Date: Friday, September 30, 2022
Theme: Vulnerability
Featured Speaker: Alison Swan, Environmental Writer*
This conference will be 100% on Zoom.
The conference theme of “Vulnerability” refers to a broad range of issues that we face in 2022. Climate change, development of previously wild areas, drought, fires, floods, hurricanes, etc. threaten people, animals, and plants in our environment. Wars, epidemics, poverty, homelessness, prejudice, racism, political conflict, and isolation also make us feel insecure. Many colleges are laying off professors and instructors, and some institutions are closing. How can we faculty members help our vulnerable students and colleagues? How can writing assignments enable students to better cope with current conditions? How can we make our classrooms and colleges safer spaces for people of color, women, GLBTQ individuals, immigrants, religious minorities? Which works of literature reflect on vulnerability and/or provide reassurance? What are advantages and disadvantages of online instruction during a time of insecurity? How can we educators, administrators, and creative writers foster resilience?
We will have the entire conference online via Zoom.
The Michigan College English Association invites proposals for individual papers and for complete panels for our Fall 2022 Conference. We welcome proposals from experienced academics, young scholars, and graduate students. We encourage a variety of papers, including pedagogical work, scholarly essays, creative writing, as well as workshops, crafting circles, and other activity-directed sessions. All proposals will be peer-reviewed.
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
literacy textual analysis
Conference proposals are due by September 11, 2022. 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 Program Chairs Ilse Schweitzer, Curtis VanDonkelaar, and Lori Burlingame via email at schwei53@msu.edu , vandonkc@msu.edu , and lburlinga@emich.edu . To submit a panel proposal, please include the information for all members (5 maximum participants) in the same proposal.
Topic Tags: call for papers, Michigan College English Association, conference, Vulnerability, Resilience, Environment, teaching, creative writing, composition, literature, linguistics
*Alison Swan teaches for the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. Her poems and environmental writing have appeared in many publications, including her books A Fine Canopy: Poems, Before the Snow Moon, and Dog Heart, and the recent anthologies Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction, Here: Women Writing on the Upper Peninsula, and Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry. Alison Swan’s book Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes is a Michigan Notable Book. Her other awards include a Mesa Refuge Fellowship and the Michigan Environmental Council’s Petoskey Prize for Grassroots Environmental Leadership which she shared with David Swan for their ongoing work to protect and preserve the Saugatuck Dunes at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River.
