The Writing Across the Curriculum Program is honored to welcome Dr. Amanda Berardi Tennant of West Virginia University as this year’s featured speaker for the Writing Across Institutions Conference on April 10, 2026. We hope you’ll join us for her lecture, “Appalachian Identity and Agency in the Composition Classroom,” which will take place in the Plemmons Student Union Blue Ridge Ballroom (room 201) from 10:45 a.m.-noon. 

Dr. Tennant’s research focuses on how people from the Appalachian region negotiate cultural identity in different rhetorical situations and how they respond to stereotypes. Appalachian college students can bring rich forms of cultural knowledge to the writing classroom. In this talk, Dr. Tennant reports on her research with high-achieving Appalachian students to describe how these students use key moves, which she calls “moves of rhetorical (in)visibiliy,” to strategically draw on Appalachian cultural knowledge across different writing genres.

We hope faculty, staff, students and community members will join us for this inspiring conversation made possible by generous support from the Joan Vail Distinguished Lectureship. Registration is not required but encouraged, to ensure adequate seating. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend.