(Extended Deadline) What a Difference Makes: 18th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing

deadline for submissions: 
February 15, 2023
full name / name of organization: 
UConn Conference on the Teaching of Writing
contact email: 

We invite conference proposals for the University of Connecticut First-Year Writing Program’s Conference on the Teaching of Writing, taking place in Storrs, CT on Friday, April 14th, 2023. Proposal submissions are due Wednesday, February 15th, 2023 and can be submitted through our conference website. We are thrilled to be hosting Stacey Waite as this year’s keynote speaker. 

We invite proposals that investigate the possibilities of difference to consider “What a Difference Makes” and to imagine the generative potential of difference in the teaching of writing and the writing classroom. We define “difference” broadly to encompass differences in identities, experiences, social groups, languages, social practices, curricula, and pedagogies, as well as in thought and action. Differences can be marked as divergences and as enrichments, as diversity and as divisive; difference can provoke a pressure to conform, or serve as a catalyst for creativity. Making a difference can demonstrate the kind of dynamic and productive ways of thinking that help all of us to grow as educators. 

As educators and academics, we must encourage an examination into the way we have taught before and a curiosity that fosters new ways of thinking. While we are not yet in a post-pandemic world, we cannot deny that the writing classroom has significantly changed, as has the world around us. This conference asks what we have learned from these changes and how we can move forward with more diverse methods of working with students and evolving notions of what it means to teach writing. Furthermore, it asks that we consider the ways in which exploring new possibilities that prioritize generative difference can engender new knowledge and possibilities. This extends also to difference in how we view writing more generally. How can an understanding of writing as not merely textual but also multimodal and collaborative help us produce and respect difference? Further, how can we approach these ideas of difference to make a difference in the lives of our students and within our departments/institutions? 

We seek proposals of 250 to 300 words for accessible and active presentations. We strongly encourage proposals that describe how material will be interactive, participatory, and/or engaging for the audience. Sessions should be designed to be accessible from the outset. We invite proposals focused on any aspect of the topic as it pertains to the teaching of writing, but we will give preference to proposals that address one or more of the following questions or otherwise engage current scholarship on educational practices that focus on, incorporate, or explore difference in the writing classroom: 

  • How do we understand, imagine, and mark “difference”? 

  • How can difference be generative? What can grow out of expressions of difference & diversity in the classroom? How can we nourish the products of that difference/diversity, and how might it help us to imagine new (different) possibilities? 

  • In what ways is difference erased or obscured in the classroom? What are the effects of making differences visible?  

  • How do we treat differences of minds and bodies in our course plans and classrooms?

  • How do we use difference to categorize? To exclude? How might we challenge the systems that are produced to stabilize difference and to create norms? 

  • How might divergences from the norm change us? How might they affect our pedagogies, assignments, grading, and assessment?

  • In what ways has difference itself become the norm? 

  • Do/can technologies adapt a world with norms to the differences of minds and bodies? How do technologies affect and engage with difference? 

  • How might we engage with linguistic and language differences? What happens when the difference is Artificial Intelligence? How might AI writing flatten differences in language and style, and enforce linguistic norms?

  • How might we make a difference to our students?