Dear colleagues,
The 2026 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) invites scholars to contribute what “matters to you most” through conversation and collaboration. In that spirit, we would like to facilitate a roundtable discussion on developing and/or expanding the horizons of how we teach established research genres in the first-year composition classrooms.
We invite scholars, especially graduate students currently teaching first-year writing, who have theorized or enacted innovative teaching practices to engage students in connecting more to their research processes.
Research writing is a vital exploratory tool for students to delve deeper into important topics/issues and offer a chance to think through their writing. However, students rarely choose and/or assign topics/issues that impact their everyday lives and surroundings.
Some questions we are interested in exploring are:
- What is the purpose of research? What do we want students to do/learn within the research process?
- How can we encourage a process of research rather than a product?
- What is the role of research in students’ everyday lives?
- How do we make research writing an embodied process for students?
- To what extent do the established research genres, such as rhetorical analyses, syntheses, commentaries, etc., offer ways for students to think through their writing processes?
- How can we create and/or advance better assignment descriptions or prompts to improve student engagement with research writing?
- How do we help students explore ideas and think through their research processes?
If you are currently working on something that engages with one or more of the questions above or any related theme, and if you are interested to share your ideas with us or learn from other colleagues from your scholarly research/teaching area please respond to this CFP with a 200-300-word abstract/summary and a brief list of questions that you would want to explore at the roundtable by May 12, 2025.
Email submissions or any questions to Alexandra Rowe (alexandra.rowe.1).
Sincerely,
Mafruha Shifat and Alexandra Rowe
Best regards,
MAFRUHA SHIFAT
She/Her/Hers
Graduate Student (MA) and First-Year Writing Instructor
Department of English, North Dakota State University
Office: Minard 318E2, P.O. Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA
Email: Mafruha.shifat