SUNY CoW 2016 Extended Deadline 12/15/2015

full name / name of organization: 
SUNY Council of Writers
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Writing (and) Affordability: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Writing Instruction

For this year's conference we ask writers, writing instructors at all levels, tutors, and researchers to consider the role of affordability in our practices. We welcome perspectives, strategies, and questions for approaching and understanding the role of "affordability" pluralistically—as both what is within one's financial means and what writing can afford (as in what it allows us to be able to do or manage). In the tradition of SUNY CoW conferences, we are interested in how these ideas apply to historical, contemporary, and projected-future practices of instruction.


Presenters are invited to consider (yet are not limited to) the following topics:

  • Accessibility and affordability
  • What writing affords, and what writing instruction affords as well
  • The role of technology and affordability in writing instruction
  • Pedagogies that examine intersectionality of class with subjectivity
  • Grades, degrees, and commodification
  • Affordable pedagogy
  • Social justice and writing outside the university
  • Creativity in genres of professional and technical writing
  • Large-scale assessment (such as institutional, national or statewide mandates) and affordability
  • Writing as currency
  • ESOL/ELL instruction and economies of non-standard language acquisition
  • Measuring the value of writing and writing instruction
  • What is afforded in 2-year and/vs. 4-year college instruction
  • Indebtedness and writing
  • The Writing Center and its value to the university community
  • Identifying the affordances of specific genres, technologies, pedagogies

    Presenters may propose individual sessions (20 min.) or complete sessions (75 min.) Please send 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, or 500-word abstracts for 75-minute sessions by December 15, 2015 to sunycow2016@gmail.com. Participants will be notified of their acceptance by January 1, 2016.

    In addition to traditional panel presentations we encourage other formats (inc. workshops, roundtables, discussions and alternative participatory formats). To encourage undergraduate participation we plan to reserve (at least) one breakout area specifically for undergraduate research.

    Please visit the conference website for information and updates. https://sunycow2016.wordpress.com