Call for Papers

2021 Conference of the SUNY Council on Writing

Date:  October 22-23, 2021

Theme:  Scarcity and Abundance: Cultivating Community and Expertise in Uncertain Times

Writing educators have never been strangers to the institutional rhetoric of scarcity, perpetually negotiating new austerity measures and an ongoing discourse of crisis. But we have also understood how to find abundance in community, building exchanges between like-minded colleagues to create new institutional opportunities–a practice we will almost certainly need even more urgently in the landscape of post-pandemic higher education. In this spirit, we follow the words of writer Parker Palmer to “have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store.” This conference invites participants to think about scarcity and abundance while asking how writing instructors may better invest time and energy for teaching, writing, and researching. Thinking about scarcity and abundance as rhetorical/social as well as material/literal constructs, we invite panels and presentations that address how we may carve new pathways of expertise for our discipline and profession during uncertain times.

Though the SUNYCoW conference has traditionally focused on faculty in the SUNY system, we welcome submissions from all faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars regardless of institutional affiliation. We invite presentations from any discipline or theoretical perspective on college writers, composition, or writing pedagogy. Some ways to engage with the theme include but are not limited to topics that are current in writing studies:

• Writing pedagogies/methods of abundance
• Advocacy of writing studies in higher education
• Applied learning and community engagement 
• Generosity, mentorship, and mindfulness in teaching and tutoring
• Virtual and material environments of teaching 
• Supportive roles in writing and WPA relationships
• Faculty training and professional development
• International student preparation and ELL support 
• Diversity training and culturally-responsive education
• Graduate student education in writing studies
• New media in the writing classroom
• Critical Media Literacy in the writing classroom
• Issues of academic labor and the institutional position/structure of undergraduate writing programs

Proposals should be submitted using this Google Form by Sept. 1, 2021. In addition to submitting an abstract of no more than 300 words, we have included suggestions for interactivity in the Google form to further support presenters in their development of engaging and interactive sessions. The conference will also include special topics sessions, brown bag lunch discussions, a mindfulness workshop, a keynote speaker, and individual panel discussions. 

Questions should be directed to sunycouncilonwriting@gmail.com.