Call for Proposals Please cross-post to relevant lists. Writing: Activity and Interactivity A Collection of Research and Theory Articles PROPOSALS DUE JANUARY 4, 1999 FULL ESSAYS DUE TWELVE MONTHS LATER (see end of post for details) Editors: Charles Bazerman and David Russell The importance of activity-oriented cultural, historical, and social approaches for understanding how and why people write, the form their writing takes, and the consequentiality of their texts is becoming generally evident. These approaches, inspired by Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Soviet activity theorists as well by more recent approaches to situated activity and situated cognition and structurational approaches to social organization, have raised a range of issues for understanding writing: human motive, social interaction and text form, production and circulation, the organization of human endeavors, the production and use of knowledge, the textual operations of social institutions, and consciousness developing in participation in these emergent socio-textual activities. We are soliciting new, previously unpublished essays that grow out of substantial empirical and theoretical research projects that will carry forward out understanding of how writing mediates human interaction, how writing itself is a form of activity, how writing is shaped in typified forms or genres and carries out localized action within these typified forms, and similar issues. We are interested in articles that address all levels of writing, including emergent writing impulses in young children, writing in all levels of schooling and professional training, professional and workplace writing, writing within play and leisure activities, writing mediating the different spheres of public and private activity, and writing in all media of production and dissemination, especially including electronic environments. While the scope of this collection will be much broader than the special issue of Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4 (1997) on The Activity of Writing/The Writing of Activity, that issue may suggest the length, focus, and weight of the articles we are looking for. In order to help us evaluate submissions we would like detailed proposals of five hundred to a thousand words clearly identifying the empirical basis, theoretical argument, and tentative conclusions of the proposed chapter. The deadline for proposals will be January 4, 1999. Completed manuscripts of around 8000 words will be due twelve months later in January 2000. Feel free to contact us with preliminary inquiries. Please submit proposals (in either paper or electronic form) to Charles Bazerman English Department University of California. Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA [log in to unmask] or David Russell English Department Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 50011 USA [log in to unmask]