Collaborative Writing in Virtual Workplaces: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Tools
A book edited by Dr. Beth L. Hewett and Dr. Charlotte A. Robidoux
University Maryland, UC
Hewlett-Packard Company

Deadline for submission: November 30, 2008

Introduction

Collaborative writing, a process that has often occurred both asynchronously by sharing a document, as well as synchronously in face-to-face or telephone settings, increasingly occurs in virtual settings. When authors write virtually, their processes are distributed across geographic locations, but also within the co-located space of an office or institutional setting. Unlike traditional document sharing and face-to-face or telephone interactions, virtual writing requires participants to communicate using computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies, which include everything from instant messaging and email to interactions that take place via web pages and webcasts and through the use of graphical user interfaces. This book will investigate the use of CMC technology to facilitate effective interdependent collaboration in writing projects, especially in virtual workplace settings.

Special Issue: Games as Transformative Works
Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 2 (Spring 2009)
Guest Editor: Rebecca Carlson

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2008

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) invites essays on gaming and gaming culture as transformative work. We are interested in game studies in all its theoretical and practical breadth, but even more so in the way fan culture shapes itself around and through gaming interfaces. Potential topics include but are not limited to game audiences as fan cultures; anthropological approaches to game design and game engagement; on- and off-line game experiences; textual and cultural analysis of games; fan appropriations and manipulations of games; and intersections between games and other fan artifacts.

June 22–25, 2009
University of Maryland

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2008

From the CFP:

The international Programme Committee invites submissions of abstracts of between 750 and 1500 words on any aspect of digital humanities, broadly defined to encompass the common ground between information technology and problems in humanities research and teaching. As always, we welcome submissions in any area of the humanities, particularly interdisciplinary work. We especially encourage submissions on the current state of the art in digital humanities, and on recent new developments and expected future developments in the field.

June 18-21, 2009
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri

Deadline for submission: January 15, 2009

From the CFP:

“Ecology”: a word derived from the Greek words meaning “household knowledge.” For the 2009 MEA convention, we seek papers on any aspect of media ecology. Special interest in the places and spaces of media interactions: Silicon Valley or St. Louis; screen, studio, library, or street. Does place matter? Local systems, larger systems, and changing relationships in the ecology of media. The role(s) of media in different ecological systems. The changing geography of media: Why do some forms emerge and others recede? The ethics of (not) setting boundaries. Living in information systems: Are we the center, the web, the flaneur? What is the I in the culture of iPods, iPhones, and iGames? Because the 2009 MEA Convention will meet at Saint Louis University, where Walter J. Ong was a faculty member, papers on any aspect of his work are especially welcome.

Competition Theme: Participatory Learning

Application Deadline: 5 pm PDT/8 pm EDT, October 15, 2008

From the proposal description:

Drawing upon the innovative winning projects from the first Digital Media and Learning Competition, the theme for this year’s Competition is Participatory Learning. There are two award categories: Innovation in Participatory Learning and Young Innovators. All proposals submitted to the Digital Media and Learning Competition, in either category, should be for support of digital projects that engage participatory learning in an integral way.

Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. Participatory learners come together to aggregate their ideas and experiences in a way that makes the whole ultimately greater than the sum of the parts.

Posthuman Rhetorics and Technical Communication
Special Issue of Technical Communication Quarterly (Winter 2010)

Deadline for proposals: July 17, 2008

Guest editors: Andrew Mara, North Dakota State University, and Byron Hawk, George Mason University

According to N. Katherine Hayles, we have always been posthuman. Ever since the first social organization, the first use of fire, and the first development of language, humans have lived in and with systems. Even before its emergence as an academic field, professional and technical writers had been writing and living in organizational systems. Even when the profession is imagined as an isolated endeavor or end-of-the-process set of tasks, technical writers still must operate in larger, complex rhetorical situations. Many theorists have been trying to come to grips with this kind of situatedness from Michel Foucault's attempts to develop an archeological method to understand the human sciences to Bruno Latour's development of actor-network-theory to understand science's place within a complex social order. Professional and technical communication's emergence as a discipline has been marked by similar attempts to identify and articulate these systems perspectives. From Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" to Clay Spinuzzi's Tracing Genres through Organizations, the field has been trying to come to grips with the complex, and increasingly automated, systems a writer, text, and reader encounter, affect, and live in.

Visual Reasoning and Knowledge

Deadline for submission: February 28, 2009

Knowledge Engineering Review (a journal normally dedicated to the development of the field of artificial intelligence), plans a special issue on visual reasoning and knowledge. The topic is to be understood broadly. We welcome papers covering pictures, diagrams, thought experiments, etc. that connect to some form of reasoning (as opposed to mere illustration). And we welcome a broad range of approaches: philosophical, historical, anthropological, psychological, computational, and so on. Papers should be of interest and intelligible to a broad audience, including: working scientists and mathematicians, philosophers and historians of science, anthropologists, sociologists, and cognitive scientists.