2024 Advanced Writing Symposium
Uncharted Territories: Genre, Audience & Innovation in Advanced Writing Contexts

University of Southern California

Event Date: February 2, 2024
Event Location: Online

The USC Writing Program’s Upper Division Curriculum Committee welcomes proposals for
“Uncharted Territories: Genre, Audience and Innovation in Advanced Writing Contexts.”

This one-day online event aims to bring together teachers of advanced and/or upper-division college composition courses to discuss innovative methods and best practices for widening and strengthening student engagement with diverse genres and audiences. Join us to explore emerging developments, as we strive to help our students become more effective communicators, critical thinkers, and rhetorical citizens in today’s rapidly changing world.

This symposium seeks to create a space for Advanced Writing teachers to gather, share materials, and support each other as we teach our students how to write in various public-facing contexts and genres, and how to address a range of audiences.

What genres are teachable? How are we innovating as we design assignments and lessons? How are technological changes and new media transforming genres, audiences, and pedagogical practices?

To create a space wherein teachers can inspire other teachers, we are especially interested in sessions that emphasize innovative pedagogy and praxis.

Questions & Issues: We welcome proposals for panels, individual presentations, and
workshops related to any of the following topics:

- Fresh approaches to audience & genre
- Assignment innovation: experiments in assignment design, supporting students in
creating products, student autonomy in defining audiences or selecting genres
- Digital literacies; teaching multimedia or multi-modal assignments, podcasts, videos,
Medium.com & other online publishing
- Generative AI. Incorporating AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude; harnessing
LLMs as tools; ethical considerations; plagiarism
- A fully formed panel (3-4 presenters) organized around an issue of your own design
related to audience & genre in upper division writing courses
We also hope to populate a series of roundtables with both educators and students on the
following issues. Participants who wish to invite one of their students to join the conversation too
can indicate that in their proposal.
- Alternative Modes of Assessment (collaborative grading; ungrading; unilateral,
labor-based, and empathy-based grading contracts; specification grading)
- Assessing Unconventional Assignments (Once students are producing work that
befuddles standard rubrics, how should it be evaluated? How can unorthodox projects
be introduced into the socialized portfolio grading context? Does group assessment stifle
innovation? How can we (should we) look to reshape group assessment to fairly and
consistently evaluate works that don't conform to the traditional portfolio model?
- Personal Statements for Graduate School, Fellowships, and Awards
- Generative AI:How are instructors incorporating it into pedagogy? How are students
responding?
- Advanced Writing + the situation of writing/comp programs (staffed mostly by NTT
faculty) within the contemporary university

What To Send Us: Proposals of 200-450 words.

- Panel proposals: 3-4 speakers organized around a theme or issue of your choice
- Individual presentation proposals: 1-2 speakers delivering a single talk/paper
- Workshop proposals: Sessions focused on discussion, collaboration, audience
participation, and workshop activities
- Roundtable: Join one of our pre-set roundtables by telling us about your relationship to
and expertise in the topic and what you would contribute to the conversation

Proposal Submission Deadline: Friday, October 23, 2023Please submit Proposals via this GOOGLE FORM: 2024 Advanced Writing Symposium (google.com) For any questions about developing your proposal, contact Tamara Black at tamarabl@usc.eduor Elizabeth Durst at edurst@usc.edu with the subject line “Advanced Writing Symposium.”