Conference Theme: Multiplicity
We are pleased to invite proposals for the University of Washington English Department Writing Programs’ fifth annual Praxis Conference, which will be held at the UW Seattle campus on Friday May 30th, 2025. The theme for the conference is “Multiplicity” (understood broadly to include how to honor and support the multiplicity of our students’ identities, knowledges, modes of communication, and languages) and its possibilities as they relate to our teaching of English.
In our increasingly globalized and technologically mediated world, we are offering multiplicity as a way to think about composing. The increasing awareness of the multiplicity of our students’ identities and knowledges invites us to think translingually about our work. In a time when AI innovations are quickly making existing pedagogical repertoires harder to sustain, we invite participants to think multimodally as a way to work with and not against students’ existing knowledges. We conceptualize a praxis of interconnectivity broadly as both a multimodal approach to engaging multiple literacies as well as a philosophy that recognizes how cultural practices- in the ways that they embody our connections to place, society and culture- are always multimodal, translingual, and multiliterate, and always inform our teaching at any given time. Given this understanding, we are excited to think with you about how pedagogies of multiplicity can help us explore the following and other related questions:
- How can we foreground the knowledge making practices of multiply marginalized members of our communities in our teaching?
- How can we respond to the complexities of emergent technologies in our teaching?
- How can our teaching practices not only foster individual expression but also encourage collective action and social justice across communities?
- How can evaluation and assessment design encourage multiplicity of expression?
- What does thinking with multiplicity afford us as educators, students, and citizens?
Since its inception, the Praxis Conference has served as a platform for educators, students, and other stakeholders within and beyond the University of Washington community to bring theory and practice into conversation on various topics of writing pedagogy. We encourage faculty, staff, students, and administrators from UW’s three campuses, local colleges, K-12 schools, as well as community partners and other UW affiliates to present their research, community initiatives, teaching strategies, and context-specific projects that contribute to expanding our understanding and practices across disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches as well as proposals that address issues of equity are highly encouraged.
Some possible topics could include, but are not limited to:
- Multiliteracies/Multimodality
- Translingualism
- Critical Studies: Feminist, Queer, and Trans*; Race and Ethnicity; Dis/ability;
- Migrant knowledges and postcolonial studies
- Teacher and student identity and intersectionality
- Dual Enrollment and Intersections of K-12 and College teaching
- Rhetoric/Poetics
- Literature, Media, and Cultural Studies
- TESOL/Applied Linguistics Place-Based and Environmental Literacies
- Generative AI/Chat GPT and other technologies Indigenous and Decolonial Approaches
- Affect
- Archives
Proposals for 75 minute breakout sessions or posters should be 250-500 words and for one of the following types of presentations:
- 15-20 minute presentation from one to two presenters
- 75 minute panel (including Q&A) from multiple presenters proposing three related presentations on a topic related to the conference theme
- 75 minute roundtable discussion with audience members
- 75 minute workshop where presenter(s) lead participants to engage in a topic related to the conference theme and help work on participants’ own materials
- Poster presentations that address any topic related to the conference theme or English teaching; see this resource on preparing a poster: How to poster (Colorado State University)
Please submit proposals via this webform. Please include the following:
Type of presentation
Title of the presentation
Presenter’s name(s), professional title(s) affiliation(s), and email(s)
250-500 word proposal
Deadline for submissions: March 21, 2025 by 11:59pm PST
Acceptance notifications will go out before the end of April.
Please contact the conference co-chairs with any questions, Hamza Ahmad at hahmadw@uw.edu and Jennie Baker at jenba@uw.edu