University Writing Program Seeks Presenters for Writing Conference

The UNC Charlotte University Writing Program’s Fall 2016 Writing Conference, “Transcendent Literacies.” will take place on October 28, 2016 at UNC Charlotte Center City.

Students, teachers, administrators, and researchers may submit proposals in a variety of formats to foster discussion, conversation, connections, and new partnerships across various borders. Submissions will be accepted until April 22, 2016. More information on the conference can be found on the conference website.

As students and professionals continue to adapt their writing to a variety of new contexts, scenes, and situations, the conference will consider how writers prepare for the complex literacies of an increasingly connected, global space. The conference aims to explore and discuss how writers can be prepared to function across/without borders, build on traditional frameworks or build additional frameworks for 21st century literacies.

The University Writing Program hopes to foster conversation about writing praxis across a variety of cultural, disciplinary, and institutional borders, transforming the way we “do” writing in our own contexts, organizers say.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Literacies across cultural borders
  • Transcultural/transnational/translingual rhetorics and writing education
  • Writing transfer across contexts and sites (K12 to college, community college to 4-year institution, FYC to writing in disciplines, academic to workplace settings and vice versa)
  • Reading and writing in virtual spaces and their impact on writing
  • Genres across borders/Genre meshing/Genre camouflaging
  • Social media and its impact on academic writing
  • Technology, coding and emerging digital literacies
  • Print ↔ Digital

The University Writing Program will move beyond the tradition of presenters reading papers to encourage a variety of formats, including master classes, interactive workshops and seminars, roundtables, fishbowl discussions, round robins, campfire sessions, and works-in-progress sessions.

Individual presentation submissions should be no more than 300 words or the equivalent Multi-Modal proposal, explaining both the purpose of the proposed session and the submitter’s overall plan for a 15-20-minute time frame. Group submissions should be no more than 800 words or the equivalent Multi-Modal proposal, explaining both the purpose of the session and the overall plan for a 75-minute time frame.