Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals

Errors in Our Expectations

Mina Shaughnessy & Basic Writing 50 Years Later

The City College of New York, CUNY · New York, NY · June 10–12, 2027
Chair: Missy Watson · Co-Chair: James Dunn

Proposals due Monday, November 23, 2026

2027 marks fifty years since Mina Shaughnessy published her pioneering book, Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. Much has changed in the last five decades, including our students, their writing, our pedagogies, and the sociopolitical contexts of institutions and nations. Yet, far too much has remained the same, especially when it comes to misguided assumptions about—and thus expectations for—students, language, and literacy. For this conference, we invite proposals that examine an array of errors in our expectations.

Background

The City College of New York, a core institution in New York City’s public university system (CUNY), is oft-cited as the birthplace of Basic Writing. City College’s foundational role in the field is inseparable from the Open Admissions policy of 1970 and the research conducted in response by Mina Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy’s research and on-the-ground efforts fundamentally challenged the notion of the “basic writer” as deficient and “uneducable,” and instead framed students’ “errors” as linguistically sound and logical results that occur when writers (are expected to) learn new language systems and discourses.

Since Shaughnessy, teacher-scholars of Basic Writing have continued the tradition of contesting the mismatch between expectations and realities when it comes to:

• what is meant by “basic writing,”
• who is considered a “basic writer,” and
• what role “error” and error correction play (and should play) in teaching writing.

In Basic Writing and Composition Studies writ large, we have also long addressed problematic myths and expectations that have been hard to shake despite decades of research debunking them. For instance, consider how we as a whole have yet to fully detach from assuming that…

• Writing is a solitary and objectively assessable practice
• Composition is and should be one mode of text-based communication
• The five-paragraph essay is an ideal genre for student learning and communication
• Teaching and testing for grammar rules enhances student learning and writing
• Marking / correcting “errors” in student writing helps improve students’ grammar
• Students should arrive to college already “prepared” to read and write for college
• Students learn best in our classes when required to use English and English only
• All writers should achieve the same English-only standards within our courses / degrees

Sets of Questions

To collectively grapple with these and other “errors in our expectations,” we invite proposals that address any of the following sets of questions:

1. What are the legacies of Mina Shaughnessy’s scholarship? How has Shaughnessy’s work impacted composition teaching for the better? What criticisms and transformations of Shaughnessy’s work have been (or still need to be) incorporated into the field?
2. Who are the fundamental theorists of early basic writing scholarship, and how have they impacted the trajectory of basic writing today? What historical contributions from marginalized voices (e.g., instructors, students) warrant acknowledgment? And how might we amplify them?
3. Who is a “basic writer” today? How have students and their needs changed (or remained the same) in the last 50 years? How might we better deconstruct the stigmatized label of “basic writer” to better reflect students’ linguistic assets and intellectual capabilities?
4. Where is “composition” going? What politics remain in BW models like ALP, Stretch, and Directed Self-Placement? How might we re-envision the field in light of new student demographics, ever-growing curricular and labor demands, and the dissolution of CCCC?
5. What are the errors in our expectations in college composition today? What do we know about who our students are, how they actually learn, use language, and write, and how our expectations and teaching practices neglect (or even worsen) these socio-linguistic realities?
6. What are the errors in expectations in higher education and society writ large today? What do we know from scholarship in composition studies that outsiders ought to know? What strategies and opportunities are there to share disciplinary knowledge with broader audiences?
7. What are the errors in our expectations for what counts as “access” and “equity” in composition and higher education? How might we better support students with language differences, disabilities, neurodivergencies, as well as family, life, and time constraints?
8. What sorts of curriculum, teaching, and feedback strategies are needed to resist errors in our expectations about students, language, and writing? And how might we best address GenAI, multimodality, cross-languaging, remote learning, and digital technologies in our teaching?
9. What advocacy exists and/or is still needed to resist errors in our expectations about program administration, including and especially the politics of placement, enrollment caps, course credit, curriculum development, assessment, and administrators’ job security and promotions?
10. What advocacy exists and/or is still needed to resist errors in our expectations about teacher training and the ongoing exploitation of adjuncts who are overworked, underpaid, and situated in precarious, unstable positions that lack benefits, job security, and power?

Who Can Apply?

We welcome proposals from all members of the academic community, including (under)graduate students, adjunct instructors, full-time faculty, new and seasoned basic writing teachers, and researchers of basic writing, composition studies, writing centers, and beyond.

Presentation & Session Formats

We welcome the following presentation and session formats:

How to Apply

For individual presentations, prepare a proposal that includes:

• The Title of the Presentation (>20 words)
• An Abstracted Description (>50 words)
• A Full Description (>250 words)

For panels, roundtables, and workshops, prepare a proposal that includes:

• The Title of the Session (>20 words)
• An Abstracted Description (>150 words)
• A Full Description (differentiating speakers) (>600 words)