Great Salt Lake Argumentation Conference Center for Civic Discourse and Debate

Theme: Argument After Affect

Across the humanities and social sciences, accounts of public culture have significantly shifted away from those focused on deliberation and reason, in favor of the view that social behaviors are better understood by attention to what Raymond Williams called “structures of feeling.”  Some accounts advocating an “affective turn” suggest a focus on emotion as a long overdue corrective to the rationalism of political theory and some theories of public life that defended deliberative practices as substantive when they simply masked power or functioned as performance. A pivot to affect might also be read as the natural endpoint of the 20^th century’s critiques of instrumental reason and the emergence of other perspectives that think public reason as a logic of exclusion and domination.

Given rising levels of affective polarization, the scene today seems to offer impoverished prospects for deliberation, consensus formation, open-minded reason giving and compromise.  The institutions built to sustain deliberative practices – universities, journalism, legislatures, the administrative state – are often sclerotic and paralyzed.  As deliberative institutions lose legitimacy, appeals to the strong passions become more salient. Argumentation persists, but is more localized and conspiracy prone, often insulated from the wider pressures of rejoinder that come from outside the silo. The worry is now regularly articulated that public cultures swayed by the unchecked rhythms of strong emotion, accelerated and magnified by social media and emerging AI technologies, are also more likely to give way to authoritarianism or worse.

The argumentation studies tradition is well equipped to navigate these issues.  Researchers have long studied how emotion can deform reason-giving, as in the case of attention to the so-called pathetic fallacies. The affinities between argumentation and rhetorical studies have sustained interest in pathos and the wider role of emotion in public life. This conference has long showcased work attending to argumentative embodiment, elaborated as both a psychology and phenomenology of argument. And researchers interested in social movements have presented work showing how demands for justice have been activated and made argumentatively compelling as they were made emotionally vivid. The 2027 theme, then, asks its participants to explore the possibilities for a unified account of public decision and social movement that does justice to the scholarship on argument and affect. As the affective turn has intellectually matured, what are its implications for the future of argumentation studies?

Potential submitters are encouraged to speak to the study of argumentation in its specificity as a product, process, and/or procedure. Naturally, some preference will be given to submissions that address the general theme. However, quality work using any methodology, on any aspect of argumentation, will be welcome, as it always has been. Furthermore, the conference encourages submissions about intercollegiate debate and forensics in all its formats.

The conference provides three awards for research accomplishments in argumentation studies. The Malcolm Sillars Distinguished Argumentation Scholarship Award honors significant career achievements in argumentation research; in 2025, it was won by Prof. Marilyn Young, Professor of Communication Emerita at Florida State University. The Michael Calvin McGee Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award is given for the best graduate student research paper presented at each conference; it was earned in 2025 by Brooke Hubsch from Pennsylvania State University.

For the first time, in 2027 the Conference will award a prize to an exemplary intellectual mentor.  The criteria for this mentoring award includes but is not limited to: A mentor's demonstrated commitment to the intellectual, career, and personal development of their mentees as argumentation scholars. Key aspects include providing guidance, fostering a positive and supportive environment, and actively contributing to mentees’ growth and success as argumentation scholars. Guiding and preparing mentees for the Argumentation Conference is evidence of these commitments.

Also for the first time in 2027, the conference will award a G. Thomas Goodnight Emerging Argumentation Scholarship Award.  The prize honors Tom Goodnight, whose research shaped the argumentation studies field and whose mentorship helped support the discipline’s most accomplished scholars. The award will be presented for a first monograph, a body of early career research, or other indications of intellectual promise and early career accomplishment and trajectory.

The conference planning committee welcomes nominations for the Sillars, Goodnight, and mentoring prizes (the McGee award is chosen based on the peer review process that selects papers).  To nominate a person for the Sillars, Goodnight, or mentoring awards, or to self-nominate, send a letter of nomination and the nominee’s CV to Prof. Robert C. Rowland by April 1, 2027, at rrowland@ku.edu. Awards are selected by the Conference steering committee, which Prof. Rowland chairs.

We invite completed papers, panel proposals, workshop proposals and paper abstracts written from any of the available methodological approaches to argumentation. Irrespective of topic, a key is that the proposal articulate a specific connection to scholarship on argumentation or closely associated research areas (e.g., public deliberation and reason, informal logic, debate or other critical thinking pedagogies, history of social controversy, dialectical critical theory, or how these traditions might be rethought given feminist, queer, critical race, postcolonial and other perspectives).

Completed papers: Papers should not exceed 3,000 words, excluding notes and references, or no longer than 3,200 words, inclusive of notes and APA-style references.

Panel proposals: Panel proposals should provide a title, names and addresses (including e-mail) of participants, an abstract of each paper, and a brief explanation of the importance of the panel (500 words or less). Given that the conference tradition is active member-presenter engagement, if respondents are included, then their role should be explained. Panel proposals with participants from multiple institutions are preferred.

Workshop proposals: For the first time, the conference plans to host a limited number of workshops designed to offer training for scholars interested to build their expertise on selected topics. As mentioned above, we are especially interested to build workshops around such issues as argumentation pedagogy, AI & deliberation, computation argumentation, debate-across-the-curriculum. But we are open to other topics that would be of broad interest. Workshops might be understood as led by two or more instructors, and substantively focused on project-based or highly interactive activity. A workshop proposal should provide a title, names and addresses (including email) of leaders, a workshop description and rationale (500 words or less).

Paper abstracts: Extended abstracts of paper proposals (500 words or more) should be substantial enough to indicate the scope, direction, approach, and merit of proposed papers. Assessment will be based on the evaluators’ understandings of the projected paper as presented in the abstract.

Mentoring program: As noted we plan to offer a mentoring program on Sunday after the conference begins.  If you are interested in this program, please note that interest along with your submission. The mentoring program will conclude no later than 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 1, such that participation in this program will not interfere with plans to fly out of Salt Lake City Sunday afternoon.

Audio-Visual: Please indicate AV needs that you may require should your submission be accepted. A limited number of panel presentation rooms are equipped with an 8-foot screen and 4-5K projector and presenters expecting to use those should plan to bring their own laptop and connecting cables.

Submissions are due February 11, 2027, and will then be evaluated by peer reviewers. For accepted proposals, full papers will be due on July 9, 2027, and these papers will again be peer reviewed, this time for publication. The 2027 collection of papers will be published in open access format as a collaboration with the University of Utah Libraries, with paper authors retaining copyright in their essays and the freedom to develop a longer-form essay for publication elsewhere (we only request that authors acknowledge first publication in this conference collection).  The open access publication means that the conference can publish more than the limited number of papers that could be published in a physical volume. All papers that meet the peer-review standards established by the editorial board will be published. The open access publication that the conference will use is similar to other major argumentation conferences, including the conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA).

Eventual papers should be in a file format conveniently readable and editable in Microsoft Word. The American Psychological Association’s style manual should be used by everyone.

Instructions for Submitting

Submit your abstract, paper, or panel or workshop proposal to David Cheshier as an email attachment. Please use the conference email address: argconf2027@gsu.edu. Please name your file in the following way: LastName, FirstInitial-PaperTitle-Date. For example, perhaps we will receive Berlant, L-ArgAsCruelOptimism-1-15-2027.docx.

Graduate Student Submission

Financial assistance is available on a competitive basis for papers solely written by graduate students. Please indicate if you qualify for consideration. Moreover, there is an award for the best graduate student paper.

The GSLAC will convene in Park City, Utah, which is located roughly 30 miles southeast of downtown Salt Lake City in the Wasatch Mountain Range. Attendees should plan to fly into the Salt Lake International Airport in time to be at the hotel for a 4:00 conference opening and keynote address on Thursday, July 31.  The mentoring session mentioned earlier will convene Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. Most attendees plan a Sunday return home.

Conference attendees will be housed in The Lodges at Deer Valley, part of the Deer Valley Resorts located at 2250 Deer Valley Drive South, Park City Utah, 84060. The Lodges are approximately one mile from the Park City historic main street.

At the 2027 conference, a mechanism has been created to facilitate a unified single charge of $1500 that provides for registration, meals (apart from Friday evening), and hotel. The fee is to be paid directly to the University of Utah in two payments, with a $500 deposit payable by April 15, and the balance payable to UU by June 15.  For participants whose home institutions require receipt documentation that itemizes, that can be provided. Anyone paying the deposit by April 1 would receive a $100 “early registration” discount. If a registering conference participant is sharing a hotel room with another registering conference participant, they would both receive a $400 per-person discount. If more than two registered participants share a hotel room with other registered participants, each would receive a $500 discount. The $1500 total is based on an estimated $915 room charge (inclusive of taxes), $350 food package, and a $235 registration fee.

The conference planners have worked to assure that, despite inflation, the total conference costs are almost precisely the same as for the 2025 conference. The typical room is a single king bed or two queen beds; alternatives may be available for those seeking larger room upgrades. The meal package includes dinner Thursday evening, continental breakfast and lunch on Friday and continental breakfast, lunch, dinner on Saturday, and refreshments between sessions.

To facilitate this unified payment mechanism, the University of Utah is facilitating a single online portal where initial deposit and final payment for registration, room and meal charges will be made. To secure the conference rate and complete registration, reservations must be made through registration link on the conference website (link available in late November 2026). Plan to make reservations at the University of Utah payment portal before the hotel block expires on June 15, 2027. Final payment is due on June 15, 2027.

Park City was founded in 1870 after silver was discovered, a fact that transformed it into a booming mining center before it later became a ghost town and then a ski resort known for many years for hosting the Sundance Film Festival. Park City was a host venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics and is scheduled to host events again at the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Games. A trail network features more than 400 miles of gold-level Mountain Bicycling Association trails for hiking and mountain biking.  The town offers a wonderful mix of unique cultural venues, art galleries, performing arts and live music venues, and a historical museum.

Shared shuttle service is available from the Salt Lake City International Airport to Park City lodgings.  A one-way shuttle takes approximately 45 minutes and costs from $45-65 per person. The main shared shuttle option is Prime Time Shuttle. A regional bus service, the Salt Lake City Express, also runs from the airport to Park City; it only drops passengers in downtown Park City (and not at specific hotels), but is very inexpensive (<$25 each way).