“Evolving Possibilities: Futures of Advanced Writing”
University of Southern California
Event Date: Friday, January 29, 2027
Deadline to Submit a Proposal: Friday, September 25, 2026
Context
The USC Writing Program is delighted to host the fourth annual National Advanced Writing Symposium! The event is entirely ONLINE and FREE to both speakers and attendees, as we aim to bring together teachers of advanced and/or upper-division college composition courses to discuss innovative methods and effective practices. Our theme, “Evolving Possibilities: Futures of Advanced Writing,” welcomes participants to contemplate how Advanced Writing will address emerging needs and conditions in our discipline and beyond.
Please join us and share your work in the Advanced Writing space. We hope to include a wide variety of topics, from how you theorize modes of writing beyond first-year composition to how you build your students’ confidence and skills as they prepare to write in a rapidly changing, professional world beyond college. Our theme invites analyses of the multifaceted information landscapes that advanced student writers face as they transition from school writers to life writers.
If selected to present at the symposium, you will also be invited to submit your work to the NAWS Online Journal, which will publish its inaugural issue in Fall 2027.
Topics & Issues
We welcome proposals for panels, individual presentations, workshops, and roundtables related to any of the following:
- The Human: How can we prioritize the humanity of knowledge production in Advanced Writing contexts? Humanist futures; innovations that embrace analog or paper-based practices; reimagining low-tech approaches; the paradox of reclaiming techniques of the past to offset the uncertainties of emerging technologies.
- The Generative: How is the humanity of writing in conversation with digital generative tools? Human generation versus machine synthesis; generative AI and LLMs, including contrasting views on these technologies and debates over their uses; writing as generative (because certainly, writing was generative before Chat GPT!)
- The Political: How can Advanced Writing pedagogies resist oppression, increase inclusion, and support social justice? The intersection of Advanced Writing and DEIB; teaching practices that fight fascism, encourage solidarity, or demonstrate “principled refusal”[1]; resisting institutional structures or social forces that estrange students from their work or each other.
- The Students’ Futures: How might we help our students transition from “school writing” to “life writing” as they adjust to their professional worlds? Anticipating the changing needs and expectations of the professions and disciplines students are entering; professional writing; experiential learning; nonfiction genres as a form of social action.[2]
- The Discipline: How might Advanced Writing spaces serve to do more than rehash the rhetorical essay, but rather serve as a place to innovate pedagogies in a turbulent Higher Ed landscape? Adapting pedagogies to changing conditions; writing instructors and program administrators working in ways that are shaping or innovating our discipline; the future of Advanced Writing within the broader context of higher education.
- The Multifaceted Information Landscape: As a teacher or scholar of Advanced Writing, how are you playing in the multiverse? Genre as contextual; how identities shift across projects (i.e., multiple registers, voice, meeting audience and genre expectations while maintaining one’s identity as an author); complex information landscapes (i.e., assemblages, Deleuze, Complexity; information circulation; alternative ways to access resources).
What to Send Us
A proposal of 250-450 words, along with a 40-60 word abstract. You can submit:
- Panel proposals: 3-4 speakers organized around a theme or issue of your choice
- Individual presentation proposals: 1-2 speakers delivering a single talk/paper
- Workshop proposals: Sessions focused on workshop activities and/or audience collaboration
- Roundtable proposals: 4-5 speakers gathering for a roundtable conversation on the issue of your choice
Proposal Submission Deadline: Friday, September 25, 2026
Submit Proposals via this GOOGLE FORM.
For any questions about developing your proposal, contact Tamara Black at tamarabl@usc.edu or Elizabeth Durst at edurst@usc.edu with the subject line “NAWS 2027.”
Please visit our NAWS 2027 Website or join our mailing list to receive news and updates about the symposium.
[1] The act of rejecting systems–institutional, cultural, or corporate–that reproduce inequalities. For instance, see Tressie McMillan Cottom’s “principled refusal” of AI dominance as a foregone conclusion here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUlNVvmka05/
[2] See Miller, Carolyn R. “Genre as Social Action.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, no. 2 (May 1984): 151–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638409383686.