Pedagogy Symposium

45th Mid-America Theatre Conference

Pedagogy Call for Proposals

Deadline for Submissions: November 1, 2024

Submit your proposal here

Click this link for a downloadable PDF of the CFP:  MATC Pedagogy 2025 CFP

For our 2025 annual meeting in Atlanta, The Pedagogy Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC) would like to lean away from the traditional “paper presentation” format. Instead, what you propose might take any number of different shapes, all outlined below. The “theme-less”-ness of this year’s conference reflects a curiosity into what participants feel is most pressing in their classrooms and the contemporary currents in teaching theatre in higher ed..  How might your unique and individual approaches to engaging classrooms support and inspire the broader teaching community? 

This year, the Pedagogy Symposium will consist of the following presentation opportunities. Please consider which format best fits your submission:

• Exercise/activity demonstrations: We invite you to propose an exercise from your classroom. At the conference, you will have 20 minutes to demonstrate your exercise with volunteers from the conference, and then receive feedback from the audience using the Critical Response Process. This is an excellent way to dip your toe into the conference environment and share a snapshot of your pedagogy in action. This might also be a portion of your teaching demonstration used in campus visits.
• Roundtable Discussion: 5-6 panelists discuss a jointly proposed or similarly identified topic, followed by Q&A with the audience.
• Pedagogical “Knots”: This option encourages you to share activities, exercises, or lesson plans which might still be in process or still need some untangling. You will have 15 minutes to present the “knot” and then receive feedback or inspiration on ways to move forward from the audience or through small group discussions.
• Job-Talk Demonstration: new to the Pedagogy Symposium last year, we invite graduate students and other early-career professionals to test out their job-talk. Panelists will share a shortened version (15-20 minutes) of their teaching demo and/or their scholarship presentation and receive feedback from the audience, including the Pedagogy Respondent.
• Panel Presentation: 3-4 participants, sharing a 15-20-minute talk/demonstration.
• Workshop: solo (60-minute) or shared (30-minute) sessions involving engaged participation from the audience
• Paper presentation: This traditional option is still available, especially for those who need to present a paper to receive funding from their institution. We only ask that you prepare to present to and engage with the audience on your paper topic instead of reading the finished document to the audience. 

Our aim is to generate robust and inspiring conversations during our time together. As one of the few gatherings where “pedagogy nerds” can talk about how and why we teach the way that we do,  we’re hosting a space that encourages process, reflection, not-knowing, and curiosity. 

If you are looking for inspiration, please consider the following prompts as you prepare your submission.  This list is only intended to spark your imagination and not present a conclusive list of what’s possible.

• How do early-career professionals and those just entering academia define your teaching style? 
• How do you essentialize your Teaching Philosophy? 
• How does the structure of the lesson plan best support the intended learning outcome?
• How do you use theatre to teach something across disciplines?
• How do our curricula reflect our students’ communities and experiences? 
• How do our curricula reflect our institution’s values? 
• How are you incorporating metacognition into your curriculum?
• How are you thinking about the dramaturgy of your course?
• How do we purposely acknowledge those small enclaves of identities within which our institutions might be located?
• How do we incorporate into our lessons the populations that surround and incubate our institutions, and what does this look like? 
• How do we enfold into our departments the histories and identities that comprise those we educate as well as those doing the educating?
• How do we infuse our syllabi with meaningful attention to theatre-making of the past, present, and future? 
• What ways can we include local voices in our lectures and class discussions?
• What methodologies do we employ to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population? 
• How do the stories we inspect in our classrooms reflect our students and expose them to different perspectives?
• How do we measure success for our students? 
• How do students measure success for themselves? 
• How do we measure our own success and how is that success measured for us by our institutions?
• How does your pedagogy intersect with your artistic work or scholarship? 
• How might your artistic and scholarly work show up in your classroom? How might it benefit other classrooms outside your department but within your institution?
• How do we encourage students to anticipate the future of theatre? 
• What tools do we help students develop to both prepare for and shape that future?

MATC commits to advancing intersectional equity, inclusivity, diversity, and justice; to creating a conference that is welcoming and fully accessible, and to disrupting the ongoing damage of white supremacy within MATC and the broader academic and theatrical worlds. As part of this effort, we highly encourage a broad range of submissions by presenters or about theatre of historically disenfranchised and underrepresented populations, particularly those of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. To request specific conference accommodations, please contact our Accessibility Officer at access@matc.us. MATC prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind, including during all associated meetings, the annual conference sessions, and within publications. For MATC’s full statement on anti-racism, accessibility, and inclusivity, please see our website at http://matc.us. 

When submitting a proposal, you will be asked to supply:

• Name, academic affiliation (if any), position title (if any), and email for all participants
• A paper/presentation title (Consider framing this as provocative discussion question)
• An abstract (250 words)
• A presentation format (Exercise/activity demonstration, roundtable discussion, pedagogical knot,  job-talk demonstration, panel presentations, workshop, or paper presentation)
• A brief biography for all participants
• Please submit your proposals here by Friday, Nov 1, 2024

Please submit electronically via the online form below: