Our 19th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person on 9:45 a.m. on Friday, February 7, 2025. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present by completing this Google Form and submit a payment by visiting this web page.
Call for Proposals: Carolinas Writing Program Administrators – Meeting in the Middle 2025
When: February 7, 2025, 9:00am registration, 9:45am EST to begin (full schedule to come)
Where: Younts Conference Center, Furman University 2005 Rugby Rd, Greenville, SC 29613
We cordially invite you to Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference, and we’ve got some BIG news to share. We’re moving venues for this conference.
We’ve long wanted to host events in South Carolina, since our membership reflects both of the Carolinas, and this year, the opportunity presented itself. And while it’s not quite in the middle, our hope is you will still consider joining us in Greenville, SC at the campus of Furman University.
Conference Theme: “The Power of Praxis: Notes from the Field”
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” – Paulo Freire
“Education as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn.” – bell hooks
Over the last several years, academia has responded to external factors that feel wildly outside of our control: global pandemics; elections and constant legislature changes with direct impacts on DEI, Title IX, recruitment, budgets, and education; the rapid spread of generative AI; FAFSA debacles that wreaked havoc on enrollment; and then, most recently, Hurricane Helene’s ravaging of our mountain counties in North and South Carolina. We white-knuckled our way through the past several years as we’ve responded to stressors that have placed significant constraints on our work.
And yet.
What endures, despite the ever-changing external landscape of our industry, is the praxis of teaching. The things we do in service to the profession we love persist beyond any external constraints. Teaching is the heart of what we do. Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that narrate, question, uplift, illustrate, workshop, reflect on, and propose ideas related to the practice of teaching.
During our annual retreat at Wildacres, we reflected on the work we do and named several “hubs” of interests, considerations, and concerns. We invite you to consider ideas that could fit into these subthemes. We’ve listed some ideas for each subtopic, but that list is not exhaustive.
Value, Worth, Sense of Belonging: What we do matters; work/life balance; the value of writing studies in the institution; labor and compensation; networking as a vital practice.
Leadership in Justice & Ethics: DEI initiatives in the face of state politics; state and national elections; the age of misinformation and disinformation; AI; diversifying and decolonizing our teaching; linguistic justice; digital literacy; writing as an agent of change.
Joy as Exigence: Do less better; writing as joy and liberation; the joy of teaching; sustaining practices; professional friendships and collaborations; creating margin and avoiding burnout; new teaching tools and tricks.
Praxis of Hope & Compassion: Mindfulness and wellbeing; pedagogy of kindness; rhetorics of compassion; self-reflection as a practice; assessment with real purpose; writing to heal and process.
Keynote Presentation: Play and the Conditions of Invention
In its invitation to consider praxis, this conference invokes Paolo Freire and bell hooks, reminding us of the impulse toward creativity and freedom at the heart of why so many of us have dedicated our lives to the teaching of writing. Freedom, though, is not simply the absence of restriction – our relative sense of freedom to create, to invent, and to reinvent comes out of the conditions in which we write and work, conditions which inevitably include boundaries, expectations, and limits. Some of those limits actually help us to create, and some of them restrict to the point of stifling us. As educators, it’s our task to design conditions for our students such that they will feel capable and, hopefully, freer to invent. This talk will use play as a framework for understanding the relationship between freedom and structure as a relationship between risk and safety, and will invite attendees to consider how our teaching practices set the table for our students to do meaningful, difficult, and joyful intellectual work.
Al Douglass is the Director of the Writing Center at Wofford College, where she teaches courses in composition and American cultural studies. She has previously served in writing program roles at the City University of New York, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Midwestern State University. Her scholarly interests are in queer theory, play, and humor. Douglass studies playful forms of cultural production, including games, comedy and improvisational performances, especially from LGBT+ communities, and she applies theories of play and humor in the classroom. Her hobbies are sewing, hand embroidery and bird watching. She has two cats, Elvis and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Call for Presentations:
We welcome individual, paired, or group proposals in the following formats:
Traditional presentations: Presenters share their work, research, ideas, experiences. These presentations typically include visual slides or handouts. 45-60 minutes; including time for Q&A and discussion (time will be decided based on the number of Presentation proposals accepted; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).
Workshops: These are more hands-on experiences where presenters facilitate some whole-group discussion or reflection. Attendees are asked to participate more actively (through writing prompts, group discussion, brainstorming or ideation, completing worksheets, etc). 45-60 minutes (time will be decided based on the number of Workshop proposals accepted; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).
Roundtable discussions: More relaxed in their setting, roundtable discussions may solicit feedback for ideas, assignments, programs, concepts the presenter(s) want to try out in the classroom or work through a scenario playing out at the programmatic or institutional level. Presenters may or may not have presentation materials or handouts, but will lead discussion. 30-45 minutes (time will be decided based on the number of Roundtable Discussions selected; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).
Please communicate any equipment needs (ie: access to monitor, wifi, AV, etc.)
New this Year! Book club! Based on the survey we sent out in the fall, we will hold a 60 minute book club discussion on the book A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial. This session will be facilitated by board members Megan Busch and Shawn Bowers. If you can’t get the book read in time, no worries – please still feel free to join us.
Deadline: 11:59pm, January 24, 2025
We’re excited to offer graduated pricing levels this year to help those without institutional funding attend at the lowest registration cost possible. Prices below include annual membership in Carolinas Writing Program Administrators, registration, lunch, and parking at Furman University. (Click on this link to submit payment for registration.)
Attendees without Institutional Financial Support: $45
Attendees with Some Institutional Financial Support: $60
Attendees with Full Institutional Financial Support: $75
Additionally, if you would like to invite and bring someone new to the organization, we’re pleased to offer their registration at our lowest cost: $45.
Is funding still a hurdle for attendance? Please let us know (robin.snead@uncp.edu).We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee.
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 President, Robin Snead at robin.snead@uncp.edu. Questions about registration/payment/invoices can be sent to Megan Busch at mbusch@csuniv.edu.
New Venue! New Shirts! We will have shirts for sale at Meeting in the Middle if you didn’t snag yours at Wildacres this past fall. If you would like to preorder a shirt ($20 each), please use the following link: Carolinas WPA T-Shirts (2024) – Carolinas Writing Program Administrators
Maps and more details about travel to follow.