Call for Papers

“U.S congresswoman Barbara Jordan electrified audiences with her distinct oratory style, a style she admitted was learned during her years on the Texas Southern University debate team.” Ronald Goodwin, African Americans of Houston.

Since the ancient Greeks first taught rhetoric and argumentation as the cornerstone of a liberal education, speech and debate have been viewed as education for citizenship. In recent years, however, many speech and debate programs have lost sight of their connections to civic education, and programs across the country have been downsized or eliminated altogether. This conference is centered on chronicling, theorizing, and illustrating the connections between debate and educating for citizenship in the past, present, and future. We welcome completed papers and extended abstracts addressing all aspects of the relationship between curricular or co-curricular speech and debate and civic education, including but not limited to:

• The history of curricular and co-curricular speech and debate in all forms
• Speech and debate in the classroom and across the curriculum
• Co-curricular debate and forensics as education for citizenship
• Alternative forms of co-curricular speech and debate and their relationship to civic education
• Current and future problems and possibilities for innovation in speech and debate education

We encourage submissions from coaches or participants in any form of collegiate debate and forensics (NDT/CEDA, NFA-LD, APDA, NPDA, etc.), as well as from program administrators and educators from any discipline with an interest in speech or debate as civic education.

Submissions:

We invite completed papers and extended abstracts addressing any aspect of the history, theory, or practice of speech and debate as civic education. Submissions should follow the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition), with all text, including notes, double-spaced with one-inch margins in Times New Roman 12-point font. All files should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document (doc or docx).

• Completed papers should include a 200-250 word abstract and should not exceed 25 pages, excluding notes and references.
• Extended abstracts should be substantial enough (at least 500 words) to indicate the scope, structure, and major arguments of the proposed paper.

Please submit electronic versions of abstracts and completed papers to J. Kurr at debate@psu.edu and include “Civic Education Conference Submission – (Last Name)” in the subject line of the e-mail. Notifications of acceptance for the conference will be made by November 14, 2014.

The deadline for submissions is Monday, October 20, 2014.

Presentation Guidelines:

Accepted submissions will be organized into ninety-minute panels with four oral presentations. Each presentation should last no more than 15 minutes, with the remainder of time devoted to discussion and questions from the audience. Please indicate on your submission if you will need A/V equipment for your presentation.

Conference Volume:

Papers presented at the conference will be considered for an edited volume on Speech and Debate as Civic Education, which will be considered for publication in the Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation series at the Penn State University Press. To be considered for the volume completed papers must be submitted to the editors by September 1, 2015. Papers should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) and be submitted as a Word document (doc or docx).

Conference Planning and Editorial Committee:

J. Michael Hogan (jmh32@psu.edu)
J. Kurr (jak580@psu.edu)
Jeremy Johnson (jdj171@psu.edu)
Michael Bergmaier (mub229@psu.edu)