Midwest Winter Workshop

We are pleased to announce that the 4th annual Midwest Winter Workshop will occur January 17, 2009 at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. This workshop was originally developed through graduate student collaboration at Indiana University and Illinois. Over the past four years the workshop has brought together graduate students and top faculty from participating universities to share ideas, explore timely problematics, and assist graduate students at all levels of the research and writing process. We hope you will join us in Minneapolis for this year’s workshop.

Our theme for this workshop is “Critical Cultural Connections.” This theme recognizes the common work between participating universities in critical cultural studies from rhetorical, media and other areas of communication studies. We hope the workshop will provide a space to explore the common critical orientation of our work and to consider new articulations of critical practice.

The workshop this year will consist of an opening plenary, simultaneous faculty break-out panels, and graduate student workshops. We cordially invite you to participate in the graduate student workshop. During this time, 2 faculty members will workshop 3-5 student papers. The goal of the workshop is to take papers to the next level: from seminar papers to conference submissions, conference papers to publication, etc. Students will submit papers 1 month in advance of the workshop allowing adequate time for thorough review.

We feel that this workshop is an imperfect but extremely useful process and we try to make things as financially accessible as possible. Unlike many other conferences, there is no registration fee for this workshop. At the University of Minnesota, our ambition is to host graduate students with other graduate students in order to avoid the usual costs of attending out of town conventions. Don’t forget your sleeping bags!

Please consider joining us in the beautiful Twin Cities!

Deadlines:
November 15, 2007—Please notify us regarding your intent to participate with a title and brief abstract (100-200 words). Send notification to Amy Pason (pason001@umn.edu).
December 31, 2007—Please send us a draft of the paper you would like to workshop. The paper may be at any level development but should at least include enough text for the faculty to get a strong sense of the argument and to make helpful suggestions for improvement. Please try and keep these drafts under 25 pages in length.

We look forward to seeing you in Minneapolis. Please contact Amy Pason
(pason001@umn.edu) with any questions or to RSVP. Don’t forget to pack warm clothes!