Special Session

Professional and Pedagogy / Composition and Rhetoric

Shataparni Bhattacharya (Indiana University - Bloomington)
shab@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This pedagogy roundtable provides a venue for graduate students and early career faculty to discuss ways of incorporating their scholarly interests as researchers into the undergraduate (often first-year composition) classroom. Presentations and discussion may offer strategies for course design, assignments and lesson plans, teaching tools, classroom practices, and syllabus policies that meaningfully integrate instructors’ scholarly interests into the composition classroom.

Graduate students and early career faculty teach undergraduate writing courses (often first-year composition) while simultaneously conducting specialized research. Yet, the relationship between our research interests and our teaching can feel distant, particularly in courses with established curricula, learning outcomes, or limited room for disciplinary specialization. How might we meaningfully integrate our scholarly interests into the composition classroom in ways that enrich both our teaching and our research?

This roundtable invites graduate students and early career faculty to discuss ways of incorporating their scholarly interests as researchers into the composition classroom as instructors. Rather than formal paper presentations, this session will prioritize short informal presentations, conversation, and the sharing of practical approaches for bringing research into undergraduate writing instruction. Our goal is to create a space for early career scholars to exchange ideas, reflect on pedagogical practice, and collectively imagine ways of bringing our scholarly work into the writing classroom.

We welcome short contributions (5–7 minutes) that briefly introduce an idea, course design strategy, teaching tool, activity, assignment, lesson plan, classroom practice, or syllabus policy, that showcase how you incorporate your research into your composition pedagogy. As each presentation is to be no more than 7 minutes in length, please use your time to:
1. Describe your strategy, tool, or policy, focusing on essentials;
2. Suggest ways to implement or adapt it to other courses;
3. Highlight how your classroom instruction is enriched by the inclusion of your research interest.

Proposal submissions to the roundtable should include brief responses to the above; should specify the category (whether the idea is a course design strategy, teaching tool, activity, assignment, lesson plan, classroom practice, syllabus policy or other); and should provide an estimated time-duration for your presentation. We look forward to your submissions.