Writing and Wellbeing: A New Urgency for Human-Centered Composition Pedagogies (NeMLA 2027 Convention) (NeMLA 2027 Annual Convention)
Newport, RI
Organization: Northeast Modern Language Association
Event: NeMLA 2027 Annual Convention
Call for Proposals
NeMLA’s 58th Annual Convention – “Empowering Communities”
March 6–9, 2027 | Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island
Roundtable Title: Writing and Wellbeing: A New Urgency for Human-Centered Composition Pedagogies
Primary Area / Secondary Area: Rhetoric & Composition / Pedagogy & Professional
Modality: In person only
Chair: Miranda Lutyens, University of Massachusetts Amherst
College is a time of excitement and novelty, but it can also bring about anxiety and uncertainty. Those unsettling emotions have been on an upward trend in recent years, with a host of factors — the fallout of the pandemic, social media’s curation of idealized lives, and existential fears relating to climate change, generative AI, and political turmoil — raising concerns about the wellbeing of students. The college writing classroom has a long history of offering compassion through creative (and even countercultural) approaches to teaching and learning. This included affirming the rights of linguistically marginalized students to their own language, as well as efforts to keep struggling writers in school to keep them out of the Vietnam War.
As we collectively face new urgencies, this roundtable session invites participants to share research projects and instructional practices that consider college writing classrooms as affective and embodied spaces. Recognizing concerns such as instructors’ emotional labor and under-resourced writing programs, the session primarily focuses on putting forward innovative approaches to making writing instruction responsive to students’ experiences in increasingly uncertain times. Insights gained from critical teacher research on human-centered pedagogies are particularly welcome, as are contributions from all levels of writing instruction, including first-year composition, writing in the disciplines, writing support for graduate students etc.
The goal of this roundtable is for both participants and attendees to leave with expanded perspectives on how the college writing classroom might offer students more pleasure and new possibilities – to reimagine a more salutary relationship to writing, to engage with the written word in more personally meaningful ways, and to gain a greater awareness of themselves and others. The roundtable also aims to offer practical strategies for enacting – or at least experimenting with – new classroom practices.
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026
Please submit abstracts via the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22547
Convention information can be found here:
https://www.nemla.org/convention.html
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22547
Miranda Lutyens