Call for Proposals: Individual Research Presentations for the Qualitative Research Network to be held Wednesday, April 2 from 1:30-5:00 p.m. at the 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication in New Orleans.

(PDF version)

Due date: October 15, 2007

Proposals for individual presentations for the Qualitative Research Network are now being accepted. This research network, which occurs annually at the CCCC, is offered for new and experienced qualitative researchers.

Keynote Address & Research Roundtables

During the first hour of the workshop, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Stone Sunstein, research collaborators and authors of Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research, will offer keynote addresses and lead a discussion focusing on field work (see biographies and abstracts below). Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater’s presentation will examine the importance of positionality in qualitative research, offering strategies for helping fieldworkers question their assumptions about including themselves in their data. Bonnie Stone Sunstein will discuss issues of manipulating the piles of data that researchers conducting fieldwork collect and create, and she will offer approaches for organizing the process.

The rest of the Qualitative Research Network will be organized in research roundtables where novice and experienced researchers will present work-in-progress for feedback. Experienced qualitative researchers will be on hand to offer suggestions and to lead the roundtable discussions. The goal of this annual workshop is to offer mentoring and support to qualitative researchers at all levels of experience and working in diverse areas of study within the college composition and communication community.

Presenters at the research roundtables may focus on specific concerns and/or broader issues related to qualitative research, and we encourage submissions from those at any stage of the research process (e.g., planning, data collecting, data analyzing, publishing). Each presenter will have twenty to thirty minutes for both presentation and feedback, which will necessitate that presenters offer concise and accessible summaries of their studies. After all submissions have been collected, the planning committee will provide presenters specific details about the format of the workshop.

Proposal Information

Please send via email a brief description (approximately 500 words) of your research proposal by October 15 to Heidi McKee (mckeeha@muohio.edu) and Seth Kahn (skahn@wcupa.edu), Co-Chairs, Qualitative Research Network.

Be sure to include a brief overview of the research project, the stage the project is in, and the questions/issues you wish to discuss with other researchers. Place your proposal in the body of the email and attach a file in rich text format (.rtf). Descriptions need not be exhaustive; we only ask that you provide a general overview of your study as well as a statement about the kinds of feedback you would like to receive. If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact us.

Presenters for research roundtables will be notified of their acceptance by October 29th.

(PDF version)