[Air-L] CFP: The Transnational Movement of People and Information

[Catherine Vieira]

Call For Papers: Special Issue of Literacy in Composition Studies Title: The Transnational Movement of People and Information 
 
Guest Editors: Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Kate Vieira, Morris Young 
 



To be considered, please submit a 250-word abstract that discusses the proposed article to
the editors at kevieira at wisc.edu. The deadline for proposal submissions is March 14,
2014. 




 
The movement of people and information across national borders is rapid and
widespread. By some estimates, over 180 million people worldwide are currently living
outside the country of their birth, keeping in contact with homelands, forging new
migratory networks, and navigating new circumstances through writing. Literacy in
composition studies has begun to respond to this context through increased attention to
the global, the international, and the transnational. This special issue seeks to forward this
emerging area of interest. 




 
Often defined as a set of skills and resources, literacy has figured prominently in debates
about immigrants’ national integration. Some have called for migrants’ swift assimilation
through literacy, others have pointed to the value of migrants’ diverse literacy legacies,
and still others have examined how their literacies change in new national contexts. But if
we think of literacy more materially, as skills and resources made possible by the
technology of writing, it becomes clear that literacy plays a role in more than migrants’
incorporation within nations. It also shapes their movement among them. Writing can
facilitate transnational communication and network migration via the postal system and
Internet. And writing is a key tool in migration policy, as nation states use immigration
documents, such as visas and passports, to allow some migrants in and to keep others out.
Writing, in other words, is deeply imbricated both in transnational lived experiences and
in the infrastructures that govern transnational mobility. The central question this special
issue asks is how. 
 
We welcome articles that address these issues empirically, theoretically, and/or
rhetorically. Among the questions to be considered are the following: 
 
	 
How do migrants’ literacy practices change and persist across time and national
borders? 
 
	 
How does the transnational inhere in local literacies? 
 
	 
How do other semiotic practices interact with writing in transnational contexts? 
 
	 
How is literacy taught and learned transnationally? 
 
	 
How does writing itself move? 
 
	 
What are the implications of changing communication technologies, such as the post 
 
and the Internet, for transnational lives and literacies? 
 
	 
How does writing motivate, influence, or restrict the travels of people? 
 
	 
How have structural forces (such as governments, institutions, race, etc.) facilitated 
 
and/or discouraged literacy and immigration? 
 
	 
Which methodologies might glean productive inquiries into transnational literacies? 
 
Literacy in Composition Studies is a peer-reviewed venue for a broad range of
scholarship in literacy and writing studies. http://licsjournal.org. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Kate Vieira
Assistant Professor
English Department, Program in Composition and Rhetoric
University of Wisconsin, Madison
kevieira at wisc.edu