2023 Workshops

 ENG 600: Teaching Writing in the Age of A.I. (Davies)

The launch of ChatGPT and the advancement of other artificial intelligence (AI) writing technologies has invited writing teachers to reckon with assumptions that inform our writing pedagogy, particularly those that shape how we design writing assignments. Questions surrounding originality and authorship, our students’ writing and research processes, and the ways our students use writing technologies are on every writing teacher’s mind as they develop lesson plans while, simultaneously, every school system is struggling to develop policies and support that contend with these questions.

In line with those concerns, topics in this workshop will include the systemic biases present in large language AI models like ChatGPT, the ways writers may use AI writing technologies at different stages of the writing process, concerns about plagiarism and authorship in student writing, issues of privacy and data collection with AI writing technologies, and studies on how students read and engage with sources in their writing. The participants will develop writing assignments and unit plans that incorporate AI writing technologies while emphasizing the collaborative and generative ways writers work with sources and writing technologies.

 ENG 600: Writing Beyond Ourselves: Taking Storytelling Risks with Intention, Integrity, and Imagination (Lawhorn) 

 Are there stories or characters we shouldn’t write? What’s the difference between representation and appropriation? How do we reveal, in writing, our complex, ever-changing world (or imagined worlds) in all of its glorious, terrifying aliveness without leaning on clichés, stereotypes, and generalizations? In this generative workshop, we’ll excavate what it means to intentionally craft vivid writing by considering our own unique perspectives as writers, our implied reader, and the effect we hope our writing will have. Is our implied reader just like us, and if so how do we write beyond ourselves? In this workshop we’ll consider:

•The limits of imagination and the expansive possibilities research affords us

•How to ask for, and take, feedback especially when we have taken risks in writing differences

•What to do when we unintentionally muck it up and reveal what we didn’t know

Participants will read an array of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction as well as Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shaw and Cynthia Ward. These texts will act as springboards for a series of exercises written alone and in community that explore differences (and just who decides what’s “different” and what’s “normal”) with openness, curiosity, honesty, and humor.  Participants will be expected to bring writing of their choice (3-5 pages) that will benefit from workshop. 

2023 Faculty

Laura J. Davis

Barbara Lawhorn

About Minnowbrook

Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center is an enchanting facility built in the rustic elegance of the Adirondack “Great Camp” tradition.

Room accommodations are spacious and comfortable. They will be designated single occupancy, unless registration numbers require room sharing. All meals will be provided by the kitchen staff at Minnowbrook, as will snacks throughout the day. Meals are gourmet quality and participants are guaranteed to never go hungry!

Recreational facilities—including a game room, workout equipment, tennis court, canoes, kayaks, paddleboats, and rowboats—are available for participants, and of course, the Adirondacks themselves offer great opportunities for hiking and other outdoor sports.

Workshop Fees & Tuition

Participants have several registration options for the Special Topics workshops. Most register for one workshop only. Graduate credit is optional, and this specially reduced tuition rate ($210 for 3 credit hours) is available only to SUPA certified instructors. 

The fee structure for the workshop- only option—which includes room and board, use of the Minnowbrook facilities and workshop fees, is $1,430 

(If you are interested in taking both workshops, please contact Sean Conrey at smconrey@syr.edu)

Please note that in the event of low enrollment, individual workshops may be canceled.*

Registration

To register for the Special Topics workshops, complete the application form by June 27, 2023 to:

Syracuse University Project Advance
400 Ostrom Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13244-3250
315.443.2404
315.443.1626

Testimonials

What do past Minnowbrook participants say about their experience?

“I can’t think of any situation where you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in not only a subject, but a place, that allows for the leisure to contemplate the world without distractions—a serenity that is very different from the hectic world of teaching in the high school in particular. This is the perfect time to lose yourself and do something that you love. Talking about books, talking about art, with people who have the same passion, the same interests, and so much experience to exchange.”

“During my free time, I spent a lot of time on the dock just listening to the water and reading for chunks of time. That’s one of the lures of Minnowbrook: time to think. And to read and to be uninterrupted. And to talk to people who are from all over, finding out what’s going on at other places.”

“Each of the years I’ve attended, I’ve come home with something I’ve been able to use directly in my classes and in my instruction. I’m getting materials and points of view that I didn’t have. The marriage of people from the high schools and Syracuse University in this particular program, which we’ve come to call an intellectual community, has the distinct advantage of giving us an opportunity to generalize our knowledge, to find out what things are like in other places, and to see what works in other places. It’s so refreshing: you come home and you have thought deeply about a variety of subjects and discussed them with a variety of very intelligent and very articulate and very well-read and informed people, and how can that be bad? It’s just a totally good time.”

“Well, first of all, the setting is so gorgeous. And you just feel at peace and relaxed. It becomes a very intense experience, because when you’re with a group of people and you’re in class with them for so many hours of the day, and then you sit down and have lunch with them, and you sit down at dinner with them, and you have breakfast with them, and you talk, continually, and the issues that come up in the class get hashed out again and again, new things get brought up over meals, and it’s just a very stimulating, and totally involving experience. And you come back very invigorated and with new ideas and ready to try new things.”

“The intellectual stimulation that you get here is incomparable. I mean you go to the faculty room and everybody complains about problems with the day-to-day routine, and you don’t get to discuss ideas at all or techniques that you would use in the classroom. Here, we talk about all kinds of things that we can try and that we’ve tried before that worked. It’s just a constant exchange of new ideas. It’s a totally new networking that is not normal in a high school room. Everybody here is just on an automatic cycle of exchange of ideas. And that’s what happens here all the time. Not just in a group meeting but while we’re on a hike up to Castle Rock or while we’re at dinner or after dinner.”

“This has some of the same benefits as any sort of camp provides. People get to come away. They get a retreat. And they come together with other people who are interested in the same issues, the same topic, the same inquiry, and they get to live, eat, breathe, and do this for however many hours of a day, so it’s a very short experience, but it’s a very intense experience. And the benefit comes not just from the content delivery, but from the kind of all-inclusive interaction. So there’s this constant flow of discussion, from one course to another, to issues in my school, to how am I going to do this unit of my course, and there’s this sort of seamless interaction for whatever period of time and that’s just remarkable. So you can call it camp but it’s a much more intense sort of professional interaction than any other venue I can imagine.”

“What brings me here? The opportunity to gain credit working with the Syracuse University program and the idea of it being concentrated in one week; other courses that I take are spread out over several months or they take up weekends and don’t feel as though they have the same continuity as they do here.”