5th International Conference on Literacy, Culture, and Language Education

Language, Literacy, and Belonging

In a time marked by intensifying debates about language, curriculum, identity, and educational equity, the theme Language, Literacy, and Belonging invites scholars, educators, and community partners to critically examine how literacy practices shape — and are shaped by — questions of inclusion, power, and participation. As classrooms continue to become increasingly multilingual and culturally complex, the field of language and literacy faces urgent questions about whose language practices are legitimized, whose stories are centered, and how belonging is cultivated or constrained within educational systems.

Keynote Speakers

October 2, 2026

Alejandro Cuza

Purdue University

Alejandro Cuza is the Director of Linguistics in the Purdue College of Liberal Arts. His primary area of research focuses on the psycholinguistic processes involved in the second language acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax, semantics and bilingualism. Specifically, he is interested in the role of language transfer, input conditions and age of onset of bilingualism in the acquisition and loss of Spanish morphosyntactic patterns among bilingual children, adult L2 learners and Spanish heritage speakers.

October 3, 2026

Dianne Wellington

SUNY Cortland

Dianne Wellington is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at SUNY Cortland and holds a PhD from Indiana University. Her research centers on decolonized methodologies, emancipation literacies, transnationalism, healing pedagogies, and antiracist education. Drawing on her transnational identity, she collaborates with educators to foster equity, healing, and critical reflection in diverse learning spaces. Her work investigates how teachers and students envision emancipation for themselves and their communities, articulate their dreams, confront challenges, and imagine what it means to “become” beyond perceived limitations. She has presented this research at LRA and AERA. Publications emerging from this scholarship include articles in Intersection: Critical Issues in Education (2026, on critical dialogue as a decolonial feminist approach to healing and restoration in antiracist literacy education), Teachers & Teaching: Theory Into Practice (2025, on literacy as a semiotics of care), Voices From the Middle (2024, on critical dreaming as changemaking), and Multicultural Perspectives (2024, on diasporic perspectives in children’s literature).

Speaker Propsals

Three attendees listen to a presentation at Purdue University's ICLCLE conference.

Submit a Presentation Proposal

The Center for Literacy and Language Education and Research (CL2EAR) in the College of Education at Purdue University invites proposals for individual papers, research-to-practice presentations, interactive workshops, and poster presentations.

Selected articles from the conference will be published in the peer-reviewed
International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education (IJLCLE).

The deadline for receipt of proposals is June 30, 2026.

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