Storify from 2014 CCCC

Angela Davis, Featured Session, Award Winners, and More
Big props to 2014 CCCC chair Dr. Adam Banks for putting on the best Cs since I've been attending, and since others been attending from what I hear. It was a conference of inspiration, creativity, critical insight, collaboration, redefining, and learning about the profession and others.

                                                      (Angela Davis and I)

                                                 

                                                       (NCTE Latin@ Caucus)

College Composition and Communication Confernce 2014

...is coming!!!
Below is just the top 2 of 3 presentations and chairing of panels on my schedule, not to mention the caucus workshop and meeting for which I've yet to register. Also, I will be at the NCTE/CCCC Welcome Desk for all of the first-time attendees!

If you follow the hashtag #4C14, I have also volunteered to document sessions by posting pictures and tweeting from sessions. Other attendees of this year's Cs will also be tweeting from Indiana, where the theme of the conference is Open Source(s), Access, Futures, chaired by Adam Banks at the University of Kentucky.

Check out my semi-complete schedule here:
http://center.uoregon.edu/NCTE/2014CCCC/program/search_results.php?text_search_value=medina+cruz&text_search_bool=AND&orderby=DATE&Search=Search

Or, search the program here: http://center.uoregon.edu/NCTE/2014CCCC/program/program_search.php

It's Never Too Early...

...To Think About CCCC 2013
Regarding CCCC 2013, I got this postcard/flyer in my email that I thought I'd post. Hope to see y'all in Las Vegas, where 'what happens while we're there' becomes experiential knowledge when made sense of and mediated through narration, ha!

This may sound like a silly title and subtitle, however, I have actually been giving serious thought to my CCCC presentation, tweaking a digital story to go along with my written presentation. Fortunately, the digital storytelling I'm experimenting with stems from a small-scope narrative coming out in the Sept 2013 Special Issue of CCC on the profession, so the narrative is not from whole-cloth.

Still, the piece is personal narrative, so there are rhetorical considerations as to how much I want to express, and the genre of digital storytelling adds the additional questions of modality in terms of which media do I want to employ to communicate my message. One of the major advantages of the genre that I've noted from my research is the ability to add voice to narratives that are traditionally silenced, although there is something bare and exposed about recording voice to accompanying images.

Tis the Season for Conferences

March Madness

It might only be the beginning of February, but I'm gearing up for March.

I mentioned the international conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society I attended at UCLA in January and that was only the beginning of the presentation pandemonium to come. Somehow, I managed to submit to conference convening primarily in March.

First off, I'm off to San Marcos, Texas where I was a predoctoral fellow. There, I'll be presenting as a part of the Tejas Foco of the National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies Tejas Regional Conference. 

As in the image above, I will then be in St. Louis, Missouri from March 21-24 for the 2012 CCCC. As a past CCCC Scholar for the Dream, I always look forward to attending the ceremonies along with this years scholars--one of the PhD students I peer-mentor is one of this year's award recipients. Not to mention all of the great NCTE Latina/o Caucus workshop/meetings.

Rounding out March, I'm heading to UCSD for the  2012 Cultural Studies Association Conference, themed CULTURE MATTERS from March 28 through April 1. 

I'm getting tired just thinking about all of the travel, but I think these conferences reflect the intersections of my research interests and will charge my scholarly battery with great presentations and discussion.

Crossing boundaries and speaking in foreign tongues like a pochteca...

Interview with fellow Scholar for the Dream

Amazing Experience
Just got back from 2010 Cs and have had a moment to reflect, and I feel like this year's Cs was a really amazing experience. Presenting for the first time, and of course winning a Scholar for the Dream award contributed immensely because it allowed me to meet so many other great scholars.
Below, I'm embedding an interview that Dr. Carlos Salinas conducted with Fernando Febres about his award winning presentation, in partnership with Memorial Award winner Jota Samper, based around the community outreach concept of placing libraries in violent neighborhoods as a means of deterring crime.