Dear Colleagues,
For those of you in California (or in a California state of mind), please consider sending in a paper, panel, or workshop for The Future of Writing Conversations across California Higher Education. The conference will be July 15-16, 2027 at Cal Poly Maritime in Vallejo, CA. Proposals are due November 16, 2026.
About the Convening
What is writing today? How are students and faculty reading, writing, and learning in the age of generative and agentic AI? From social media to emerging AI technologies, the ways we communicate, create knowledge, and learn have changed dramatically. These shifts bring new opportunities, new challenges, and important questions about the future of writing.
This conference invites educators, researchers, and administrators from across California’s Community Colleges, CSUs, and UCs to explore evolving pedagogies, student experiences, and emerging technologies for cross-segment collaboration. As students move through our educational systems, they carry diverse literacies, technologies, languages, and goals. Together, we can examine how writing is changing and help shape what writing education can become.
Guiding Questions
Rather than asking what writing has been, we ask:
- What kinds of writing futures are emerging in California higher education?
- How are artificial intelligence and other technologies reshaping what it means to write, learn, and teach?
- What knowledge, practices, and values should remain central as writing instruction evolves?
- How can educators collaborate across institutions to better support students throughout their educational journeys?
- What opportunities emerge when community colleges, CSUs, and UCs think about writing together rather than separately?
- How might we design more equitable, inclusive, and responsive writing futures for California’s diverse student populations?
Conference Strands
We welcome proposals from faculty, graduate students, writing center professionals, administrators, educational developers, librarians, and researchers. Submissions may present research, innovative pedagogies and programs, works in progress, collaborative initiatives, or interactive conversations about urgent challenges in writing instruction. Strands are intended to demonstrate conference themes. Proposals should align to the conference theme, but specific strand selection will not impact proposal selection.
Strand 1. AI and Emerging Technologies in Writing
How are AI and other emerging technologies reshaping writing practices, writing instruction, and writing research? What new opportunities, challenges, and ethical questions are emerging as students and faculty integrate these tools into their work? Possible topics include:
- Generative AI and writing pedagogy
- Human-AI collaboration in writing
- Ethics, equity, and authorship
- Assessment in AI-rich environments
- Digital rhetorics and multimodal composing
- Emerging writing technologies and platforms
- Student perspectives and agency on AI and writing
- AI skepticism, resistance, and critical perspectives
- Linguistic justice, language diversity, and AI
- AI technologies as tools for summarizing readings and other sources
Strand 2. Still Teaching Humans: Writing Instruction in a Time of Artificial Intelligence
How are writing teachers responding to changing literacy practices, student needs, and institutional pressures? What new approaches are emerging, and what long-standing practices still matter? Possible topics include:
- First-year composition in a post-ChatGPT landscape
- ESL courses in a post-AI landscape
- Writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines
- Translingual and multilingual pedagogies in an AI-mediated world
- Writing assessment
- Evolving relationships among reading, writing, and meaning-making
- Reading processes in writing courses
- Writing centers and student support
- Equity-minded writing instruction
- Creative and innovative pedagogical approaches
- Writing as purpose, process, and productive struggle
- Writer agency: protecting students’ capacity to make meaningful choices in their own writing
- Teacher agency: institutional pressures and pedagogical authority
- Redefining authorship, voice, and authenticity
- The role and future of creative writing instruction in an age of AI-generated fiction.
Strand 3. Peer and AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR)
How are peer review, AI feedback, and critical reflection reshaping writing practices, writing instruction, and writing assessment? What new possibilities emerge when writers critically evaluate feedback from both human and AI readers while retaining agency over their writing and revision? We invite faculty who have incorporated PAIRR approaches into the courses to share their experiences with conference attendees. Possible topics include:
- Human-centered approaches to AI-supported writing
- Critical AI literacy and writer agency
- Reflection, revision, and formative assessment
- Linguistic justice, language diversity, and AI
- Equity and access to writing support
- Student perspectives on AI feedback
- AI feedback, peer review, and writing processes
- Ethics, privacy, and responsible AI use
- Metacognition reflection: Writing choices, feedback, revision, and learning
Strand 4. Intersegmental Pathways and Partnerships
What can faculty in California’s higher education system learn from one another? How might greater collaboration improve writing instruction, support transfer students, and strengthen educational pathways across institutions? Possible topics include:
- Transfer, curriculum, and intersegmental partnerships
- Cross-segment conversations about writing outcomes and expectations
- Cal-GETC, transfer reform, and writing requirements
- Shared assessment initiatives
- Collaborative research projects
- Dual enrollment and early college programs
- Writing support across educational transitions
- Faculty learning communities and professional development
- Statewide initiatives and policy conversations
The future of writing will not be shaped by a single institution, technology, discipline, or educational sector. It will emerge through the conversations we have, the partnerships we build, and the futures we imagine together. We invite proposals that help us explore, question, design, and build those futures.
If you have any questions about the conference, feel free to reach out.
Best,
Carl
Carl Whithaus (pronouns: he/him)
Professor of Writing and Rhetoric
Director, University Writing Program
University of California, Davis