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Call for Proposals

11th Annual Cavalier Conference on Writing and Literature
“Plot Twist!”
April 10, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Laura Moriarty

Everyone who loves stories knows the feeling of surprise that comes with a plot twist. A twist can be exhilarating, satisfying, shocking, or tragic. It can feel like storytelling at its best or fate at its worst. A narrative turn is not limited to fiction, either, but can serve as a useful metaphor for our experiences as teachers. New technologies upend our profession. New regulations constrain us, but they also call up our creativity. Big changes can make us feel like we’ve lost our agency or gained new capabilities, but small plot twists can ripple outward, too: an activity we try on a whim rejuvenates a classroom; a student’s sharp question sparks a discussion.

For our 2026 conference, we invite proposals for interactive panels and individual presentations on literary, rhetorical and pedagogical plot twists. How can we integrate the element of surprise into our teaching? How has technology twisted language? How can we subvert students’ expectations in productive ways? What does a narrative turn tell us about power or control – of the speaker or the listener, the leader or the citizen, the teacher or the student? What plot twists might await us, for good or ill, that we might try to hasten or avoid?

We’re excited to see what creative proposals these questions generate for you, and we offer the below non-exhaustive list of topics and questions as further provocation.

Please note that we’ve seen a large increase in submissions in recent years, so the selection process is more competitive than it once was. If you are new to proposal-writing or curious what a strong submission looks like, we’ve provided examples of strong past submissions, below and we encourage potential submitters to note their structure and specificity.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, February 6, 2026.

Submit your proposal today!

  • What tried-and-true pedagogies – peer review, research essays, rubrics, grading – should we toss out or revise?
  • How have our institutions’ support services – tutoring, accessibility, early alerts – altered students’ trajectories?
  • How can we use the element of surprise to captivate and engage students?
  • How far can plots twist before they break, and what happens when they do?
  • Can plots be untwisted?
  • What genres rely on plot twists? Do expectations for narrative turns drain them of their power?
  • What unwanted plot twists can we foresee, and how can we prevent them?
  • How have unexpected or non-traditional partnerships with other teachers, departments, or community members shifted student learning?
  • In what ways have we productively managed or subverted professional bad news?
  • How have new regulations, like those around co-curricular developmental education, shifted our teaching, our institutions, and students’ learning?
  • What new teaching practices have generative technologies called forth, and what old ones have they revived? What effects have these practices had, intended or otherwise?
  • How have new technologies helped or harmed students in unexpected ways?
  • What assignments encourage students to rethink endings, rewrite narratives, or challenge expectations?
  • What assignments have elicited unexpected responses, and what insights have resulted from them?

How have students surprised us, and how has this changed our teaching?

Past proposals

Full abstract

Storytelling is embedded in both our minds and in culture as key understanding the world and ourselves. Storylistening is also essential, but far more often overlooked, underdeveloped, and assumed to happen naturally. It is also often confused for consuming a story, typical of an audience.

By storylistening, I specifically mean a mindset and actions intended to understand the lives and identities of others through engagement, so that a co-construction of story emerges. The end goal is recognition, of a “unique and unrepeatable” other (Cavarero, 2000), with all the intrinsic value that implies, especially in vocations where listening for narratives is crucial. In some cases, these acts of listening last less than a minute (receptionist at a health clinic), hours or days (some nurses and journalists), while in other cases they last years (a mental health counselor).

The larger point of this research is to return to journalism, my vocation, and understand how listening might be better developed for those who report on people, and activities, that shape the world in which we live. This kind of listening allows a story to emerge, rather than seeking snippets of information to confirm preconceived narratives. It also assumes that storytellers are ends in themselves, rather than means to a news story. Taken in this light, storylistening becomes an act of counter-culture, and a means to healing in a media landscape that is built on contention and division.

Finally, I will present a graphic that helps explain how storylistening occurs in both fast and slow interactions.

Shortened abstract (for program)

Storytelling is embedded in our minds and culture as key to understanding the world and ourselves. Storylistening is also essential, but more often overlooked, underdeveloped, and assumed to happen naturally. Storylistening is a mindset and set of actions to understand the lives and identities of another person, especially in vocations where listening for narratives is crucial, such as journalism.

Full abstract

In Everyday Genres Mary Soliday argues that teachers across the curriculum should have their students write “wild genres”—those which are more authentic than the “domesticated genres” we may develop within an academic setting but often seem fake—and that “By studying how genres behave in the wild, teachers can craft [writing] prompts that invoke the situations of their use, which in turn will help writers to gain a sense of typical speech, imagine their roles, and select their angle of vision” (68). Elizabeth Wardle raises a similar concern in “'Mutt Genres' and the Goal of FYC: Can We Help Students Write the Genres of the University?” when she writes that many teachers assigned “mutt genres,” ones that “mimic genres that mediate activities in other activity systems, but within [first-year composition] systems their purposes and audiences are vague or even contradictory” (774).

Soliday and Wardle raise important questions for those of us who teach writing about the genres we value, teach, and have students write. In this session, panelists will share their experiences with assigning authentic genres such as the Goodreads review, letters to the editor, op-ed articles, the blog, pet bios for an animal shelter’s website, and Wikipedia articles. In addition, participants in this panel session will explore ways to develop “authentic” writing assignments or projects.

Shortened abstract (for program)

How can classroom writing move beyond the essay? Participants will explore ways to develop “authentic” writing assignments from panelists’ experiences assigning genres such as the Goodreads review, letters to the editor, op-ed articles, the blog, pet bios for an animal shelter’s website, and Wikipedia articles.