Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s English Graduate Organization will offer its 2025 Conference, “Landscapes of Language and Literature,” on March 21 and 22.
The conference will be offered both in person in IUP’s Sprowls Hall and via Zoom. It is free and open to the community.
IUP’s English Graduate Organization includes all students in IUP’s English graduate studies programs. The organization sponsors and supports a number of events related to the study of language and literature, including the yearly conference, professional development workshops, and the Banned Books project.
Student members of the organization are responsible for organizing the conference, working with members of the IUP faculty. The EGO has an active membership of 123 students.
IUP’s graduate programs in English include two master’s degree programs—one in Composition and Literature and another in Literature—and two doctoral programs—Composition and Applied Linguistics and Literature and Criticism. Students can also complete an English 7–12 teaching certificate.
“While the conference is valuable for scholars of all levels in the discipline, the programs are designed for anyone interested in examining language, landscape, and identity, drawing from multiple perspectives, from autoethnography and cultural landscapes to environmental narratives and transgressive fiction,” IUP Literature and Criticism doctoral student and conference event co-organizer Stacey Hoffer.
“We’ve designed the conference to allow for in-person or virtual attendance, including by our presenters, to provide an opportunity for all interested persons to participate,” she said.
On March 21, Anne Colwell will offer the keynote address: “Landscapes, Language, and Loss: Maps, Mapping, and the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.”
Colwell writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Delaware. Her collection of short stories, Broken-Heart Syndrome, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2025.
She has published two books of poems, Believing Their Shadows (Word Poetry 2010) and Mother’s Maiden Name (Word Poetry 2013). She received both Emerging and Established Artist awards in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from the Delaware Division of the Arts.
Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in several journals, including Bellevue Literary Review, California Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Brooklyn Review, and The Madison Review. She has been a staff member at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a visiting professor at the University of Granada in Spain.
On March 22, IUP professor of English David Hanauer will provide the keynote address, “Interdisciplinarity and the Psychology of the Linguistic Landscape.”
Hanauer is an applied linguist by training who teaches research methodology in the English doctoral Composition and Applied Linguistics program. He has expertise in a wide range of psychological, writing, and linguistic methodologies, which he employs to construct psychosocial measurement tools for educational research and assessment purposes.
Since coming to IUP more than 20 years ago, he has published nine peer-reviewed academic books; 69 peer-reviewed research papers, including in the journal Science; and 19 refereed book chapters. He has received close to $3 million in research funding from prestigious funding agencies in the United States, including the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the US Department of Education.
In 2023, he was named as one of the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” for 2023 in the field of education and linguistics compiled by Stanford University using Scopus data provided by the Elsevier Data Repository.
In addition to these presentations, the conference includes a number of panel discussions, creative presentations focused on how language shapes the understanding of the world, and remarks from the EGO leadership
A complete conference schedule and information on how to register is available online.