Themes: Authority and Agency During Divisive Times
Featured Luncheon Speaker : Matthew Gavin Frank
Location: Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197
Individuals often contest the issues of authority and agency in our classrooms, workplaces, country, and world. How can we help our students to feel like authorities who have agency? How are agency and authority manifest in what we read, learn, study, and teach? How do administrators and faculty negotiate agency and authority? To what extent should we discuss state, national, and international political issues of agency and authority in our classrooms? How do works of literature comment on the topics of agency and authority? What are the implications of agency and authority in the writing class?
The Michigan College English Association invites proposals for individual papers and for complete panels for our Fall 2017 Conference. We welcome proposals from experienced academics, young scholars, and graduate students. We encourage a variety of papers, including pedagogical and scholarly essays as well as work from creative writers. Here are some possible areas for presentations:
fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction professional expectations/evaluation/assessment
classroom management teaching composition, literature, linguistics
preparing students for the work world English departments and our society
curriculum development the creative process
computer or on-line instruction union/administration differences
race, class, and gender studies film studies
Graduate Students: Graduate students with the best scholarly paper and the best creative writing will receive awards. To qualify for graduate student awards, the completed papers must be submitted to the program chairs by October 10, 2017.
Although we encourage papers and panels that reflect the conference theme, we also welcome proposals from all areas that English and Writing departments encompass: cultural studies; developmental education; English as a second language; literary studies; multicultural literature; popular culture; progressive education; reading and writing across the curriculum; and technical writing.
Note that the new MCEA website is https://michigancea.org/
Proposals are due by October 8, 2017. Early submissions are welcome. Please send your name, university affiliation, e-mail address, AV requests, time/day preference, and a 200-word abstract or sample of creative writing to Joyce Meier and Janet Ruth Heller, Program Chairs, via email at meierjo@msu.edu and janetheller@charter.net. To submit a panel proposal, please include the information for all members (4 maximum participants) in the same proposal.