CFP: Wellbeing & Writing Across the Curriculum

Greetings!

We are excited to announce a call for submissions for an edited collection centered on wellbeing and writing across the curriculum. Specifically, we are looking for proposals that “explore the integration of wellbeing across the curriculum that utilizes writing as a primary method in empirical, theoretical, organizational, and pedagogical work.” We encourage projects that are multi-genre, multi-voiced, research-based, pedagogical and/or vignette-style.

Proposals are due by October 1, 2024 to https://tinyurl.com/wellbeingandwac

Acceptances will go out by December 1, 2024.

Questions or queries can be sent to wellbeing.wac

Please find the full CFP both below and attached for your convenience.

We look forward to receiving your proposals!

Sincerely,

Stacey Cochran, University of Arizona

Kara Taczak, University of Central Florida
Kimberly Adilia Helmer, University of California, Santa Cruz

Susan Miller-Cochran, University of Arizona

Tracy Ann Morse, East Carolina University

Call for Proposals: Wellbeing and Writing across the Curriculum

Growing attention to mental health and socioemotional learning in higher education, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, have heightened awareness among scholars and teachers of writing regarding the connection between writing and wellbeing.1 However, colleges continue to struggle with what wellbeing means for administrators, faculty, and students and how to draw on the full resources across campuses to support wellbeing. Approaches to address the various aspects of wellbeing have been discussed and promoted in workshops and speaker series, but developing a healthy relationship between work/school-life and wellbeing continues to be evasive to many. This collection delves more deeply into wellbeing by seeking administrators, faculty, and students from across the curriculum to submit proposals that explore wellbeing through writing on college campuses and the ways in which wellbeing may be developed and promoted inside higher education and for various audiences using writing. To do this, we invite writers to examine all aspects of wellbeing—from the cognitive to the emotional, from the creative to the critical, from the social to the communal, from the physical to the financial, from the accessible to the difficult—in hopes to publicize the need for a cultural change in perspective to prioritize wellbeing in writing studies and U.S. education writ large. More specifically, we encourage proposals that explore the integration of wellbeing across the curriculum that utilizes writing as a primary method in empirical, theoretical, organizational, and pedagogical work.

Background

Writing has long been used across the curriculum to help students better prepare for workplace writing, to conduct research projects, and to learn more about themselves as learners. Yet, however, few, if any, organizational policy or consensus statements have been written to prioritize wellbeing in the teaching of writing. Faculty members engage in various forms of writing to develop instructional materials, conceptualize research initiatives, document their work, and fulfill administrative and service obligations. Writing can also be used as a tool for expression, reflection, optimal mental functioning, and healing. From journaling to creative writing, from academic research to writing practices that strengthen social and emotional health, we know that writing can encourage growth and evolution through self-discovery and mindfulness. All of this starts to help students and faculty engage with wellbeing practices.

This call aims to better understand how writing can be used to improve wellbeing across contexts, experiences, and audiences while collectively moving us to a clearer definition of wellbeing and writing across the curriculum.

Objectives

We encourage projects that are multi-genre, multi-voiced, research-based, pedagogical and/or vignettes. We aim to support projects that:

Investigate impacts (critically or supportively) of wellbeing and writing across the curriculum
Develop innovative writing methodologies to operationalize established theories of wellbeing
Explore impacts of writing on cognitive, physical, social, and emotional health
Integrate writing practices into educational, clinical, and community settings
Foster interdisciplinary collaboration in response to writing and wellbeing
Address the impact of educational policy statements that include or (too often) don’t include wellbeing

Possible areas of focus may be:

Practices of Wellbeing: Experiences from Within and Across the Curriculum
Mindful Administration and Leadership
Policies that Support Wellbeing and Inform Learning Outcomes
Wellbeing as an Area of Learning in Writing Studies
Mindful Praxis
Wellbeing and Writing with Classroom Practices
Creative Writing and Wellbeing
Writing for Physical Health

Wellbeing and Social Justice
Writing into Mindfulness
Writing to Strengthen Social and Emotional Health
Community-Based Wellbeing and Writing
Wellbeing and Writing in Teacher Education
Wellbeing and Writing in Graduate Education
Other related topics

Please submit proposals that include names and email addresses of authors, a title, a 50-word brief proposal version, and a no more than 400-word proposal in a Word document or pdf to https://tinyurl.com/wellbeingandwac.

Note about Proposal File Names: please name proposal files using the following convention: Last Name of Corresponding Author_Shortened Version of Title (i.e. Taczak_My Article Title.pdf)

For queries, feel free to contact the editors at wellbeing.wac. Additionally, the editorial team is committed to a transparent, humane review process that draws from the Anti-racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices guidelines.

Timeline

Proposals Due: October 1, 2024 to https://tinyurl.com/wellbeingandwac
Invitations for manuscripts sent out: December 1, 2024
Initial Drafts: February 2, 2025
Feedback from Editors on Initial Drafts: April 7, 2025
Revisions Due: June 1, 2025

Editors