CFP: Beginning Again: Wayfinding in Troubling Times (summer 2027 AEPL conference)

The Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL) is now accepting proposals for its 29th summer conference, Beginning Again: Wayfinding in Troubling Times, at the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2027. The deadline for submissions is 5pm Eastern on Monday, November 23, 2026. Click here (or read on below) for full details and a link to the submission form. Please join us!

Nate Mickelson

AEPL Chair

Clinical Professor and Director of Faculty Development

Expository Writing Program

New York University

Beginning Again: Wayfinding in Troubling Times

Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

June 24 – 27, 2027

University of California, Santa Barbara

“Each time I trace a tangle and add a few threads that at first seemed whimsical but turned out to be essential to the fabric, I get a bit straighter that staying with the trouble of complex worlding is the name of the game of living and dying well together on terra, in Terrapolis.”

– Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

Welcome to the 29th Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning Summer Conference. Inspired by possibilities we imagined together last year, AEPL invites literacy educators from all levels and contexts to gather again at the edge of the California Coast to reckon with the present, draw insight and courage from the past, and invent ways toward more humane and hopeful futures.

Organized in part as a retreat, the conference will offer time and space for reckoning with challenges, mourning what we have lost, remembering what we have learned through past struggles, and sharing stories and ideas for what our teaching might become. The program will foreground community, alliances, and a collective commitment to positive practices in the face of new beginnings.

We invite you–K-12, college, and community educators; writers; artists; researchers; and learners of all kinds–to lead and join in experiential presentations and workshops, reflective practices, collaborative writing, emerging research, creative performances, and other knowledge-making activities.

We offer this invitation in a moment of profound uncertainty. So much seems to be ending. So many of the structures and institutions we have relied on for community and renewal are being dismantled. And yet. And yet we are making our way, “staying with the trouble,” as philosopher Donna J. Haraway puts it, leveraging grief and anger toward renewal. Endings bring beginnings and care is the essence of teaching and learning.

In light of the conference theme, proposals for workshops might explore:

• What “staying with the trouble” looks like in teaching, writing, research, and community

• Pedagogies of wholeness / holistic pedagogies

• Ethics of care / pedagogies of care

• Trauma-informed pedagogies

• Mourning rituals and learning with/through grief

• Meditation, mindfulness, yoga

• Writing as a means for self-renewal / writing as a means for relation

• Keeping the past with us / Exploring scholars who came before us (e.g., James Moffett, Cynthia Selfe, Peter Elbow, Alice Brand, Sheridan Blau, Sondra Perl, and others)

• Teacher research and inquiry / participant action research

• Reading, writing and literacy practices for the heart, soul, and spirit

• Community writing / communal writing

• Advocacy / Advocacy writing

• Kairotic moments in and out of the classroom

• Outdoor pedagogies / teaching outdoors / teaching in and with nature

• Place-based literacies / place-specific literacies

• Environmental writing and learning

Session formats: We seek proposals from individuals and groups–K-12, college, and community educators; writers; artists; researchers; and learners of all kinds–for experiential workshops, lesson demonstrations, exhibitions and performances, research immersions, roundtables, and other activities that invite participants to write, think, and collaborate together. Sessions will be 30 or 60 minutes. The organizers will facilitate collaborations among individual presenters engaging related questions and topics.

• Experiential Workshop: Lead participants in activities that prompt personal or/and pedagogical engagement, writing, and reflection

• Lesson Demonstration: Guide participants through a lesson, assignment, unit, or class you’ve designed and highlight successes, questions, challenges, and insights

• Exhibition or Performance: Share creative work in your preferred media: visual art, a reading of poetry or prose, a dramatic performance, and others.

• Immersion in Your Research: Share emerging insights from your research and gather feedback, suggestions, and new lines of inquiry from attendees

• Roundtable: Join (or lead) a focused discussion focused on the conference themes

Special invitation to students: We are keen to welcome undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines, majors, and specializations as participants and workshop leaders. To make participation possible, we offer scholarships and discounted registration and membership rates.

Estimated Costs: Registration and membership costs are used to fund publication of AEPL’s award-winning, peer-reviewed journal JAEPL. Given the nature and location of this in-person conference, we want to be as clear as possible how you might estimate your expenses, including registration and membership fees, lodging, and meals related to this event.

We are committed to making participation accessible. To this end, we are partnering with UCSB to offer single or double-occupancy rooms in the new San Joaquin apartment complex on campus, a short walk from the meeting rooms. No-cost shuttle service will be provided to/from the rooms.

While there is no requirement that conference participants stay or eat at the USCB facility, we do encourage staying on site. We have reserved a block of rooms for attendees near the meeting rooms and the dining hall for your convenience. These modern, apartment-style rooms include three bedrooms (single or double occupancy) and two private bathrooms, accommodating up to 6 persons. We will be happy to help you if you need assistance in finding a roommate, just indicate so on the registration form.

Transportation: The Santa Barbara Airport is a 10-minute drive from the conference venue and often costs the same or less to fly to than Los Angeles (LAX). The organizers will arrange vanpool transportation from the Santa Barbara airport to the conference venue. For those flying to LAX, there is a regular shuttle service (the Santa Barbara Airbus) that offers free wifi and a comfortable ride.

Make a Vacation of it! For those wishing to come early or stay later, the UCSB campus is ideally located for a range of family and personal excursions. Stunning public beaches, state parks, and forests are accessible within minutes, including Goleta Beach Park, Refugio State Beach, and Los Padres National Forest. Other nearby sites include Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, which documents and preserves the culture of the indigenous Chumash people; and the 19th century Santa Inés Mission; and the Danish enclave of Solvang. The Pacific Coast Highway, Greater Los Angeles, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Mojave Desert are within driving distance!