Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois is hosting this year’s Iowa+ Writing Center Consortium conference on Friday, April 19th, 2024 from 9:00am-3:00pm. Please save the date and plan to attend! See below for the CFP.
Call for Proposals: “Writing Agency” – due January 29th
Writing centers have long sought to help our clients develop agency by giving them the tools to make more informed choices as readers/writers, but this focus is sometimes at odds with student and faculty expectations. Meanwhile, book bans and restrictions on institutions of higher education—including in Iowa—have attempted to minimize agency by silencing marginalized or dissenting voices. At the same time, the recent proliferation of AI-generated text has myriad implications for authorship and voice. Given these competing forces, how can writing centers foster agency in our clients and tutors alike?
Here are some examples of different ways proposals may approach the broad theme of “writing agency” (this is not an exhaustive list):
- How might writing centers advocate for and amplify marginalized voices? What barriers or assumptions prevent students from making use of us and developing agency as readers/writers? What does agency look like for tutors from marginalized communities, and how should our centers’ policies and practices change accordingly?
- How can writing centers enable writerly agency by promoting multilingualism and code-meshing? How might we serve as agents of change within our larger institutions in this area? What, practically speaking, does it mean to prioritize a writer’s authentic voice over grammar/“correctness”?
- How do AI writing tools/chatbots affect agency, and how should writing centers respond? How might these technologies help or hinder writers’ development and tutors’ approach? How should our policies and practices change to respond to students’ reliance on AI tools and texts?
To be clear, proposals that don’t address any of the above–yet show some awareness of the theme of “writing agency”–are more than welcome! Promoting agency is an idea that underlies much of what we do in the writing center, even if we may not have always thought of it as such.
Proposal Requirements: Proposals should include a 50-word abstract (that will appear in the conference program, if accepted), plus a session description of no more than 250 words. Proposals should be as specific as possible about the role of the presenters, the degree of audience participation, the learning objectives or goals of the session, and the format the presentation will take:
Panel Presentation: 3 or 4 presentations of 15-20 minutes each on a specific theme or question.
Individual Presentation: 15-20 minute-presentation (that will be combined into a panel by the conference organizers).
Workshop: A participatory session that engages attendees in active learning.
Roundtable Discussion: 15 minutes of introductory framing by the leader(s) followed by a facilitated discussion among attendees.
Poster Presentation: A research-fair style presentation in which the presenter(s) create a visual argument and informally discuss their research with attendees.
Audio/Visual: We will have projectors, but presenters should bring their laptops.
Submission: Proposals should be emailed to readingwritingcenter@augustana.edu no later than January 29, 2024. Put “IWCC Proposal” in the subject line. Expect a response by the end of February.
We look forward to reading your proposals and to hosting you in Rock Island!
–Lucas Street, Farah Marklevits, Jake Romaniello, and all the peer tutors of the Augustana College Reading/Writing Center
Iowa Writing Center Consortium 