2025 Call for Submissions
Central States Communication Association
2025 Annual Conference
Widening the Scope
Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza
Cincinnati, Ohio
April 1 - 6, 2025
You are invited to submit competitive papers, panel discussions, and performance sessions for our 94th Annual Convention in Cincinnati, OH. Members are encouraged to reflect on the theme of “Widening the Scope”. In families, one of the best things individual members of the unit can do in the face of difficulty is to invite expertise into the family system from outside of it (such as seeing a therapist or consulting a close friend who might see situations and issues differently). Widening the scope of our natural thinking about our engagement in the communication discipline can bring forward unique insights and perspectives to understanding communication issues, concerns, and problems.
Often in academia we are encouraged to go deeper and be more and more specialized in a narrow area of expertise. This practice is helpful for having experts across the field who can advance communication research, teaching, and practice to address a variety of contemporary problems and issues. Equally important is the practice of recognizing that we are stronger as a discipline when we: widen the scope of our natural individual inquiry and understanding; invite lesser considered voices to the table; and engage in enhanced perspective-taking by exploring issues in teaching, research, and practice that are not as normative of our everyday thinking.
This conference theme encourages members to make connections with instructors, scholars, the communication literature, and practitioners examining related issues of interest in different ways. Practices associated with widening our scope include attending an interest group or caucus that you ordinarily would not attend. Learn something about an aspect of the field that will push your own thinking and understanding of the communication discipline. Collect a sample that is less typical of practice in your area. Collaborate with a scholar who pursues inquiry into a related topic or area of interest from a different theoretical, disciplinary, or methodological vantage point than your own. Teach a course in a way that is different from how others might teach it. Brainstorm ways to help students in the classroom broaden their scope and understanding of communication studies. As a caucus or interest group your members might collaborate with individuals from other units or the industry at large who bring relevant issues to the forefront as your own, albeit perhaps framed in a slightly different way.
I encourage each one of us to use the sessions of this conference to step away with a deeper appreciation for the richness that is the study and practice of communication within the Central States Communication Association (CSCA) by engaging with others who have a different vantage point on issues related to research, teaching, service, engagement, and disciplinary practices.
Question about the general call or the 2025 conference:
- Contact Jeffrey T. Child (jeffrey.child@unlv.edu), 2025 primary program planner
Look for specific calls and submission information from each of the 27 CSCA Interest Groups, Caucuses, and Sections.
Deadline for Submissions: October 5, 2024, 11:59 pm CDT
Directions for using the online system: Online Submission Directions
