Community Literacy Journal

Call for Proposals: Texts of Consequence: Composing Rhetorics of Social Activism for the Writing Classroom. Edited by Christopher Wilkey and Nicholas Mauriello.

Published as part of the Hampton Press series on Research and Teaching in Rhetoric and Composition.

More and more students from across the country are using writing to promote a more just and democratic society. Consider the 2008 Presidential Election. Student activists from across the political spectrum are blogging and using social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to organize and write a variety of arguments designed to call attention to the most pressing civic issues of the day. These students are already excited about using writing and multimedia technologies to make a difference in the world. Many students clearly want to influence how politics is enacted during this current electoral season, but what kind of impact might student activist writers actually have on the political process? For those student writers who have yet to engage in activist work, what rhetorical tools can be made available to them as they transition into the public arena? Given our discipline’s strong interest in writing as a social activity, we are especially suited to inquire into the ways in which writing might intersect with the demands and objectives of student activism.
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