Dear Colleagues,
HAPPY NEW YEAR from the First-Year Writing Program at the University of Connecticut.
I’m writing to share the CFP for our 21st Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing, which will be held on Thursday, April 23 and Friday, April 24, 2026, on our campus in Storrs, CT. We are excited to announce that our Keynote speaker will be Dr. Kendall Gerdes, author of Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism.
We hope that you can also share the CFP below with your friends and colleagues!
CFP BELOW:
Our theme for the upcoming conference is: “Wicked Reading for Wicked Problems." We are once again inviting you to help us explore ways of approaching these ‘wicked problems’, such as those that evade consensus, offer multiple solutions, or may even resist resolution at all. Instead, such dilemmas invite us to open space to collaborate, engage, and challenge ourselves within the classroom and our discussions of academic freedom.
Our keynote speaker, Dr. Kendall Gerdes, will be leading us in exploring the role of writing education in connection with academic freedom during times of emergent crises. They are an Associate Professor at the University of Utah and a winner of the 2025 Conference on College Composition & Communication’s (CCCC) Outstanding Book Award for their book Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024). Dr. Gerdes will also be hosting a teaching workshop that will engage participants in exploring the possibilities for teaching sensitive and contentious topics in times of polycrisis.
We invite you to submit proposals that may explore, but are not limited to, topics such as:
- How might the frameworks of “wicked problems” and “wicked reading” impose upon and reshape students’ writing identities?
- How do we foster engagement with texts that encourage either competing or complicated answers?
- How does the writing classroom handle questions and anxieties around academic freedom?
- What is at stake for secondary classroom educators when working within frameworks of “wicked problems” and “polycrises”?
**For more possible areas of inquiry, we encourage you to review our Call for Proposals (attached to this email).
We are inviting proposals that take the form of research presentations, teaching workshops, or ideas that will be featured in our Research Slam. We encourage any submissions that engage our participants in exciting or interactive ways when discussing these ‘wicked problems.’
The deadline for proposal submissions is Friday, January 30th, 2026. Please see the attached Call for Proposals (CFP)or our website for more details on submission guidelines and formats.
If you have any questions, please email us at FYWConference.
Sincerely,
The University of Connecticut First-Year Writing Program’s Conference Planning Committee
Howard Fisher (he/him), Ph.D.
Associate Director of First-Year Writing
Assistant Professor-in-Residence
Department of English
University of Connecticut
215 Glenbrook Road, Unit #4025
Storrs, Connecticut 06269-4025