User:Guitarhorn/sandbox

== Conference and conference history ==

The conference "Computers and Writing" was established in 1982 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Donald Ross and Lillian Bridwell. The conference was informal at first, but over the years, it has grown from a grassroots organized conference to an established, mainstream conference that examines the ways in which computers change writing practice and pedagogy. In earlier conferences, the scholarship presented often explored how computers influenced individual writers, but during the late 1980's and 1990's, scholarship shifted to hypertext and hypermedia, and therefore, the social nature of computer mediated writing. The conference originally presented original or "homemade" software design associated with word processing and editing, but eventually switched to commercial software as commercial software became more common for both individual students and educational institutions.

The conference has a history of technological optimism, and often, scholarship presented is optimistic regarding technology's influence on writing. However, the conference also has a history of examining and voicing fears and concerns related to computer technology, and some of these fears are related to institutional policies and control as well as the fear of being overwhelmed by the constant march of technological innovation. The conference has also traditionally explored the ways in which computer mediated writing can be used in socially responsible ways, as is evident by the feminist roots of the conference and subfield. While the conference was originally more concerned software and hardware decisions and use, the conference has steadily become more concerned with the theoretical application of computers in writing pedagogy and practice. This attention to theory mirrors a shift to embrace multimodal compositions as texts and interdisciplinary growth as the conference became more mainstream and established in the 1990's and early 2000's.

The conference has been held annually since 1988, which is the year that the CCCC Committee on Computers established a subcommittee to support the Computers and Writing Conference. While the journal Computers and Composition, founded by Cynthia Selfe and Kate Kiefer in 1983, is not officially connected to the Computers and Writing Conference, both began around the same time and explore the subfield within the larger fields of composition studies and rhetoric.