UConn First-Year Writing presents the 21st annual

Conference on the Teaching of Writing

Wicked Reading for Wicked Problems

April 23-24, 2026
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut

REGISTER HERE

Questions? Email fywconference@uconn.edu

Conference Program

A full, detailed program will be made available soon. For the time being, we know that:

  • Thursday will include the Research Slam and the Keynote Workshop by Dr. Kendall Gerdes, and
  • Friday will include the Keynote Address and the Aetna Celebration of Student Writing.

Conference Theme

A 2023 report by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) describes a global trend in approaches to education that respond to a pressing question: With ever-evolving situations of technological change, globalization, demographic shift, and climate emergency, how do we prepare students for the future if we don’t know what competencies are going to be needed? No exception to this trend, UConn has responded to looming crises with a new Common Curriculum structured around a similar set of inquiry areas and competencies. Writing instructors are familiar with what it means to teach these new competencies or “future skills”: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, complex problem solving, and digital literacy. 

Now, in the first year of the Common Curriculum’s implementation, First-Year Writing aims to move this conversation forward by seeking further frameworks for engaging with crisis and broadening strategies to support students’ responses. Two frameworks that interest us are Wicked Problems and polycrisis. We understand “Wicked Problems” as questions that invite dissensus and invoke a variety of responses because they are not easy to answer and may not even elicit resolution. Wicked problems are chock-full of interdependent factors, incomplete information, and unsettled definitions. Meanwhile, polycrisis describes a climate where “disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part” (Global Risks Report 9). Polycrisis prioritizes students’ explorations of the interanimating dynamics of multiple issues, even crises, while also opening up multiple avenues of response. 

Two strategies for teaching under these frameworks include “Wicked Reading” and teaching for “sensitive rhetorics” (Gerdes, 2024). We develop the term “wicked reading” as a strategy to respond to the wickedness which “derives from the fact that [Wicked Problems] are not the tame problems solvable through greater command of more information” (Marback 399). Therefore, “Wicked Reading” might describe teaching that foregrounds students’ integration of multiple reading strategies to create novel ways of responding to emergent situations. An instructor might likewise approach (poly)crisis through sensitive rhetorics, where sensitivity acts “as the condition of possibility for language to both injure, wound, or harm, and to affect rhetorical existents in the first place” (Gerdes 5). 

We invite you to join us and our Keynote Speaker Dr. Kendall Gerdes in thinking about the role of (writing) education and the heightened stakes of academic freedom in a time of emergent crises. 

With Keynote Speaker

Dr. Kendall Gerdes

   

Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah, and winner of winner of the 2025 Conference on College Composition & Communication's (CCCC) Outstanding Book Award for their book Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024).

Keynote Address: Solidarity and Survival: Lessons on Teaching Writing from and for Polycrisis 

Pandemic. Economic disparity. Racial injustice. Climate disaster. Democratic decline. Censorship. Protest. Generative AI. Each of these names a contemporary domain of wicked problems: issues that seem intractable because of their complexity, messy contexts, and competing values. These issues also overlap and inform one another, and so we find ourselves living in an age of polycrisis. How are teachers of writing meant to meet the current moment in higher education, to protect our work as well as our wellbeing, and to empower our students with the rhetorical skills they need to navigate their world? 

The framework of “polycrisis” allows us to explore the interanimating dynamics of multiple issues, even crises, while also opening up multiple avenues of response. The goal of this keynote address is to offer teachers of writing insights & resources to support a restorative relationship with our teaching. That is, teaching can be a way of opening a transformative space for our students in the midst of both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. But we must acknowledge that doing such work is both difficult and risky. We need to stay grounded in the disciplinary values that shape our field, and we need to sustain ourselves—as departments and writing programs, as labor forces, as colleagues and teachers, and as humans. Polycrisis does not have one simple solution, but through solidarity, we may find lessons to help us survive it. 

Dr. Gerdes will also be hosting a teaching workshop that will engage participants in exploring the possibilities for teaching sensitive and contentious topics in times of polycrisis.

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Location and Venue

The conference will be held at Werth Tower at the UConn Storrs Campus. The address is 2378 Alumni Drive Storrs, CT 06269. 

Parking

Parking is available for a fee at the North Parking Garage.

Additional information about parking for visitors to the Storrs campus can be found on the UConn Parking Services website

Dining

Food will be provided for conference registrants and participants.

There are many options in Downtown Storrs for dinner, coffee, and/or snacks. We recommend Gansett Wraps, Dog Lane Café, and Kathmandu Kitchen & Bar. There are also numerous other stores and restaurants in this area, including Price Chopper, CVS, Subway, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Starbucks, and Dunkin’.

The Student Union (SU) Building, located at a 5-minute walk from the building where the conference takes place, contains a food court and a convenience store.

Transit

Peter Pan Buses come to UConn Storrs from Hartford, New York City, Boston, and other cities. For other bus options for getting to UConn from other points in Connecticut, check out UConn’s Transportation Services’ Regional Transit page and the CT Transit’s Trip Planner.

Lodging

Lodging is available near campus, including the following options:

Graduate Hotel

Address: 855 Bolton Rd, Storrs, CT 06268
Phone: (860) 427-7888

Spring Hill Inn

Address: 957 Storrs Rd, Storrs, CT 06268
Phone: (860) 477-1199

There are also AirBNB options near campus.