding to these calls, this edited collection aims to develop a rich understanding of multilingual composing processes across a range of contexts—classrooms, communities, workplaces, institutions, home environments—and the ways these practices are deeply linked to fluid and dynamic flows of capital, cultures, histories, and ideologies resulting in hybrid identities and novel forms of discursive practices. Drawing on work in multiliteracies, we further aim to extend the scope of multilingual research by developing rich descriptions of the ways that multimodal activities are deeply blended into speaking, reading, writing practices co-constituting complex ecologies distributed across space and time. It is the assumption of this collection that such fine grained descriptions of multimodal-multilingual literacy practices are critical for developing broader methodological and theoretical frameworks related to teaching, language policy, and research. To this end, we seek interdisciplinary scholarship on multilingual and multimodal literacy practices across a wide range of disciplines, including composition, literacy studies, ESL, new media, World Englishes, linguistic anthropology, rhetoric, technical communication, organizational behavior, applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis, computer mediated communication, education, and a range of other relevant disciplines.
We seek proposals that challenge and inform our work with or on multilingual and multimodal literacy practices, considering such questions as:
· How do writers construct multilingual and multimodal texts and objects (web pages, chats, graffiti, speeches, student papers, brochures, business proposals, presentations, laundry lists)? We seek rich descriptions of multilingual and multimodal literacy practices across a range of contexts—classrooms, communities, workplaces, home environments—with links to constellations of institutional, ideological, cultural, historical, and global factors.
· How is multilingual-multimodal writing embedded in a complex ecology of texts, tools, people, institutions, histories, cultures, ideologies?
· How do multilingual and multimodal practices—in conjunction with written texts, objects, talk, design, gesture, physical positioning and alignment—coordinate activities? How are these activities intertwined with broader sociocultural contexts?
· How can an understanding of unofficial multilingual and multimodal literacy practices such as social networking, web page design, digital story telling, and graffiti inform our officially sanctioned practices in our research, teaching, and policy making?
· What theoretical and methodological frameworks should we use for researching multilingual and multimodal texts and composing?
· What are the challenges that researchers face in multilingual and multimodal research, teaching, and policy making? What benefits and insights from attending to these issues can be gained?
We welcome 1-2 page (300-600 word) proposals for research-focused papers that explore the complexities and issues of multilingual and multimodal composing processes and texts across classrooms, workplaces, and community contexts.
Deadline for Proposals: September 1, 2009. Send electronically (prefer MS Word) to Steven Fraiberg at sfraibe2@gmail.com.
Notification of Acceptance: October 1, 2009 - - - Manuscripts Due: February 1, 2010 - - - Projected Publication: Spring 2011.
