Recollections from Our Common Places: 4C21-23 Documentarian Tales
Edited by Bump Halbritter, Julie Lindquist, and Bree Straayer
Copy edited and designed by Mike Palmquist.
This second volume of Documentarian Tales features narratives by attendees of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Annual Convention (both virtual and in person). The first collection, Recollections from an Uncommon Time: 4C20 Documentarian Tales (2023), was conceived to be a product of the new Documentarian role at the 2020 Convention in Milwaukee. When that meeting was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Documentarian idea became a means for CCCC members to share a common experience at a most unusual time.
As with the earlier collection, the Tales in began as responses to Documentarian daily surveys. Taken together, they narrate authors’ experiences on the days of the CCCC Convention in 2021, 2022, and 2023, foregrounding contrasts and commonalities between virtual and in-person conferences, and addressing such themes and issues as professional growth and belonging, forms of participation, the professional life of the field, accessibility, and work-life balance.
The essays in this volume resonate with the themes surfaced in the earlier collection and introduce new provocations about the terms of our work in writing studies and the changing landscape of our disciplinary participation, particularly in light of educational shifts occasioned by responses to the pandemic.
Table of Contents
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Introduction, Bump Halbritter, Julie Lindquist, and Bree Straayer
2021 Documentarian Tales
1. Learning Stewardship, Adrienne Jankens
2. Toward an Academic Made Whole: Navigating the Work-Life Balance in Times of Crisis, Joel Bergholtz
3. Running on Empty: Documenting the Oscillating Continuum from My Virtual Common Place, Swan Kim
4. CCCC 2021: Storytelling and Surprisesa>, Jennifer Marlow
5. Reflective Writing and Pedagogy: Processing Loss and Grief during 4C21, Victoria L. Braegger
6. CCCC 2021: My Academic Rite of Passage, Thir Budhathoki
7. Dear Analeigh, Analeigh Horton
8. The New Harriet Tubmans of the Same Beloved Underground Railroad: Notes for Future Essays Needed in the Present, Shelagh Patterson
2022 Documentarian Tales
9. Neurodiversity, New Networks, and Conference Commonplaces, Jennifer Grouling
10. Angst, Agency, and Longing: On (Re)Turning to Our Virtual Profession, Kimberly Thomas
11. Recollections: The Experience of Documentation as a Form of Evidence for Reflective Practice, Nitya Pandey
12. There Is Something to Be Said for Asynchronicity, Emily Plummer Catena
2023 Documentarian Tales
13. Among My People: Trying to Pierce the Veil of the Writing Studies Discourse Community, Quang Ly
14. Assembling the Conference Experience: A Quasi-Materialist’s Reflection, Jason Tham
15. Documenting a Documentarian Friendship, Adrienne Jankens and Jennifer Grouling
16. Together, in Chicago, Karen R. Tellez-Chaires
Afterwords
Afterword. Kindness and Kith, Frankie Condon
Afterword. Making Academic Conferencing Meaningful across Modalities: Lessons from Documentarians, Jennifer Sano-Franchini
About the Editors
Bump Halbritter is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and former Director of First-Year Writing (FYW) at Michigan State University. His research attends to teaching and learning in FYW and to the integration of audio-visual writing into scenes of college writing and scholarly research and production. His long-term collaboration with Julie Lindquist has yielded many articles and chapters, including their 2013 article, “Time, Lives, and Videotape: Operationalizing Discovery in Scenes of Literacy Sponsorship,” which received the Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English. His book, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, received the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award for 2013. He has served on the CCCC Executive Committee and many CCCC working groups. He writes, performs, and produces music under the name Hope Junkies with albums released in 2024 and 2026.
Julie Lindquist is Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and two-time Director of First-Year Writing (FYW) at Michigan State University, where she has taught undergraduate courses in first-year and professional writing and graduate courses in rhetorical theory, composition studies, cultural rhetoric, research methods, and writing pedagogy. Her books include A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar, Elements of Literacy, and Recollections from an Uncommon Time: 4C20 Documentarian Tales. Her writings on rhetoric, class, literacy, and writing pedagogy have appeared in major journals and in edited collections. She has coauthored several articles on literacy research, writing pedagogy, and reflective learning with her colleague and writing partner at MSU, Bump Halbritter. Their coauthored piece, “Time, Lives, and Videotape: Operationalizing Discovery in Scenes of Literacy Sponsorship” won the 2013 Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English. Lindquist was elected in 2019 to serve as Assistant Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, was Program Chair for the (planned) 2020 Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and served as Chair of CCCC in 2021. She has twice served as Director of the First-Year Writing program at Michigan State University, a program that serves more than 7,000 students annually. Her research and scholarship on class culture, identity, and learning, along with her work in administration and leadership, has always been motivated by questions of educational access for diverse learners.
Bree Straayer is Assistant Professor at Michigan State University and Associate Director of First-Year Writing. Her vocational and research interests focus on the intersections of culture, gender, and education. She has several publications and has presented nationally on her research examining the role of religious ideologies in educational trajectories along with her other interests in language learning and writing program administration. Her interests are also expressed through her community-based work in the nonprofit sphere, where she was director of a language learning program and helped to bring in over two million dollars in grant funding and significantly increase program participation. When not reading, writing, or working, she enjoys spending time traveling, gardening, antiquing, and making all manner of things.
Publication Information: Halbritter, Bump, Julie Lindquist, & Bree Straayer (Eds.). (2026). Recollections from Our Common Places: 4C21–23 Documentarian Tales. National Council of Teachers of English; The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wacclearinghouse.org/books/swr/recollections/
ISBN: 978-0-8141-0200-8 (PDF) | 978-0-8141-0197-1 (ePub) | 978-0-8141-0196-4 (pbk.)
Publication Date: February 27, 2026
Contact Information:
Bump Halbritter: drbump@msu.edu
Julie Lindquist: lindqu11@msu.edu
Bree Straayer: bstraayer@literacycenterwm.org
Studies in Writing and Rhetoric
Series Editor: Stephen Parks, University of Virginia
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Copyright © 2026 by the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English. 202 pages, with notes and references. This book is available in print from National Council of Teachers of English as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in PDF and ePub formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.