2024 ICTE Fall Conference

As Megan Mayhew Bergman observes in _The Kenyon Review_, “While nearly all writing observes and processes the world around us, overtly socially-conscious writing is risky.” Many of the writers from the English Renaissance were as courageous as they were cunning, but current pedagogy often ignores the crucible of political intrigue and personal peril in which their witticisms were wielded. The Elizabethans’ affections for cryptology, rhetoric and wordplay created a synergy that often allowed them to avoid not just book bans, but beheadings! Come join in a celebration of risky writing as we sleuth the puns and politics of Shakespeare, Lanier, and Marlowe and find new appreciation for contemporary social poets like Gwendolyn Brooks.