Category: CFP

Call for Proposals and Registration Now Available for Carolinas WPA Fall Conference 2024 at Wildacres

Photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

We are proud to announce that the 17th Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will take place September 16-18, 2024 at the Wildacres Retreat Center, centering on the theme We Are the Storytellers (more below).

Click here for a call for proposals and more information about the conference. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please complete this form.

Proposals are due by 11:59pm on Monday, August 26, 2024.

You are entirely welcome to attend without presenting, but those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda. This may help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals.

 Registration and Cost. The registration fee of $240 for full-time tenure track faculty and $220 for other faculty and graduate students includes 2 nights’ lodging in double occupancy rooms, and 5 meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials and annual voting membership in Carolinas Writing Program Administrators. 

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://forms.gle/oypGZyeggTAS3T5b9 

Deadline. Conference goers must register by the end of day on Friday, August 30th, 2024.   

Plans changed? Registration will be fully refunded if we are notified by 8 am on September 2, 2024.

LOGISTICS:

Please visit https://wildacres.org/ to get a sense of the location, which truly is serene. All meals are provided at the conference center. Please note below or email Shawn with any dietary needs or restrictions that we should be made aware of. Lodging is dorm style accommodations with private bathroom. Each room has two beds, a private bathroom. Spaces have common areas to hang out — both indoors and out. If you have a roommate preference, please indicate so on the form.

Questions can be sent to President Shawn Bowers Buxton (bowerss@queens.edu).

We Are the Storytellers

Last year marked our return to Wildacres, a place that is deeply connected to the story and identity of CarWPA. In the fall of 2023, we rooted into the notion of place and how it can serve to renew us and our pedagogy. Last fall was a return “home” in many ways, when the veil of the global pandemic finally lifted enough for many of us to “normal,”  except we didn’t know what normal meant anymore or if we wanted to even go back to normal. And so, to understand where we want to go, as educators and as a community, we realized we needed to revisit our origin story. In the spring of 2024, at our annual Meeting in the Middle, Wendy Sharer (and Tracy Morse in absentia) shared that story and invited us to consider our key values and what the future of this beloved organization might look like. 

Stories and storytelling are important tools in knowledge-making (Legg & Sullivan, 2018) and stories are critical to community organizing practices (Goldblatt, 2010). Indeed, as Wendy and Tracy shared with us back at MitM, “Storytelling is the discursive form through which we translate our values into the motivation to act.” (Ganz, 2001, p. 279). 

With this in mind, we invite you to the mountains this fall to participate in storytelling, to engage in the work of collective dialogue that enunciates communal values we can usher forward as an organization and bring to our respectives campuses and programs. What stories guide our work? What values inform our practices and pedagogies? And: What stories (“lore”)––about writing program administration, students, the teaching of writing, higher education in the Carolinas, our work more generally––do we need to respond to in our work? Consider stories about policy, programming, faculty feelings, practicalities, politics, pedagogies, diversity and inclusion, scholarship and research, advocacy, archive, collaboration. We want to share stories about the bright and important work we’re doing in our classrooms and schools, and we want to create plenty of space for storymaking and brainstorming.

Conference Schedule and Format. The conference begins at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 16, and concludes at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 18. On Monday evening, we will host a collective brainstorming session about the stories we want to collect and write. Tuesday will follow with a slate of workshops and presentations, but also with open-ended sessions to allow for networking and ideation. These sessions might be organized in conversation with the conference proposals we receive, but we hope to weave them around ideas of storytelling and rhetorical empathic listening. As always, we strive to create pockets of unscripted time, too. Our time will conclude with a closing session Wednesday morning, where we hope to share some reflections – and maybe even leave with some “story” we started . All meals are provided. 

Wildacres Retreat is a low-tech, informal setting conducive to relaxing, collaborating, and learning with friends and colleagues across the Carolinas. We welcome teams or solo participants from across our region. The main lobby area has wifi, as do some of the classroom meeting spaces, but presentations at Wildacres tend to be projected slides (think PowerPoint or downloaded Canvas slides) or good ol’ paper handouts.

Monday Evening Plenary Session: What Are Our Stories?

This relaxed session will be loosely moderated. Our hope is that members will share their stories – how did you first learn about CarWPA? Who invited you? Why does CarWPA matter? What role does CarWPA serve in the greater community of writing educators and program administrators? We will build off the values Wendy and Tracy shared with us at Meeting in the Middle to consider what values direct our work.

Tuesday Morning Plenary Session: What Stories Sustain Us? 

Using Monday evening’s discussion as a springboard, we’ll spend some time Tuesday morning identifying “hubs” – areas of interest or engagement to create some space to have story circles. 

Hubs might focus on issues that came up from our 2024 MitM (i.e.: documenting and sharing our origin stories, meaningfully engaging DEI in our programs, addressing generative AI in our writing programs, formalizing mentoring/buddy networks, creating collaboration spaces for SOTL and writing studies work). Hubs might also be inspired by 4C’s presentations or reflections. 

Plenary sessions will be facilitated by members of the CarWPA board.

16th Annual Fall Conference to take place September 11-13, 2023…CFP available!

We are proud to announce that the 16th Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will take place September 11-13, 2023 at the Wildacres Retreat Center, centering on the theme Homecoming: Finding a place for renewal in the profession.

Click here for a call for proposals and more information about the conference. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please complete this form.

See the PayPal button below for means to submit a payment. (Note that the cost of the conference is $210 for students and NTT faculty and $220 for TT faculty; the cost includes a year of membership in the organization.)

If you have questions about the conference, please contact Carolinas WPA President Shawn Bowers at bowerss@queens.edu.

Registrant status
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Registration and CFP for the 2023 Meeting in the Middle is now available!

Our 17th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person from at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, March 3, 2023. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present using this Google Form and submit a payment by visiting this website and selecting the “BOGO” option. Registration is $30 and, as in years past, this is a “Buy One/Get One” cost, covering two persons’ conference registration and membership in Carolinas WPA.

When: March 3, 2023, 10:00am EST (full schedule to come)

Where: UNC Charlotte, Center City Campus 320 E 9th St., Charlotte, NC 28202

We are beyond thrilled to announce that this year’s Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference will be held in person! We return to UNCC’s beautiful uptown campus in Charlotte, and we invite you to join us (CFP details below). Our keynote speaker this year is Kevin Gannon. 

About our keynote speaker: Kevin Gannon is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University Of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, published in April, 2020, as part of the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series from West Virginia University press. He is a regular contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and his work has appeared in outlets such as Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. You can find Kevin online at his blog, thetattooedprof.com, and on Twitter: @TheTattoedProf

Keynote Presentation:  “Sustaining Communities of Hope”

It might seem perverse to talk about something like “Sustaining Communities of Hope” in our current context, shaped as it is by racism, violence, economic dislocation, political rancor, and—oh, by the way—a global pandemic. In higher education, we find ourselves in an environment of crisis, in teaching and learning spaces that are unfamiliar to many of us and significantly more difficult for all of us. This session WILL NOT talk about “silver linings” or “making the most of the new normal.” In fact, one of the crucial elements of acting with hope is an honest acknowledgement that “normal times” were unsatisfactory and unsustainable. The session will, however, offer some avenues to ground our pedagogy in an ethic of hope, as opposed to a program dictated by fear. In doing so, this session will also critically interrogate the current fascination with “innovation” in higher ed, and think about ways to reclaim that discussion for meaningful, sustainable teaching and learning. 

Conference Theme: In the pandemic, we reached for technology to help us adapt to the new landscapes of learning as classes went from an embodied experience in a classroom to modalities that embraced both synchronous and asynchronous online spaces. We hi-flexed, we hybrid-ed, we pivoted so, so many times! With that memory still very fresh in our minds, we introduce you to this year’s conference theme:

Beyond Resilience: Moving from Reactive to Sustainable Spaces 

How do we process our experiences of the last two years and use what we learned to create sustainable teaching practices?

The global pandemic created such upheaval in academia, and institutions everywhere scrambled to react to unprecedented times. Faculty and staff embraced new technologies, proving we can learn new tricks. But this was all done in reactive space–adjusting the ship to traverse the uncharted waters we found ourselves navigating. It seems we’ve docked on dry land now, after three years braving the wilds. Only now are we reckoning with the collective and individual trauma of the last three years. In processing what we’ve come through, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of learning spaces we want to usher in. We have an opportunity to reframe innovation, think less about the fancy tools we want to use, and focus on ways to bolster sustainability in our programs and courses. How do we take the lessons learned from the pandemic and develop teaching strategies that can weather future storms?

Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that address this topic, share ideas, insights, reflections that inspire us to process, to move away from reactive spaces into sustainable landscapes. How do you reconsider technology and innovation? What strategies position us to deliver quality instruction regardless of external factors?

We welcome proposals for traditional presentations, where presenters share pedagogies, ideas, experiences from the field. These individual or group/panel presentations are slated for 45-60 minutes total.

Returning this year will be roundtable discussion proposals–you might not have material to present in a traditional sense, but you might be interested in leading, or at least starting, a conversation about a particular issue relating to this question. We’re planning to organize the day based on conceptual groupings for discussion.

To help with considerations for potential discussion concerns, we’ve provided a few broad topics/ideas, but you’re more than welcome to suggest your own. Roundtable discussions are expected to run for roughly 45-60 minutes. 

  •  “How do I leverage technologies used during online modalities now that we’re back in person?”
  • “I’d like to learn what HIPs (High Impact Practices)  others are seeing success with.” 
  • “I’ve made the switch to upgrading, but hitting some road bumps. . I’d love to talk shop with others and trade strategies.” 

Deadline: 11:59pm, Feb. 10th, 2023

We are excited to offer BOGO registration this year for all participants: $30 for two attendees: the registration fee for the paying applicant also covers the cost of annual membership dues for both attendees. To register for the conference, please complete this form AND THEN visit the following page, where you can select the “BOGO” registration for a pair of registrants: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/join-carolinas-wpa/. (If you are registering more than two persons, please be sure to submit a BOGO payment for each pair of registrants.)

Want to bring a TA or graduate student? We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee. Please email bowerss@queens.edu to inquire about this offer. 

More information about the event and the Carolinas WPA organization can be found at https://www.carolinaswpa.org; Questions about the event can be sent to Shawn Bowers at bowerss@queens.edu. Questions about registration/payment specifically can be sent to Patrick Bahls at patrick.bahls@gmail.com.

2021 Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Call for Proposals and Participants

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators is delighted to announced that our 15th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, February 19, 2021. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register by completing this Google Form. Registration is free; however, we encourage all attendees to support Carolinas WPA by renewing their membership to the organization ($20/year for full-time TT faculty and $10/year for other faculty and students). Follow this link to renew your membership. Visit the Carolinas WPA homepage to learn more about the organization.

Teaching, Writing, and Administrating in the time of Corona: Building and Maintaining Community in Remote Spaces

It is an obvious understatement to say that this past year has been tremendously difficult–heartbreaking, overwhelming, unpredictable, seemingly unending–and we’ve all been affected in different ways by events local and (inter)national alike. Trying to figure out how we can forge ahead as writing teachers, scholars, and administrators–if not maintain or reduce our expectations for what we’ve been able to achieve in the midst of everything that’s happened–might well seem like yet another insurmountable obstacle.

To work through these dilemmas, Carolinas WPA invites you to a virtual session of our annual Meeting in the Middle conference for a day of coming together to share resources and ideas, to strategize collaboratively, and to socialize with treasured friends, old and new alike. We want to learn: how have we worked and fought to sustain ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities throughout it all? How might we continue to do so?

Participants are not obligated to attend with any particular ideas or questions in mind to address, but we want to provide plenty of opportunity to work through some helpful and important issues that impact each of us, both in general and in this particular moment.

If you would like to have some time dedicated to presenting information about a project you’ve been working on or to discussing a particular question/issue you’d like feedback on, we can make sure that happens! Alternatively, if you just want to log in to say hello to friends you might not have had the chance to see or talk to for a year, that would be absolutely great, too!

Registration is completely free — we’ll send the Zoom info to registered participants as we get closer to the date of the event. Also, while registration is free, this could be an excellent opportunity for you to join or renew your membership in Carolinas WPA to help support the organization. Click here to renew your membership!

Questions about the event can be sent to brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.

Kevin Brock

President, Carolinas Writing Program Administrators

2020 Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle: CFP and event information

Conference theme: Language, Translingualism, and Multilingualism

We are excited to send out this call for proposals to present at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators’ fourteenth annual spring conference, “Meeting in the Middle,” to be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on February 14, 2020, at UNC Charlotte.

Our theme for the meeting is language, particularly translingualism and multilingualism, and how the complex systems of meaning we use to communicate inform our composing practices as well as the teaching thereof.

How do students employ their languages and literacies in different situations and environments? For that matter, how are we doing so? How can we recognize and discuss code-switching, code-meshing, and translanguaging as they relate across a variety of contexts? How can we help our students, and learn with them, about how to do so in more rhetorically effective fashions?

Jennifer Eidum from Elon University will present a morning workshop that presents key theories of translingualism and multilingualism as they play out in higher education, with particular focus on first-year writing classrooms. Then, we will shift from theory to practice, exploring specific linguistic & cultural challenges WPAs and writing faculty might encounter in writing spaces (including their own). With an emphasis on collaboration and community-building, participants will leave the workshop with resources, connections, and new ideas for recognizing (and building upon) the linguistic and cultural diversity in their writing programs.

Time will be provided for participants to begin planning activities and assignments for their courses and/or to sketch out structures for relevant language-focused faculty workshops or projects.

Proposal Details

Proposal Deadline: Wednesday, January 29, 2020. We have a quick turnaround and presenters will be notified by Monday, February 3, in order to have as much time as possible to make travel arrangements.

You do not have to present to attend! We welcome you regardless! That said, those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda for the conference–which might help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals will also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals.

We encourage both individual and team proposals from people in the Carolinas who are working in any teaching or administrative positions related to writing. We also welcome creative interpretation, and deviation, from this year’s theme.

Three different presentation types reflect members’ interests:

  1. Problem: Describe a teaching, program leadership, or research problem that you would like help thinking about with other attendees. 10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
  2. Showcase: Share a teaching method or writing program leadership strategy that is working well at your site. Or present findings from a study you’re involved in that would interest writing teachers and WPAs. 10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
  3. Other: You have an idea that doesn’t fit either category. Explain! You still have 10-15 minutes to present.

Proposals should include:

  • Name and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your proposal
  • Type of presentation (problem, showcase, other)
  • Title and brief description of your presentation for the conference agenda
  • Your specific goals for presenting

Please use this proposal form.

Registration

The registration price of $40.00 includes lunch and the opportunity to bring a guest for free (who also gets lunch!). Parking options are limited near the building (see “Parking” below). Carpooling is encouraged!

The registration deadline is Friday, February 7, 2020. Registration is now open on the Carolinas WPA website.

When you “bring a guest for free,” you must register the guest when you register yourself.

Parking

In the past, attendees had the option to purchase event parking passes as part of conference registration. Unfortunately, event parking is currently unavailable, although there are several pay-to-park options nearby. From the UNC Charlotte Center City website:

“Due to construction and other activity surrounding UNC Charlotte Center City, parking is extremely limited. The parking lots adjacent to Center City (422 E. 9th Street and 319 E. 9th Street) are currently reserved for faculty, staff and students with a University-issued parking permit.  Please encourage visitors to prepare and plan for their visit to Center City, including consideration of carpooling and ride services.”

“Visitor parking for events is currently not available. There are a number of pay-to-park options within walking distance of Center City.  Seventh Street Parking Deck is a short walk through First Ward Park. Visitors can pay to park by the hour. Additional pay-to-park options can be found on the Preferred Parking website. The closest of these is 422 E 9th Street on the corner of 9th and Brevard Street. Other nearby lots are at 8th & College, 9th & College, and 9th & Tryon. There are metered spaces on Brevard and 8th Street to pay during the day. These meters are free after 6pm weekdays and all day on weekends.”

Map (in .png image form) of parking options in the Center City vicinity.

Hotels

Google map of hotels near the conference.

Questions or comments? Direct them to Kevin Brock at brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.

Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle 2019 CFP

CWPA announces its (lucky) Thirteenth Annual Spring Conference: Meeting in the Middle.

 

Wild, wacky weather in the Carolinas means that this year’s MitM will mark a full year since Carolinas Writing Program Administrators members and friends will have had an opportunity to gather. We have much to catch up on, and much to celebrate!

 

Our theme for this year’s meeting will be reflection—specifically, metacognition in the writing classroom. Metacognition—monitoring, evaluating, and adjusting one’s own approaches to learning—is essential for a writer’s development. Wendy Sharer and Kerri Flinchbaugh from East Carolina University will lead us in a workshop that focuses on two related areas: 1) strategies for helping students develop metacognitive awareness of their writing processes, and 2) promoting metacognitive pedagogy through WAC–based professional development. Time will be provided for participants to begin planning activities and assignments for their courses and/or to sketch out structures for metacognition-focused faculty workshops.

 

The lunch break will give you time to check in with colleagues about the “AP3 issue” in North Carolina, meet with others on tenure- or non-tenure track appointments about shared concerns, and any other special interests that span institution and state boundaries.

 

Other folks will have an opportunity to share their work during afternoon concurrent sessions. See the full CFP below.

 

And everyone is invited to celebrate our 15th anniversary and the transition to a slightly new executive team: Collie Fulford will be transitioning to past-president, Paula Patch to president, and Kevin Brock to president-elect.

 

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators 2019 Meeting in the Middle Full CFP

 

Friday, February 8, 2019

10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (with optional Friday evening events)

UNC Charlotte Center City Building

320 E. 9th Street, Charlotte, NC 28202

Theme: Reflection and Celebration: Looking Back, Moving Forward

 

Proposal deadline: Friday, January 18, 2019. We have a quick turnaround, and presenters will be notified by Tuesday, January 22, so they have plenty of time to make travel arrangements.

 

You are entirely welcome to attend without presenting, but those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda. This may help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals. We encourage individual or team proposals from people in the Carolinas who are working in any teaching or administrative positions related to writing. We also welcome creative interpretation – and deviation – from this year’s theme of Promoting Metacognition in the Classroom. Three different presentation types reflect members’ interests:

  1. Problem: Describe a teaching, program leadership, or research problem that you would like help thinking
    about with other attendees. 10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
  2. Showcase: Share a teaching method or writing program leadership strategy that is working well at your
    site. Or present findings from a study you’re involved in that would interest writing teachers and WPAs.
    10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
  3. Other: You have an idea for that doesn’t fit either category. Explain! You still have 10-15 minutes to
    present.

A proposal must include the following:

  • Names and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your
    proposal
  • Type of presentation (problem, showcase, other)
  • A title and brief description for the program
  • Your specific goals for presenting

 

Please use this proposal form to submit your proposal.

 

Because of the shorter format of Meeting in the Middle, we are not able to accommodate all of the presentations we had planned for Wildacres. If you submitted a proposal that was accepted for Wildacres, we strongly encourage you to submit a proposal for Meeting in the Middle.

 

 

Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle 2018 CFP

Call for Proposals

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators

Meeting in the Middle

Friday, February 16, 2018

10:00 AM – 4:30 PM

(optional Thursday and Friday evening events)

UNC-Charlotte Center City Building
320 E. 9th Street, Charlotte, NC 28202

Theme: 2020 Vision: Building Connections and Coalitions across Campuses

Proposal deadline: Friday, February 2, 2018

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators is accepting proposals for its Twelfth Annual Spring Conference, Meeting in the Middle.

Connections, collaborations, coalitions. Effecting change—whether in working conditions or website resources—requires sustained and supported efforts of groups of people who share common goals, values, and vision. It helps if they also share disciplinary identity and language. In their chapter in the recently published collection Surviving Sexism in Academia: Strategies for Feminist Leadership, compositionists Jennifer Heinert and Cassandra Phillips describe the characteristics of effective coalitions: “A coalition has common goals, works purposely toward them, and shares credit and responsibility for the work. Creating a coalition begins with identifying, including, and supporting colleagues who share values, concerns, and goals. On the surface, this may seem like an easy task, but it involves establishing regular communication and developing trust over time” (“From Feminized to Feminist Labor”).

This year’s Meeting in the Middle is designed to give writing program administrators and faculty time and space to find the people who share their values, concerns, and goals. Acknowledging that the work in front of us, whether teaching, research, or activism, is more than one individual person, program, or school often has time or resources to tackle well, we encourage you to find partners to share the load. We are, as has been said, better together.

We invite proposals for brief presentations that might address the following:

 

  • Successful coalitions. Already have partners? What kinds of things have you accomplished as a team? And what can others learn from your experience?
  • Help wanted. Have a research, curricular, or programmatic project that could use a few more heads or hands? Describe the project and the ways others can help.

 

You are entirely welcome to attend the Meeting in the Middle without presenting, but those who declare what they are working on in advance will be listed on the formal agenda, which may help with self-advocating for travel funding.

Your proposals also help us plan appropriate interest groups and design workshop activities around your goals.

We welcome creative interpretation of the theme and goals. This forum is appropriate for work that would benefit from feedback and focused workshop time. Carolinas WPA welcomes individual and team projects at any stage of development and from people working in any teaching or administrative positions related to writing in the Carolinas.

 

Conference Format

A featured talk on strategies for cross-institutional collaboration led by Carolinas WPA member Jessie Moore will be followed by small breakout interest groups and writing activities. Those presenting should prepare for 15-20 minutes per person to discuss their work-in-progress and seek feedback from those with shared interests.

 

Proposals

Each proposal should be 250 – 500 words including the following:

  • Names and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your proposal
  • A presentation title
  • A description of the pertinent topic
  • Your specific goals for presenting at MinM

Submit it via email to Collie Fulford (cfulfor1@nccu.edu) and Paula Patch (ppatch@elon.edu) by 12:00 midnight Friday, February 2, 2018, using the subject line “MinM Proposal yourlastname.”

Questions or Comments? – Contact Paula Patch at ppatch@elon.edu.

 

Registration

The registration price of $40.00 includes lunch and the opportunity to bring a guest for free. Carpooling encouraged. Recommended: Add $6.00 per car to prepay parking.

  • The registration deadline is Friday, February 9, 2018.
  • When you “Bring a Friend for Free,” you must register your friend when you register yourself.

Registration opens soon on the Carolinas WPA website.

 

Parking

UNC-Charlotte Center City charges Carolinas WPA $6 for each event parking pass. Passholders have access to a lot very close to the conference building. If you prepay for a parking pass, we will email guidelines for printing your pass the week of the conference. If you choose not to prepay, you will need to find an alternate parking location.

 

Hotels

Map of hotels near the conference

Registration now open for Carolinas WPA’s 2017 Fall Conference at Wildacres

Registration is now open for the 2017 Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators. More information on the conference is available below and in the conference’s call for proposals. Please visit this page to register.

Photo of the view from the Wildacres Retreat Center
The view from the Wildacres Retreat Center

14th Annual Fall Carolinas Writing Program Administrators Conference

Communities and Contact Zones: Doing Justice

September 18-20, 2017 | Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, NC (Directions) | $200 (includes 2 nights lodging and 5 meals)

  • Proposal deadline: Friday, August 25, 2017
  • Registration deadline: Monday, September 11, 2017

Carolinas WPA 2017 Wildacres Retreat Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals

14th Annual Fall Carolinas Writing Program Administrators Conference

Communities and Contact Zones: Doing Justice

September 18-20, 2017 | Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, NC (Directions) | $200 (includes 2 nights lodging and 5 meals)

  • Proposal deadline: Friday, August 25, 2017
  • Registration deadline: Monday, September 11, 2017

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators is accepting proposals on the theme of “Communities and Contact Zones: Doing Justice” for its Fourteenth Annual Fall Conference.

Twenty-six years after Mary Louise Pratt published “The Arts of the Contact Zone,” our profession continues to grapple with ways to call out colonialism in our classrooms and universities.  We seek ways to invite heterogeneity of expression and perspectives, and we strive to work with conflict and discomfort in ever-contested learning spaces. Our conference site itself is a contact zone in which the white supremacist history of the property contrasts with its present mission to serve as an inclusive, anti-discriminatory site for dialog across differences. The dialectic between community and difference that Pratt calls attention to comes into play in nearly every aspect of our work in the Carolinas as we attempt to do justice to our best ideas, do justice with our students and colleagues, and do justice in often conflicted institutional contexts.

What are you working on in your classrooms, your programs, or your research?  What challenges are you experiencing in your communities, in your justice work?  What successes have you had in working with or across differences? How do we do justice to the ideas, like Pratt’s, that invigorate our work?  As teachers, as program leaders, as community members, as researchers, how do we do justice with each other? How might the community of Carolinas WPA further your work toward those ends?

 

Keynote and Workshops: “Contemplating Race: Mindfulness as Antiracist Pedagogy.” Emma Howes and Christian Smith from Coastal Carolina University will facilitate workshops on using contemplative practices in the classroom to enact antiracist pedagogy. They will discuss some of the theoretical background for this work, providing exercises that cultivate mindfulness to build critical literacy skills in spaces where differing discourses meet. They will also address the ways we, as instructors and administrators, may benefit from our own development of contemplative work. In this way, participants will be asked to consider the value in creating slow reading and writing practices to facilitate agents to more carefully consider their initial encounters with text. This encourages deep engagement with literacy practices for navigating multiple, often clashing, discourses, and helps build empathy through the work of deep, rhetorical listening. Contemplative practices may thus allow students of writing to move from affectively-driven reactions to reflective responses.

 

Conference Schedule and Format. The conference begins at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 18, and concludes at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 20. A keynote talk on Monday evening will be followed by a full day Tuesday of workshops, small breakout interest groups, and activities on the beautiful mountaintop of Wildacres Retreat, with a closing session Wednesday morning. All meals are provided.

The conference format encourages engagement of participants from a broad variety of institutions and programs.

Those presenting should prepare for 15-20 minutes to discuss their work and seek feedback from those with shared interests. Those leading retreat activities or mini-workshops should prepare for 45-60 minutes focused on lively participant involvement.

Wildacres Retreat is a low-tech setting conducive to relaxing, collaborating, and learning with friends and colleagues across the Carolinas.

 

Proposals. You are entirely welcome to attend this conference without presenting, but those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda, which may help with obtaining travel funding. Proposals also help us plan appropriate interest groups and design activities around members’ goals.

We welcome creative interpretation of the theme. This forum is especially appropriate for work that would benefit from feedback and focused workshop time. Carolinas WPA welcomes individual and team presentations at any stage of development and from people working in any teaching or administrative positions related to writing in the Carolinas.

You may submit a proposal for one of two types of activity:

  • Individual or team presentation to be placed into 1-hr discussion groups with other presenters. Plan for approximately 20 minutes per person including discussion time.
  • Retreat activity: Solo or co-lead anything from yoga or an Appalachian plant identification walk to a mini-workshop related to the conference theme. Plan to have 45- to 60-minutes. We welcome creative use of Wildacres’ indoor and outdoor common spaces.

Be prepared to work without AV equipment. (Internet is very limited and we may not have access to projectors.) Each proposal should be 250 – 500 words including:

  • Names and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your proposal
  • Type of activity (individual or team presentation 15-20 minutes per person; retreat activity or mini-workshop of 45-60 minutes)
  • A title and brief description of what you will share
  • Your specific goals for presenting
  • Questions for attendees that will help you elicit feedback relevant to your goals.

Submit your proposal via email to Collie Fulford (collie.fulford@gmail.com) and Paula Patch (ppatch@elon.edu) by 11:59PM Monday August 25, 2017, using the subject line “CarWPA Proposal yourlastname.”

 

Registration and Cost. The registration fee of $200 includes 2 nights’ lodging and 5 meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials. Conferencegoers must register by Monday, September 11, 2017. No refunds after Friday, September 8. The registration link will be opening soon on our conference page.

Questions or Comments? – Contact Collie Fulford at collie.fulford@gmail.com.