Previous Conference Themes and Locations
Click on recent conferences for a PDF of the program.
2019 Conference
Topic: "What's Trending?": Fresh Approaches in Literature, Writing, and Pedagogy
St. Bonaventure University, Olean, NY
Conference Chairperson: Lauren Matz
The conference featured papers on a range of topics including graphic novels, intersectionality in the classroom, the use of film and media, and several papers emphasizing the value of the digital humanities.
Plenary Speaker: Catherine Waitinas, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Topic: "What's Trending?": Fresh Approaches in Literature, Writing, and Pedagogy
St. Bonaventure University, Olean, NY
Conference Chairperson: Lauren Matz
The conference featured papers on a range of topics including graphic novels, intersectionality in the classroom, the use of film and media, and several papers emphasizing the value of the digital humanities.
Plenary Speaker: Catherine Waitinas, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
2018 Conference
Topic: Embedding English
Plaza College, Queens, NY
Conference Chairpersons: Laura Butchy
The conference explored literature and writing in every field, looking to areas beyond the academy to locate literature and the written word. The Friday entertainment was an Artists Cafe with original music and poetry.
Plenary Speaker: Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania
Topic: Embedding English
Plaza College, Queens, NY
Conference Chairpersons: Laura Butchy
The conference explored literature and writing in every field, looking to areas beyond the academy to locate literature and the written word. The Friday entertainment was an Artists Cafe with original music and poetry.
Plenary Speaker: Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania
2017 Conference
Topic: Marking the Margins and Setting the Center
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Conference Chairpersons: Scott O'Neil and Daniel Singleton
The conference, a collaboration between NYCEA and the Writing Speaking and Argument Program at Rochester, aimed to explore questions of margins and marginality from a variety of angles and definitions. The Friday night entertainment featured a screening of the Ida Lupino film The Bigamist, which tied into Saturday's keynote speaker's topic.
Plenary Speaker: Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College
Topic: Marking the Margins and Setting the Center
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Conference Chairpersons: Scott O'Neil and Daniel Singleton
The conference, a collaboration between NYCEA and the Writing Speaking and Argument Program at Rochester, aimed to explore questions of margins and marginality from a variety of angles and definitions. The Friday night entertainment featured a screening of the Ida Lupino film The Bigamist, which tied into Saturday's keynote speaker's topic.
Plenary Speaker: Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College
2016 Conference
Topic: The Value of the Humanities and Writing in the 21st Century
Suffolk County Community College, Ammerman Campus, Selden, NY
Conference Chairperson: Douglas Howard
The conference, a collaboration between NYCEA and the Suffolk CCC annual Teaching of Writing Festival, focused on the realities of our changing profession, and how to move forward as scholars and teachers of the humanities and writing. The Friday night entertainment, Juke Joint: A Blues Musical by William Burns and Melissa Adeyeye offered an interactive and musical history of blues culture and its connection to national and racial history.
Plenary Speaker: David Bianculli, NPR and Rowan University
Topic: The Value of the Humanities and Writing in the 21st Century
Suffolk County Community College, Ammerman Campus, Selden, NY
Conference Chairperson: Douglas Howard
The conference, a collaboration between NYCEA and the Suffolk CCC annual Teaching of Writing Festival, focused on the realities of our changing profession, and how to move forward as scholars and teachers of the humanities and writing. The Friday night entertainment, Juke Joint: A Blues Musical by William Burns and Melissa Adeyeye offered an interactive and musical history of blues culture and its connection to national and racial history.
Plenary Speaker: David Bianculli, NPR and Rowan University
2015 Conference
Topic: Digital Domains & Humanistic Thresholds
Hilbert College, Hamburg, NY
Conference Chairperson: Charles Ernst
The conference focused on the issue of the Digital Humanities movement, covering all aspects including literary study, composition and communications. Digital pedagogy was a particular focus.
Plenary Speaker: Joanna Swafford, SUNY New Paltz
Topic: Digital Domains & Humanistic Thresholds
Hilbert College, Hamburg, NY
Conference Chairperson: Charles Ernst
The conference focused on the issue of the Digital Humanities movement, covering all aspects including literary study, composition and communications. Digital pedagogy was a particular focus.
Plenary Speaker: Joanna Swafford, SUNY New Paltz
2014 Conference
Topic: Core Controversies
Hudson Valley Community College
The conference focused on the issue of the Common Core curriculum as well as college core curriculums, exploring the theoretical foundations of the Common Core, issues of college-readiness, and diversity in the college core curriculum.
Plenary Speaker: Peggy O'Brien, Director of Education for the Folger Shakespeare Library
Topic: Core Controversies
Hudson Valley Community College
The conference focused on the issue of the Common Core curriculum as well as college core curriculums, exploring the theoretical foundations of the Common Core, issues of college-readiness, and diversity in the college core curriculum.
Plenary Speaker: Peggy O'Brien, Director of Education for the Folger Shakespeare Library
Fall 2013 Conference
Topic: Dimensions of Disability
St. John’s University, Manhattan
Conference Chairperson: Angela Belli
The conference explored images of disability in literature and pedagogical approaches to understanding disability.
Fall 2012 Conference
Topic: Art and Literature
Villa Maria College
The conference focused on the theme of “literature and the arts,” exploring the multiple intersections, conflicts, and parallels between literature and other forms of visual and performing art.
Plenary: Author Eric Gansworth
Fall 2011 Conference
Topic: Language and Feeling
Utica College
Conference Chairperson: James Scannell
Oscar Wilde wrote that “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” What role does feeling play in the generation and reception of literature? What becomes of that feeling within the professional discipline of English and composition studies
Fall 2010 Conference
Topic: Narratives of Healing and Hurt
St. John Fisher College
Conference Chairperson: Deb VanderBilt
What are the narratives of illness and wellness in our culture? Do writing and literature have a therapeutic effect? This conference explored how metaphor and narrative shape our perceptions of health and disease, medical practitioners, and medical education.
Fall 2009 Conference
Topic: Risk
Niagara County Community College
Life is full of risks. Therefore, let us reflect on the role risk plays in our lives, institutions, society, relationships, and literature. Consider the way risk is depicted, experienced, celebrated, and/or enjoyed in art and life.
Spring 2009 Conference
Topic: The Relationship Between Print and Film
St. John’s University
Does the genre change when the medium changes? What is the relationship between author and producer? Why do successful novels end up as failed films or failed novels as successful films? What changes in print to film? What changes in film to print?
Fall 2008 Conference
Topic: Close Reading
St. Bonaventure University
The term close reading generally means a painstaking examination of the details of language, imagery, figures of speech, and structure in a literary passage with an eye to extrapolating meaning for the broader text. The practice of close reading is fundamental to New Criticism, formalism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. It raises questions and poses special challenges for other critical approaches.
Spring 2008 Conference
Topic: Reconcilliation: Word over all, beautiful as the sky
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY
A conference exploring reconciliation in the literature of all periods, authors, genres, and countries. Papers examined a range of topics including the process toward reconciliation, reconciliation as a temporary measure, reconciliation and denouement, reconciliation and myth, reconciliation and conflict, the narrative of reconciliation, forgiveness, truth and reconciliation, and alienation/discomfiture, disclosure and reconciliation.
Fall 2007 Conference
Topic: The Thread of Narrative: Directions and Digressions in the Storytelling Process
Daemen College, Amherst, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of storytelling from traditional plot development, experimental prose or poetry, and the internal logic of the text to the effect of chaos or quantum theory on narrative process, rising and falling action, and Freitag’s triangle.
Spring 2007 Conference
Topic: Literature and Evolution/ Literature and Revolution
SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of literature and literary studies concerned with “Literature and Evolution / Literature and Revolution,” exploring all facets of the reading experience, the many relationships between literature and allied disciplines, and a wide range of biographical, aesthetic, social, and political possibilities, including literature and political revolution, authorial or stylistic “evolution,” “progress” as a literary trope, and teaching revolutionary literature.
Fall 2006 Conference
Topic: Ethnicity, Literature and Language
Utica College, Utica, NY
How does ethnicity impact the teaching, and study of language and literature? How is ethnic history, identity, and regional or local color captured in language and literature? Possible topics include: ethnicity and gender, teaching ethnic studies, ethnic memoir, ethnic politics, immigration, New York history/literature, and ethnicity and disability.
Spring 2006 Conference
Topic: Resistance to Tyranny — Representing the Struggle for Human Rights in Literature
Marymount College of Fordham University, Tarrytown, NY
In an interview with Amnesty International, Chilean writer and activist Ariel Dorfman explains that, despite efforts to silence survivors of human rights violations, “Somehow the stories do come out, those voices do come out. I am not their voice: I make a space for those voices, a bridge.” Dorfman’s insights raise questions about the role of literature in the struggle for human rights. How do writers represent often unspeakable crimes against humanity and create a cultural memory that recognizes the forgotten or marginalized voices from the past? What does it mean to bear witness through literature? How has the struggle for human rights, for various forms of freedom, found representation and support in different ways throughout history? These questions can apply to human rights issues across cultures, and continents as well as centuries.
Fall 2005 Conference
Topic: Crepuscular Consciousness — Literature and the Obscure
Nazareth College, Rochester, NY
The function of obscurity in literature greatly exceeds the mere refusal to “be clear.” Ambiguity, liminality and shadowy reality engage readers in a relationship with texts that demands imagination, interpretation, and, often, a suspension of the urge to simplify and hurtle forward toward the end (of a text, of a class, of a thought). These elements create atmosphere, challenge the process of meaning making and make us work.
Spring 2005 Conference
Topic: Cartographies
Siena College, Loudonville, NY
Literature and maps might be said to share the same enterprise. As Paul Theroux wrote, in "a sense, the world was once blank...and...cartography made it visible and glowing with detail." Like maps, literature plots paths through uncharted territories, trying to make visible what before sat unnoticed. It shapes and transforms experiences into a new kind of knowledge, a new way of seeing with what Margaret Atwood terms our "third eye," the eye that shows us that "this truth is not the only truth."
Fall 2004 Conference
Topic: Crossing Borders
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Challenging boundaries and interweaving texts, the current focus on interdisciplinary studies has enlivened our critical and conceptual environment. What is the role of writing and literature in relation to such fields as philosophy, history, drama, cultural studies, science, linguistics, math, and communications?
Spring 2004 Conference
Topic: The Doors of Perception: Vision, Imagination & Reaction In/To Literature
SUNY Albany, Albany, NY
Imagination allows us to see what does not physically exist; it shapes our thoughts and, as Shakespeare said, gives to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name. Perception organizes our reality, particularizes our responses and provides for different visions of the same event. Literary characters, literary critics, teachers and students of literature and writing open doors of perception with every act of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Topic: Dimensions of Disability
St. John’s University, Manhattan
Conference Chairperson: Angela Belli
The conference explored images of disability in literature and pedagogical approaches to understanding disability.
Fall 2012 Conference
Topic: Art and Literature
Villa Maria College
The conference focused on the theme of “literature and the arts,” exploring the multiple intersections, conflicts, and parallels between literature and other forms of visual and performing art.
Plenary: Author Eric Gansworth
Fall 2011 Conference
Topic: Language and Feeling
Utica College
Conference Chairperson: James Scannell
Oscar Wilde wrote that “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” What role does feeling play in the generation and reception of literature? What becomes of that feeling within the professional discipline of English and composition studies
Fall 2010 Conference
Topic: Narratives of Healing and Hurt
St. John Fisher College
Conference Chairperson: Deb VanderBilt
What are the narratives of illness and wellness in our culture? Do writing and literature have a therapeutic effect? This conference explored how metaphor and narrative shape our perceptions of health and disease, medical practitioners, and medical education.
Fall 2009 Conference
Topic: Risk
Niagara County Community College
Life is full of risks. Therefore, let us reflect on the role risk plays in our lives, institutions, society, relationships, and literature. Consider the way risk is depicted, experienced, celebrated, and/or enjoyed in art and life.
Spring 2009 Conference
Topic: The Relationship Between Print and Film
St. John’s University
Does the genre change when the medium changes? What is the relationship between author and producer? Why do successful novels end up as failed films or failed novels as successful films? What changes in print to film? What changes in film to print?
Fall 2008 Conference
Topic: Close Reading
St. Bonaventure University
The term close reading generally means a painstaking examination of the details of language, imagery, figures of speech, and structure in a literary passage with an eye to extrapolating meaning for the broader text. The practice of close reading is fundamental to New Criticism, formalism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. It raises questions and poses special challenges for other critical approaches.
Spring 2008 Conference
Topic: Reconcilliation: Word over all, beautiful as the sky
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY
A conference exploring reconciliation in the literature of all periods, authors, genres, and countries. Papers examined a range of topics including the process toward reconciliation, reconciliation as a temporary measure, reconciliation and denouement, reconciliation and myth, reconciliation and conflict, the narrative of reconciliation, forgiveness, truth and reconciliation, and alienation/discomfiture, disclosure and reconciliation.
Fall 2007 Conference
Topic: The Thread of Narrative: Directions and Digressions in the Storytelling Process
Daemen College, Amherst, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of storytelling from traditional plot development, experimental prose or poetry, and the internal logic of the text to the effect of chaos or quantum theory on narrative process, rising and falling action, and Freitag’s triangle.
Spring 2007 Conference
Topic: Literature and Evolution/ Literature and Revolution
SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of literature and literary studies concerned with “Literature and Evolution / Literature and Revolution,” exploring all facets of the reading experience, the many relationships between literature and allied disciplines, and a wide range of biographical, aesthetic, social, and political possibilities, including literature and political revolution, authorial or stylistic “evolution,” “progress” as a literary trope, and teaching revolutionary literature.
Fall 2006 Conference
Topic: Ethnicity, Literature and Language
Utica College, Utica, NY
How does ethnicity impact the teaching, and study of language and literature? How is ethnic history, identity, and regional or local color captured in language and literature? Possible topics include: ethnicity and gender, teaching ethnic studies, ethnic memoir, ethnic politics, immigration, New York history/literature, and ethnicity and disability.
Spring 2006 Conference
Topic: Resistance to Tyranny — Representing the Struggle for Human Rights in Literature
Marymount College of Fordham University, Tarrytown, NY
In an interview with Amnesty International, Chilean writer and activist Ariel Dorfman explains that, despite efforts to silence survivors of human rights violations, “Somehow the stories do come out, those voices do come out. I am not their voice: I make a space for those voices, a bridge.” Dorfman’s insights raise questions about the role of literature in the struggle for human rights. How do writers represent often unspeakable crimes against humanity and create a cultural memory that recognizes the forgotten or marginalized voices from the past? What does it mean to bear witness through literature? How has the struggle for human rights, for various forms of freedom, found representation and support in different ways throughout history? These questions can apply to human rights issues across cultures, and continents as well as centuries.
Fall 2005 Conference
Topic: Crepuscular Consciousness — Literature and the Obscure
Nazareth College, Rochester, NY
The function of obscurity in literature greatly exceeds the mere refusal to “be clear.” Ambiguity, liminality and shadowy reality engage readers in a relationship with texts that demands imagination, interpretation, and, often, a suspension of the urge to simplify and hurtle forward toward the end (of a text, of a class, of a thought). These elements create atmosphere, challenge the process of meaning making and make us work.
Spring 2005 Conference
Topic: Cartographies
Siena College, Loudonville, NY
Literature and maps might be said to share the same enterprise. As Paul Theroux wrote, in "a sense, the world was once blank...and...cartography made it visible and glowing with detail." Like maps, literature plots paths through uncharted territories, trying to make visible what before sat unnoticed. It shapes and transforms experiences into a new kind of knowledge, a new way of seeing with what Margaret Atwood terms our "third eye," the eye that shows us that "this truth is not the only truth."
Fall 2004 Conference
Topic: Crossing Borders
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Challenging boundaries and interweaving texts, the current focus on interdisciplinary studies has enlivened our critical and conceptual environment. What is the role of writing and literature in relation to such fields as philosophy, history, drama, cultural studies, science, linguistics, math, and communications?
Spring 2004 Conference
Topic: The Doors of Perception: Vision, Imagination & Reaction In/To Literature
SUNY Albany, Albany, NY
Imagination allows us to see what does not physically exist; it shapes our thoughts and, as Shakespeare said, gives to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name. Perception organizes our reality, particularizes our responses and provides for different visions of the same event. Literary characters, literary critics, teachers and students of literature and writing open doors of perception with every act of speaking, listening, reading and writing.