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Conference ProposalsFrom WPA-L exchange, April 09 The Midwest Writing Centers Association has model conference proposals on its Web site. Here is the URL: http://pages.usiouxfalls.edu/mwca/modelproposals/modelprops.htm From Doug Hesse: A couple weeks ago, Kelli Ritter invited me to jot a few thoughts for her graduate students on writing C’s proposals. I went back and cut/pasted from the email I sent her. From the heart of paragraph two on down is most pertinent here, I think. I can honestly tell your students that there’s no secret gaming to the CCCC system. Things are blindly reviewed and proportionately selected. Take the “what category to submit in,” for example. Chairs select the number for each category in proportion to the number of proposals. So, if there are 5 proposals in category A and 10 proposals in category B, then category B will have twice as many acceptances. Your percentages are the same in each case; 1 out of A and 2 out of B is 20% in each case. Now, in a category with very few submissions, particularly strong ones will stand out more, but I have some faith that that will be true of strong submissions regardless of numbers. Having said that, reviewers miss things. Each year some very fine people (even very famous) don’t make it through the review system; occasionally they deserve it, occasionally not. Likewise, most chairs assign a certain percentage of slots to “full panel” proposals and a certain percentage to “individual” proposals, though this is less prescribed. It’s certainly true that full panels are “easier” to deal with. They come prefabbed and are either accepted or rejected—in toto, regardless of the brilliance of Speaker 2. Individual proposals are first judged and selected, then assembled into panels by eight or so “stage 2 readers” who meet in the summer at NCTE headquarters for this purpose and to choose the workshops. Still, every program chair saves a good percentage of the slots for individual proposals, and every chair makes an accepted proposal fit on some panel, no matter how creative they have to be in devising an umbrella to cover all the talks. If you are proposing an entire panel, make sure you have a panel’s worth of ideas. Bad: “This panel will talk about the comma. Speaker 1 will describe the comma. Speaker 2 will describe what is not a comma. Speaker 3 will reflect on the comma.” This seems like padding. What matters, bluntly, is the quality of the proposal: the quality of the writing, the centrality of the topic, the glint of innovation, the confidence the proposal inspires in the Speaker and her/his promise. A proposal along the lines of “Here’s how we do things at my school” goes to the bottom of the pile unless it’s clearly just a brief preamble to the vital, “which I offer to illustrate the broader theory of/practice of/rationale for X, which is of true importance to the profession in several ways.” Revise the first sentence or the first two sentences at least 10 times until they gleam. (I say first two sentences in case your strategy is, “Many people think Y about X. This presentation will elaborate/contest/complicate Y.”) Speak in terms of conclusions, not topics. The whole proposal should be defending a specific thesis, not announcing a topical area and speculating that 10 months from now you’ll have something to say about it. Do enough work that you can state a claim now. Bad: “This paper will explore the complex roles that adjunct faculty inhabit.” Better: “This paper will explain how adjuncts are simultaneously prophets and pariahs, sinners and saints.” (Well, maybe not that much better.) Promise something worth delivering—not so much that you can’t deliver it, but enough that a reader is confident that you’ll have goods to deliver. Locate your talk in relation to a key article or book or two. Don’t write an annotated bib or get lost in trying to summarize a dozen scholars, but, again, give the readers confidence that your talk will address knowledgable readers—namely them!--and not waste their time plowing old ground. Then deliver on that confidence. Unless the point of your proposal concerns the subject position of being a graduate student, don’t announce your novice status. That just gives people reason to bump you in favor of that assistant professor who needs tenure or the wise sounding proposal that sounds like the Voice of Experience and Authority. Near the end of the proposal, take a couple of sentences to outline the talk, being very specific. “The presentation will spend 5 minutes talking about the methods of my study, 5 minutes explaining results, and 10 minutes discussing implications and applications. I will provide a detailed two-page handout of findings, both to clarify things for the audience and to inform questions and comments during the discussion.” Or, “I will make four points: A, B, C, and D.”
As much time as you spend burnishing your first sentence or two, spend at least that much on the title. Titles that don’t have colons actually stand out. They show reviewers that someone has actually polished their idea enough to state it in one clause or phrase. You might imagine that you are the only clever person to have thought about this particular play on words re: the conference theme. You aren’t. Which is not to say don’t try to
address the theme if your topic suits. Just don’t gymnastically knot yourself. I’m sure there’s more, but then I’d just get avuncular and/or crotchety. Doug From Chuck Bazerman: Becky [Rickly] was probably drawing on a brainstorming debrief of stage 2 reviewers a couple of years ago. We intended to make a short advice article our of it, and we still will. No excuses except: well, committees. Anyway here are some of the key points, organized only in brainstorming order, to share around. Generic Observations from Reading Proposals:
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