A College Conference on Composition and Communication (CCCC) Half-Day Workshop

Proposal:

Writing Democracy 2012: Envisioning a Federal Writers’ Project for the 21st Century

After the crash in 2008, numerous journalists, activists, educators, and arts advocates floated the
idea of a new Federal Writers’ Project. Although it became clear by late 2009 that President
Obama’s stimulus package would not fund such a project, it continued to seem like a powerful
idea that contributed to the organization of a conference—Writing Democracy: A Rhetoric of
(T)here—in March 2011 at Texas A&M-Commerce, an event spurred by an informal meeting at
CCCC 2010 and further developed during a brief follow-up meeting CCCC 2011. The primary
goal of this CCCC Workshop is to extend the conversation that began in Commerce and to
further examine the possibilities for creating a national network that could link existing local
projects and give rise to new ones. Just as the FWP vigorously debated its purpose, methods, and
goals in the 1930s, we invite participants to join us for a lively discussion about how together we
might provide a new “road map for the cultural rediscovery of America” in the 21st century (19,
Overmyer qtd. in Hirsch).

Over 150 scholars, students, and community members convened in Commerce to explore existing
and possible ways of “writing democracy” in the United States. Conference participants looked at
place, history, local publics, and popular movements in an attempt to understand and promote
democracy through research, writing, and action. Seventy-five years ago during the Great
Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project engaged in creating “a new roadmap for the cultural
rediscovery of America” via state and local guidebooks, oral history interviews, and research on
folklore. Today, college writing programs, service-learning programs, and scholars across the
disciplines are engaging in university-community partnerships that are already embarked on a
roadmap for rediscovering 21st century America. It is precisely this already existing infrastructure
that suggests the direction such a project might take, learning from the still emerging history of
the FWP how we might harness the enormous potential of college students and faculty to enact
what Ernest Boyer calls the “scholarship of engagement” in local communities and contribute to
telling a people’s history of the U.S. in the rapidly unfolding new realities of the 21st century.

Two weeks before workshop event, local projects from across the country will be made available
to participants at writingdemocracy.org. Through this portal, workshop discussion leaders
facilitate on online discussion regarding a wide range of contemporary, local projects across the
country, with the aim of analyzing their commonalities and differences and drawing conclusions
about the ways such projects might form the basis of FWP 2.0. From these, workshop
“respondents” (listed below) will develop remarks to share in Part II of half-day workshop (see
below).

The first part of the proposed workshop itself will feature a presentation by a historian (Jerold
Hirsch, Truman State University) who will set the current initiative in the historical context of the
FWP’s achievements and impediments in the 1930s. Following this historical overview,
workshop organizers will present a video montage of contemporary local projects and
representatives associated with then will share some brief remarks.

The second part of the workshop, invited Respondents will offer 5-10 minute prepared remarks in
response to local projects featured at writingdemocracy.org within a broader context, setting the
stage to develop a productive plan for FWP 2.0, utilizing the interactive, collaborative, user-
generated capacities of the Web to collect, curate, disseminate, and archive multimodal writing
about communities, places, and ordinary people that might be to future generations what the FWP
State Guides and oral histories are to contemporary scholars.
The second part of the Presenters and respondents will then facilitate small group discussions
among participants about existing and possible projects in other locales. The third part of the
Workshop will consist of a plenary on the mission, structure, and goals of Writing Democracy
and FWP 2.0.

In preparation for the plenary, small groups will discuss methods, theories, goals, and outcomes
of university-community projects, extrapolating best pedagogical, rhetorical, and research
practices and identifying key themes. Note takers will report back to the full group and these
notes will be used to draft a mission statement. The mission statement will then form the basis for
a concluding discussion about building the Writing Democracy network, envisioning FWP 2.0,
and generating new questions about the potential for linking existing and future projects in a
network across disciplinary, geographical, and social gateways.

Framing Questions:

 What pedagogical methods best support university-community projects? Are the goals of
such projects compatible with the goals of college writing instruction? How are learning
outcomes assessed, and do they meet curricular goals? At what levels?

 What outreach and collaborative methods best support partnerships with communities?
How do academic partners meet the needs of community partners and participants? How
are outcomes for communities assessed, and do projects contribute to local needs,
interests, and/or wellbeing?

 In what ways are university-community partnerships contributing to creative projects and

scholarly research and writing? To historical archives? To deepening and expanding our
knowledge of everyday life in the 21st century? How does the “scholarship of
engagement” enhance institutional commitments to community engagement?

 How can Writing Democracy/FWP 2.0 create a national—or even an international—

network of local projects (guides, ethnographic studies, oral histories, multimodal
essays)? What resources and support will be needed to sustain such an effort?

Through these framing questions, each project will contribute to the formation of an overarching
set of methods, goals, and practices, at the same time uncovering assumptions and generating new
questions about existing and possible projects, including their strengths, weaknesses, tensions,
and their impact on students, faculty, community participants, and the general public. During the
CCCC session, we will use this knowledge from the field of already existing local literacy, oral
history, place-based writing, deliberative democracy, and other university-community
partnerships to envision a network of such projects that might replicate and go beyond the
achievements of the Federal Writers’ Project seventy-five years ago.

Half-Day Session Schedule:

1:30-1:45 Welcome and Introductions

1:45-2:30 “Historical Context of the FWP” (Invited FWP Historian)

Local Projects: Here and There (including Small Group Discussions)

2:30-3:30 “FWP 2.0: Writing Democracy in the 21st Century” (Respondents)

3:30-3:45 Break
3:45-5:00 Plenary: Mission Statement and Next Steps (Small Group Discussions,
followed by Report to Large Group)