The CCCC Chair’s Address is a speech delivered at the conference’s opening general session that speaks to perceived concerns in the field. The CCCC, formed in 1949, has always had a Chair, the first being John C. Gerber, but the Chair Address is a tradition that begin in 1977 when Richard Lloyd-Jones “became the first Chair to deliver a formal address”. Many in the field of rhetoric and composition consider the CCCC Chair’s Address to be one of the most anticipated and significant texts of the year.

CCCC Chair Duties

Before becoming Chair, one must be elected Assistant Chair, a role s/he serves for a year before becoming Associate Chair for a year. After a year of being the Assistant Chair and a year of being the Associate Chair, one then becomes the official Chair, wherein s/he will deliver his/her Chair’s Address at the CCCC. After serving as Chair for a year, one becomes the Immediate Past Chair for a year.

Each of these four roles—Assistant Chair, Associate Chair, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair—has different duties and obligations. On its official website, the CCCC lists the following duties for each role:

The Assistant Chair

1. In the temporary absence of the Chair and the Associate Chair, presides at all business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, or the Officers' Committee.
2. Represents CCCC on the NCTE Board of Directors.
3. Assists the Associate Chair and the Local Chair with managing the current CCCC Annual Convention.
4. Develops plans for the subsequent convention.

The Associate Chair

1. In the temporary absence of the Chair, presides at all business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, or the Officers' Committee.
2. Directs the program of the current CCCC Annual Convention in accord with Bylaws adopted to govern the convention and the Annual Business Meeting.
3. Represents CCCC on the NCTE Board of Directors and observes the five meetings of the NCTE Executive Committee during the year he/she serves as Associate Chair.
4. Attends, as an observer, with the CCCC Chair the five meetings of the NCTE Executive Committee that occur during the period one serves as Associate Chair, and replaces the outgoing Chair as voting member at the post-convention meeting of the NCTE Executive Committee.
5. Appoints the Resolutions Committee and the Braddock Award Committee.

The Chair

1. Assumes responsibility for the functioning of the organization.
2. Plans the agendas for and presides at the business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, and the Officers' Committee.
3. Represents the organization in making public its policy decisions.
4. Appoints all special committees, with the exception of those committees stipulated in Bylaws III.B.5.
5. May authorize committees and define their functions.
6. Arranges any CCCC program sessions for the NCTE Annual Convention.
7. Arranges the CCCC program session for the MLA Annual Convention.
8. Serves as a voting member of the NCTE Board of Directors and the NCTE Executive Committee.
9. Prepares the Annual Report to NCTE.
10. Prepares a report to the membership of CCCC after the CCCC Annual Convention.

The Immediate Past Chair

1. Assumes the duties of the Chair, if the Chair is unable to serve.
2. Coordinates membership development.
3. Serves on the Nominating Committee.
4. Is a voting member of the NCTE Board of Directors.

Trends in CCCC Chairs' Addresses

There have been recurring trends within the 32 CCCC Chairs’ Addresses, and two scholars in particular have published work on these trends.

Ellen Barton, in her 1997 study “Evocative Gestures in CCCC Chairs’ Addresses,” identifies “a tradition of what can be called ‘evocative gestures’—the articulation of broad concerns in the field”. In examining the first 20 CCCC Chairs’ Addresses, she looks for ways in which the Chairs talk with and/or at one another over topics they deem pertinent to the field and its ongoing attempts at “self-representation” and “professionalism”. Toward that end, Barton demonstrates four trends:

1. Teaching: Chairs make accordant gesture about the complexity and importance of teaching composition.
2. Service: Chairs make accordant gestures about the commitment on the part of composition teachers to help students become valuable and productive members of society.
3. Research Paradigms: Chairs make contentious gestures about what research model the field should promote, humanistic or empirical.
4. Disciplinarity vs. Interdisciplinarity: Chairs make contentious gestures about where the field should be housed within the academy, as its own discipline or as an intradisciplinary focus within English departments.

Duane Roen, in his book Views from the Center: The CCCC Chairs’ Addresses 1977-2005, acknowledges Barton’s trends and provides a few of his own:

• Scholarly Teaching: Chairs emphasizing the importance of teaching that is grounded in and predicated on resources pertinent to the field.
• The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Chairs emphasizing the importance of scholarly work that addresses pedagogical issues.

Other recent trends include:

• Stake in Writing: Chairs focusing on the clout (or lack thereof) writing teachers have in writerly matters at the academic and legislative levels.
• Literacy: Chairs looking outside the academy first in making others aware of the role literacy plays both in and outside the classroom and/or speaking to the literacy practices being implemented or that should be implemented in the composition classroom.
• Diversity: Chairs discussing diversity in two corresponding ways: (1) we are not racially diverse as a field, and the diversity we do have in areas of institution, position, and sexual orientation does not mask and, in some cases, can actually exacerbate issues of equity, and (2) we need to put forth more effort in making the salient issues attached to diversity present in our pedagogies and curricula.

Publication of CCCC Chair's Address

A version of almost every Chair’s Address, whether altered slightly or not at all, has been reprinted in an issue of College Composition and Communication http://www.ncte.org/cccc/ccc (CCC). From 1987 to 1998, the Chair’s Address would appear in the February Issue of CCC; recently, however, the yearly Chair’s Address has been reprinted in the December issue of CCC.

CCCC Chairs’ Addresses Chart

Year	Chair	Address	Location	CCC Issue
1977	Richard Lloyd-Jones	“A View from the Center”	Kansas City, Missouri	29.1 (Feb. 1978)
1978	Vivian I. Davis	“Our Excellence: Where Do We Grow from Here?"	Denver, Colorado	30.1 (Feb. 1979)
1979	William F. Irmscher	“Writing as a Way of Learning and Developing”	Minneapolis, Minnesota	30.3 (Oct. 1979)
1980	Frank D’Angelo	“Regaining Our Composure”	Washington, D.C.	31.4 (Dec. 1980)
1981	Lynn Quitman Troyka	“Perspectives on Legacies and Literacy in the 1980s”	Dallas, Texas	33.3 (Oct. 1982)
1982	James Lee Hill	“Beyond Access to Education—Literacy and Learning in Perspective”	Washington, D.C.	Unpublished in CCC
1983	Donald C. Stewart	“Some History Lessons for Composition Teachers”	Detroit, Michigan	Unpublished in CCC (published in Rhetoric Review http://www.rhetoricreview.com/ Issue 3.2 Jan, 1985)
1984	Rosentene B. Purnell	“Using Language to Unlock the Limits”	New York, New York	Unpublished in CCC
1985	Maxine Hairston	“Breaking Our Bonds and Reaffirming Our Connections”	Minneapolis, Minnesota	36.3 (Oct. 1985)
1986	Lee Odell	“Diversity and Change: Toward a Maturing Discipline”	New Orleans, Louisiana	37.4 (Dec. 1986)
1987	Mariam T. Chaplin	“Issues, Perspectives and Possibilities”	Atlanta, Georgia	39.1 (Feb. 1988)
1988	David Bartholomae David Bartholomae David J. Bartholomae is an American scholar in composition studies. He is Professor of English and a former Chair of the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh....	“Freshman English, Composition, and CCCC”	St. Louis, Missouri	40.1 (Feb. 1989)
1989	Andrea A. Lunsford	“Composing Ourselves: Politics, Commitment, and the Teaching of Writing”	Seattle, Washington	41.1 (Feb. 1990)
1990	Jane E. Peterson	“Valuing Teaching: Assumptions, Problems, and Possibilities”	Chicago, Illinois	42.1 (Feb. 1991)
1991	Donald McQuade	“Living In—and On—the Margins”	Boston, Massachusetts	43.1 (Feb. 1992)
1992	William W. Cook	“Writing in the Spaces Left”	Cincinnati, Ohio	44.1 (Feb. 1993)
1993	Anne Ruggles Gere	“Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition”	San Diego, California	45.1 (Feb. 1994)
1994	Lillian Bridwell-Bowles	“Freedom, Form, Function: Varieties of Academic Discourse”	Nashville, Tennessee	46.1 (Feb. 1995)
1995	Jacqueline Jones Royster	“When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own”	Washington, D.C.	47.1 (Feb. 1996)
1996	Lester Faigley	“Literacy after the Revolution”	Milwaukee, Wisconsin	48.1 (Feb. 1997)
1997	Nell Ann Pickett	“The Two-Year College as Democracy in Action”	Phoenix, Arizona	49.1 (Feb. 1998)
1998	Cynthia L. Selfe	“Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention”	Chicago, Illinois	50.3 (Feb. 1999)
1999	Victor Villanueva	“On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism”	Atlanta, Georgia	50.4 (June 1999)
2000	Keith Gilyard Keith Gilyard Raymond Keith Gilyard is a prominent writer and American professor of English who teaches and researches in the fields of rhetoric, composition, literacy studies, sociolinguistics, and African American literature...	“Literacy, Identity, Imagination, Flight”	Minneapolis, Minnesota	52.2 (Dec. 2000)
2001	Wendy Bishop	“Against the Odds in Composition and Rhetoric”	Denver, Colorado	53.2 (Dec. 2001)
2002	John C. Lovas	“All Good Writing Develops at the Edge of Risk”	Chicago, Illinois	54.2 (Dec. 2002)
2003	Shirley Wilson Logan	“Changing Missions, Shifting Positions, and Breaking Silences”	New York, New York	55.2 (Dec. 2003)
2004	Kathleen Blake Yancey	“Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key”	San Antonio, Texas	56.2 (Dec. 2004)
2005	Douglas Hesse	“Who Owns Writing?”	San Francisco, California	57.2 (Dec. 2005)
2006	Judith A. Wootten	“Riding a One-Eyed Horse: Reigning In and Fencing Out”	Chicago, Illinois	58.2 (Dec. 2006)
2007	Akua Duku Anoyke	“Voices of the Company We Keep”	New York, New York	59.2 (Dec. 2007)
2008	Cheryl Glenn	“Representing Ourselves”	New Orleans, Louisiana	60.2 (Dec. 2008)
2009	Charles Bazerman Charles Bazerman Charles Bazerman is an American educator and scholar. He was born and raised in New York. He is one of the world's leading experts on writing and has contributed significantly to the establishment of writing as a research field...	“The Wonder of Writing”	San Francisco, California	61.3 (Feb. 2010)
2010	Marilyn Valentino	“Rethinking the 4th C: Call to Action”	Louisville, Kentucky	62.2 (Dec. 2010)
2011	Gwendolyn Pough	“It's Bigger Than Comp/Rhet: Contested and Undisciplined”	Atlanta, Georgia	Unpublished