University of Connecticut, First-Year Writing 

Twentieth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing 

Storrs, Connecticut 

April 24-25, 2024 

Joy to You and Me: Making Space for Joy in the Writing Classroom  

We invite conference proposals for the University of Connecticut First-Year Writing Program’s Conference on the Teaching of Writing, taking place in Storrs on Thursday April 24th and Friday April 25th 2025. Proposal submissions are due on Friday January 10th, 2025 and can be submitted through this form. We are thrilled to be hosting Stephanie West-Puckett as this year’s keynote speaker. Dr. West-Puckett’s research centers the use of queer interventions for writing studies and assessment. Her current project bridges these pedagogical methods with practices of joy in the writing classroom. We are thrilled for her to share her expertise with us.  

We invite proposals that consider our conference theme “Joy to You and Me: Making Space for Joy in the Writing Classroom.” We understand joy as a powerful resource, a mode of resistance, and a pedagogical framework. As writing instructors, challenges to ourselves and our students are innumerable. Finding joy amongst dread, upheaval, and catastrophe can be a practice of resilience, a refusal to accept a status quo that hurts us. We also understand joy in the classroom as an act of care, both for ourselves and for our students. Opportunities for laughter, compassion, and play can both be a needed distraction, but can also act as revelatory gestures of expression that help us frame our experiences in new ways. Joy invites others into our space and fosters community in our classrooms and on our campuses. How do we frame the work we do not merely as keeping up but about flourishing? How might we even understand failure as a kind of flourishing?   

We seek proposals of 250 to 300 words for accessible and active presentations. We strongly encourage proposals that describe how material will be interactive, participatory, and/or engaging for the audience. Presentations and sessions should be designed to be accessible from the outset. Proposals may take the following forms: 

• Research presentations: Propose an individual presentations or fully formed session. Proposals for fully-formed sessions should include a brief description and all individual proposals. 

• Teaching workshops: Propose to lead a one-hour teaching workshop on a specified topic. All conference attendees will have the opportunity later to sign up for accepted workshops. 

• Research Slam: A free-flowing, participatory session made up of interactive digital exhibitions, posters, skill and resource shares, engaged play, and other alternative formats for sharing research, teaching, or creative practice. 

Please submit your proposals here.  

We invite proposals focused on any aspect of the topic as it pertains to the teaching of writing, but we will give preference to proposals that address one or more of the following questions or otherwise engage current scholarship on educational practices that focus on, incorporate, or explore joy and assessment in the writing classroom:  

Questions to consider: 

• How do practices of joy emerge in the writing classroom? 

• How can joy be incorporated into assignments and class activities? 

• How does joy shape our experiences as teachers? How might it shape our students’ experiences? 

• How can joy influence writing assessment? How might we think about joy and failure as key components to assessment? 

• How can we think about joy in connection to Writing Program Administration? What’s at stake and what opportunities are there? 

• How is joy constructed in particular ways according to race, gender, and sexuality?  

• How can writing practices make room for or create possibilities for joy? How might we situate multimodal writing as specific kinds of joy? 

• How can resistance and revolt be constituted as joy? How do we explore this in our classrooms or on our campuses? 

• How can we understand joy as a community endeavor? What opportunities can joy create in our classroom, department, or campus communities? 

• How can joy be a part of conversations about dual enrollment programs in our learning communities, such as Early College programs that bring first-year writing classes to high school students?