Themes: Escape and Refuge
Luncheon Speaker: Ruelaine Stokes, poet & tutor at Lansing Refugee Center
Location: Lansing Community College West Campus, 5708 Cornerstone Dr., Lansing 48917
We live in a world with many conflicts and wars, which have created large numbers of displaced people, including a larger number of refugees than at any time in the past. We may seek refuge in our society, classrooms, workplaces, country, and world. How can we help our students to deal with their own desires to escape and/or confront such problems? How are the themes of escape and refuge manifest in what we read, learn, study, and teach? How do administrators and faculty negotiate these issues? To what extent should we and our students discuss state, national, and international political issues related to escape and refuge? How do works of literature comment on these topics? What are the implications of these topics in the writing class?
The Michigan College English Association invites proposals for individual papers and for complete panels for our Fall 2018 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 1, 2018.
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.
Proposals are due by October 1, 2018. 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.
