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Keynote Speaker
Dr. Angela Laflen
Dr. Angela Laflen is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Sacramento, and author of Critical Data Storytelling in the Composition Classroom (Utah State UP 2025). A timely framework for integrating data literacy into multimodal composition pedagogy, Laflen’s study demonstrates that, in an era dominated by big data and AI, the need to understand how to work with data is no longer limited to scientists and mathematicians. At the heart of Laflen’s approach is critical data storytelling—a practice that equips students with the skills to understand, interpret, and ethically communicate with and about data through various multimodal formats
Keynote Presentation
Storytelling in the Age of Datafication and AI
As data and AI technologies increasingly shape contemporary life, students and educators alike face the challenge of navigating datafied information environments. Drawing from her recent book, Critical Data Storytelling in the Composition Classroom, Professor Laflen presents data storytelling as a critical, rhetorical, and agentive response to these environments. Rather than viewing data as neutral or technical, the talk emphasizes the rhetorical choices involved in how data are collected, visualized, and interpreted. Findings from classroom-based research will illustrate how students can be supported in developing functional, critical, and rhetorical data literacies, and why accessible entry points into data work are essential. This talk frames storytelling as a method of resistance, reflection, and rhetorical action in the age of datafication.
Other speakers to be announced in January 2026
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