History

A WPA-NMA (Council of Writing Program Administrators-Network for Media Action) project, NCoW began as a series of conversations about who writes, for what purposes, and what they produce—conversations that run counter to many of the ways writing and writing instruction and students are portrayed in the media and in public policy. NCoW concept formed by Dominic DelliCarpini (York College of Pennsylvania), in collaboration with Linda Adler-Kassner (Eastern Michigan University) and in consultation with the NMA Steering Committee.

November 2006-February 2007:

Linda Adler-Kassner, Dominic DelliCarpini, and Pete Vandenberg, and Darsie Bowden (DePaul University) began collecting interviews for NCoW’s inagural project Who is a Writer? (What Writers Tell Us)—solicited via invitations on the WPA-listserv, the NMA listserv, and at the CCC and WPA annual conferences. Vandenberg and Bowden developed contributions from 25 different filmmakers across the country into the 18-minute film Who is a Writer?—available at www.comppile.com/NCoW.

March 2007:

Preliminary version of the film show at CCCC 2007 (NYC)

July 2007:

Revised version shown at the WPA annual conference (Mesa, AZ)

November 2007:

Final version shown at NCTE 2007 (NYC), along with the first five minutes of six other video contributions (Bonnie Kyburz’s “remove to dispense,” Steve Krause’s “Celebration of Student Writing: The Move 2.0,” Colin and Jonikka Charleton’s “dis-integrating composition,” Shannon Carter’s “Standardized,” Dominic Delli Carpini’s “What They Bring with Them to College: High School Students’ Attitudes toward Writing,” and Bump Halbritter’s “LiteracyCorps Michigan”).

November 2007 (NCTE, NYC):

Second phase of NCoW launched with NCoW website, soliciting contributions from community members and academics from across the country (site designed by Dominic Delli Carpini and Glenn Blalock and implemented by Glenn Blalock)

April 2008:

National Writing Project partners with NCoW, promoting contributions to the National Conversation on Writing as a techer inquiry project available to NWP participants across the country. A letter from NCoW (via Adler-Kassner and Carpini) is sent to each NWP site director, along with copies of the NCoW inaugural video and NCoW calendars.

May 2008:

Memorandum of Understanding with all the requisite signatures establishes Texas A&M-Commerce as the institutional home for NCoW, from July 2008 to July 2011. The new agreement is between WPA-NMA, the A&M-Commerce Department of Literature and Languages (providing a dedicated research assistant and faculty oversight) and Gee Library (providing a dedicated Digital Collections Librarian, expertise, and database management via CONTENTdm)

July 2008:

NCoW Steering Committee forms; current infrastructure and plans for 2008-2009 discussed at various meetings (WPA 2008, Denver, CO)

November 2008:

Video contributions shown and contributions solicited at NCTE and the National Writing Project conferences in San Antonio, Texas (with Dominic DelliCarpini, Shannon Carter, Donna Dunbar-Odom, Greg Mitchell, Glenn Blalock, and Stephanie Roach).