Annual Conference Information

10th Annual SUNY Cortland Literacy Department Conference

F(read)om Dreaming: Literacy, Justice, and the Radical Power of Voice

The SUNY Cortland Literacy Department is pleased to announce that we will be holding our 10th annual conference virtually. Details about the conference are below.

Conference Details

Date: Saturday, April 4, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. (EST)
Platform: Zoom
Cost: FREE for attendees
Submit your proposal here! Interested in presenting as a part of this conference? You can submit your proposal through February 1, 2026.

Conference Theme

Inspired by Paulo Freire’s (1970/2018) call to “read the word and the world,” the 10^th annual, 2026 SUNY Cortland Literacy Department Conference invites teachers, scholars, and community members to explore literacy as a joyful, liberating and transformative practice. This year's theme: F(read)om Dreaming, celebrates literacy as a powerful tool for bridging everyday and academic knowledge, uplifting voices that are often unheard, and reimagining classrooms as spaces for justice and possibility.

We draw on Robin D.G. Kelley’s (2002) concept of freedom dreaming—the bold imagining of better futures that have not come to life but are urgently needed. This kind of dreaming isn’t just theory; it’s a call to action. Freedom dreaming invites us to think critically about our schools, challenge systems that push students out—especially Black and Brown students—and work together to build more equitable, joyful, and radical learning landscapes. This work embeds democratic principles into everyday literacy instruction that honors multilingual identities.

The heartbeat of this work is linguistic justice. April Bell-Baker (2020) reminds us that students bring rich and diverse language practices to school, and those should be celebrated—not corrected. Honoring all languages and dialects helps students feel seen, heard, and empowered to make meaning in ways that matter to them.

Connection to SUNY Cortland’s Mission and Values

This theme reflects SUNY Cortland’s commitment to equity, inclusion, and transformational education. It supports the university’s mission to prepare educators who are reflective practitioners, advocates for justice, and leaders in diverse communities. By centering literacy as a tool for engagement and liberation, the conference aligns with Cortland’s values of community, integrity, and intellectual growth.

Request for Proposals

For the 10^th Annual SUNY Cortland Literacy Department Conference, we will accept proposals in the form of a panel, workshop, presentation, or discussion group (described in greater detail below). Our sessions, led by faculty, graduate students, and K-12 teachers, will strive to answer the following questions across the conference focus areas.

Conference Focus Areas May Include:

Civic and Community-Based Literacy Practices

In what ways can you engage with literacy to advocate, organize, and participate in shaping your community, in and outside of school?

Honoring Translanguaging & Multilingual Practices

In what ways can pedagogy and curriculum honor full linguistic repertories as assets in academic and community landscapes?

F(read)om Dreaming & Imagined Worlds

How can the concept of “freedom dreaming” be applied as a transformative framework for reimagining educational systems and practices?
In what ways, if any, does freedom dreaming appear in pedagogy?

Critical Media, Critical Literacy, & Cultivating Identity

How can multimodality support critical literacy and teachers’ efforts to support their students’ identity development?
How can democratic principles be brought to the forefront of literacy teaching and learning?
How can literacy practices support K-12 educators in embedding democratic principles into their literacy instruction while nurturing plural identities and expressions in contexts of power?

Types of Sessions

Panel: Presenters knowledgeable about a common topic gather for discussion, often moderated by a question-answer format. Panels will be held for 50 minutes.

Workshop: Presenters provide a hands-on experience or demonstration relating to teaching and learning. Audience members may be encouraged to bring their own ideas and materials to “work on” during the workshop. Workshops will be held for 50 minutes.

Discussion Group: Presenters prepare a session interacting with audience members for discussion, self-reflection, and exploration of topics. Discussion groups will be held for 50 minutes.

Presentation: Presenters share their research and/or experience answering questions and/or solving problems with little audience participation. Presentations will be held for 20 minutes and grouped in pairs.

Submit your proposal here! You can submit your proposal through February 1, 2026.

Keynote Speakers (more information to come)

Breanya Hogue – Purdue University, Assistant Professor of Literacy and Language Education in the department of Curriculum & Instruction
Darius Phelps - Educator, poet, spoken word artist, doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Featured Session Speakers (more information to come)

Tairan Qiu - Stanford University, Assistant Professor of English Language Arts and Literacy Education in the Graduate School of Education
Amy Walker - Kent State University, Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies)

Positionality Statement

The SUNY Cortland Literacy Department recognizes that we are not experts in anti-bias, anti-racist work, and we are continuously reflecting and seeking knowledge about power, privilege, and oppression ourselves. We acknowledge the following about our collective: 

We are uninvited guests living, learning, and teaching on the land of the Haudenosaunee people. 
Our collective racial makeup is predominantly white, and many of us hold unearned white privilege. 
Our department faculty is made up predominantly of white women in a field where white women represent roughly 80% of educators in the U.S., even though our students are increasingly racially diverse.

As a literacy education department, we must address and work to dismantle matters of oppression relating to literacy practices in school spaces. Our goal with this conference is to hold space for learning, reflection, and planning for action with respect to anti-bias, anti-racist literacy teaching. In doing so, we strive to centralize the scholarship and experiences of scholars and educators from the historically marginalized group who established and remain deeply engrained in this work.

We are confident that attendees and speakers have an enormous amount to teach us when grappling with these specific topics. We welcome these moments as they help to re-distribute the unearned power based on our collective positionalities and aid in continuing to disrupt our biases.

References

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315147383

Freire, P. (with Macedo, D. P.). (2018, Original 1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition (4th ed). Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Beacon Press.