Via TechRhet and the Coalition of Women Scholars listserv:

Call for Essay Proposals

For a proposed collection tentatively titled: Stories of Mentoring

Edited by:
Michelle F. Eble (East Carolina University) and Lynée Lewis Gaillet (Georgia State
University)

In the last several decades, mentoring has evolved from a concern for "graduate
students' ability to research, write, and publish" in order to secure a job after
graduation to an emphasis on professional development through formal and informal
mentoring programs that focus on teaching, research, and/or administration (Ebest,
"Mentoring: Past, Present, and Future," Preparing College Teachers of Writing:
Histories, Theories, Programs, Practices, 214). Scholarship within English Studies
(and particularly in rhetoric and composition) pays homage to mentoring
relationships and programs that prove to be mutually beneficial for graduate
students, new faculty, mentors, departments, and professional organizations alike.
Likewise, web sites from colleges and universities across the country boast
structured plans for mentoring graduate students and teaching assistants, and
increasingly colleges and universities establish and publicize their designs for
formally mentoring new faculty.

We are now seeking first-hand narratives and testimonials addressing mentoring
relationships, fuller discussions of mentor/mentoree responsibilities, and tales
from those involved in mentoring programs. In this collection, we hope to capture
some of the unique relationships resulting from what Janice Lauer labels an "ethics
of care," whereby a mentor "exhibits a willingness to nurture, to act in concrete
situations with emotional involvement, to make responsible moral decisions in
particular human relationships rather than on abstract principles, to step out of
one's personal frame of reference into the other's, to be present to the one
cared-for rather than to identify with one's possessions (scholarly possessions)--an
altruism constructive for the moral agent and the one cared-for" (Publishing in
Rhetoric and Composition, 234).

While we do not limit the scope and direction of proposed essays, we especially
welcome:

• co-authored pieces from mentors and their mentorees about their relationships.
• essays from those teachers/scholars who see mentoring as part of their academic
  appointment.
• stories from those who have been mentored and what that relationship has meant in
  their own careers as teachers/scholars.
• narratives describing (and perhaps critiquing) current mentoring programs within
  the discipline.

Proposals for essays should include: a 350-500 word abstract, a 100 word bio for
each author, and all necessary contact information (US and e-mail addresses). Essays
must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.

Please send proposals and contact information as Microsoft Word attachments to
either co-editor:

Lynée Lewis Gaillet: lgaillet@gsu.edu

Michelle F. Eble: eblem@mail.ecu.edu

Deadline for Proposals: February 1, 2005