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Hello all,

Here's a matter of some temporal urgency.

BACKGROUND

In the September 2010 issue of CCC, an article by Louise Wetherbee Phelps and John M. Ackerman appeared called "Making the Case for Disciplinarity in Rhetoric, Composition and Writing Studies: The Visibility Project." The article documents a successful effort to get our field formally recognized by the National Research Council's taxonomy of research disciplines and by the federal Classification of Instructional Programs.

In Canada, the equivalent would be SSHRC, in which we are equally invisible, necessitating strange contortions under headings such as linguistics, education and communications studies. Check out the list of Grant Selection Committees at

http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/peer_review-evaluation_pairs/selection_committees-comites_selection/standard_research-ordinaire_recherche_2011-eng.aspx

and the list of discipline codes at

http://www.outil.ost.uqam.ca/CRSH/Liste_Info.aspx?Info=2&Langue=2

You'll note that nothing like "us" by any name appears on either list. Even those who have no intention of ever applying for a SSHRC grant, or of supervising graduate students who do, would benefit from greater visibility for our field. Recognition of this type tends to trickle down from SSHRC to other levels of the academy and would potentially benefit people working everywhere from graduate programs to writing centres.

At last week's meeting of CASLL (the Canadian Society for the Study of Language and Learning, aka Inkshed), I put this matter on the table, and was rewarded by being acclaimed as unofficial ringleader and gadfly for a visibility project in Canada.  Jennifer Clary-lemon at the U of Winnipeg has made a start on this, and notes that SSHRC is planning a reorganization of these categories in the coming year. This gives us a window of opportunity until November at the latest, during which a proposal to add us somewhere might have a good chance.

PROPOSED ACTION PLAN

As unofficial and un-authoritative spokesperson (my virtual of being the one to open my mouth), I suggest the following steps.

1. Alert interested stakeholders in CASDW, CASLL, CSSR and CWCR, which seem to me the national organizations most likely to be interested. That's what I'm doing now. (Members, please feel free to spin this off to others who might not be represented on one or more organizations).

2. Find out more about exactly what we might have to do to put a proposal together. I am starting this fact-finding process with my local university SSHRC rep.

3. Start a discussion about what we might want to call this research area. The US folks used rhetoric/composition/writing studies, but in Canada we could probably leave out composition, and might want to add Discourse Studies. The suggestion from Winnipeg is to add ourselves to Group 26, which currently includes Communication Studies, Cultural Studies and Women's Studies. This is not a perfect spot but perhaps better than any of the alternatives. Given our size, we might be better positioned to add ourselves to an existing classification rather than try to start a new one, but that's up for discussion.

4. Once we've gone through the initial discussions, and found out more about what such a proposal might look like, perhaps we can get representatives from the four organizations to make up a small committee to wordsmith a proposal.

5. Lobby SSHRC representatives from our various institutions to at least alert them to what we are doing and to lay a groundwork of support. Your respective research offices can probably tell you who to talk to.

Please give me your comments on this project. Given the shortness of the window, we should start these discussions right away.

Cheers

Doug
--

Dr. Doug Brent
Social Sciences 312

University of Calgary
Department of Communication and Culture

2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4
Voice: (403) 220-5458 Fax: (403) 210-8138
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent

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