cfp.english.upenn.edu

Pedagogy as an essential part of the learning and teaching culture has an ever more important place in community colleges where we continually rethink and revise our practices for our often non-traditional student population and for a population less aware of the value of the written word. Building on the success of our first conference, Transitions and Transactions II: Literature and Creative Pedagogies invites Community College faculty to send proposals for the April 25-27, 2014 conference presented by Borough of Manhattan Community College, English Department. Continuing our work developing a community of engaged teachers interested in improving their practice by sharing pedagogical questions, concerns, successes, theories, and intellectual curiosities about the ways in which teaching and learning happens and does not happen in the community college literature and creative writing classroom, we invite a large field of inquiry: student and faculty populations, physical environments, social media and technological dependency, resistances, disruptions and distortions to teaching and learning, institutionalized educational policies, and (dis)abilities and mental illness awareness in teaching. In addition, in light of the rise in recent violence that uses the educational environment as a global stage, we invite papers that theorize violence at education institutions and violence in education and ways that college students have engaged with these questions in literature classes.

We are pleased to include the teaching of creative writing as a new topic for our conference. We’ve added creative writing pedagogy as a way to engage in and add our voices to this important field of scholarship. Specific to the community college, we would like to address how faculty teach creative writing when literacy and literary familiarity and preparation vary widely. Please see a list of suggested topics below.

We also invite presenters from our 2012 conference to present collaborative work that resulted from participating in the conference and we will consider topics not mentioned in this CFP. We look forward to learning how you invent and are invented by your students and your position as teacher in our next conference.

Literature Pedagogy Topics:
1. Exploring Cultural Literacies: Outside the Classroom
2. Teaching Literary Theory at the Community College
3. Teaching Literature in the ESL and Developmental Skills Classroom
4. Teaching Literature in Interdisciplinary Humanities Courses
5. Academic Positions and Self Reflection
6. Assessment & Self-Evaluation in Teaching Literature
7. Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Literature Classroom
8. Public Policy and its Relation to Community College Education
9. Research in the Teaching of Literature
10. Multimodal Practices in the Teaching of Literature
11. Teaching Classical Literature
12. Game Theory and New Theoretical Approaches to the Teaching of Literature
13. Gender Constructions in the Text and in the Classroom
14: Psychoanalytic Theories of Pedagogy
15: Race, Class, Gender and Multiculturalism in the Text and in Classroom
16. Student Experiences in the Community College Literature Classroom

Creative Writing Pedagogy Topics:
1. Creative Writing Theories and Resistances to Theory
2. Narrative Assessment: Grading Student Creative Writing—Teacher Response
3. Workshop Models
4. Creative Writing: Teacher's goals versus students' life goals
5. Creative Process and Creative Thinking
6. Creative Writing Communities
7. Creative Writing: Interdisciplinary Approaches
8. Teaching the Transferable Skills of Creative Writing
9. Personal Creative Writing Theories and how they work in the classroom
10. Pedagogical Contradictions: Where the Personal and Political Converge
11. Legitimizing the Field of Creative Writing Pedagogy in the Academy
12. How students use Teacher Feedback
13. Multimodal Creative Writing Assignments

As teachers of literature and creative writing, the conference asks the larger question: How do we make a literary life and literary citizenship possible both for our students and for ourselves?

This is an interdisciplinary call extended to teachers and graduate students. Additional topics are welcome. Deadline for submissions is November 15, 2013. Send abstracts (minimum of 250 words) or inquiries to:

Dr. Margaret Barrow and Dr. Manya Steinkoler
Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY
English Department, Room N720
199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
Telephone: (212) 220-8270 /Email mbarrow@bmcc.cuny.edu and msteinkoler@bmcc.cuny.edu
Please include a) name of author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of presentation (e) body of proposal and (f) brief bio. We acknowledge receipt of all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should resend.
Non-presenters who prefer to participate in the conversations and workshops rather than deliver a presentation may attend on a first come, first serve basis subject to space available at the venue. To book, send an email to Dr. Barrow or Dr. Steinkoler with “Booking Request" as the subject. Please include your name, affiliation and email address. Cost: $100.00 Full-time faculty; $50 Part-time faculty and $25 Graduate Students.