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“Disability and the Multiliteracy Center: Reframing the Rhetorical Space of the Writing Center”

If you’ve worked in, visited, or even heard about writing centers, you can likely imagine the typical writing center space: often located in a basement, often a bit too small. If well funded, there are a few computers or even an entire lab. There are tables and chairs, clustered to create conversation spaces. The arrangement often reflects the standard model: talk. Consultant and student discuss the students’ concerns and goals, one of them reads the student’s text aloud, then they discuss the text together. This is standard practice, but two factors complicate this model: disability and multiliteracy.

Spaces that privilege the read-aloud model also privilege the able-bodied student—a student who speaks and hears, who can sit and focus for 30- or 60-minute sessions, who learns best through dialogue. In the early 2000s, the New London Group recognized and articulated multiliteracies as an opportunity to move beyond the limitations of print- and word-based literacies, to value other modes of communication, such as the visual, aural, gestural, spatial, and multimodal (28). Kress argues that these modes are embodied, that “[h]uman bodies have a wide range of means of engagement with the world” that occur in various and multiple ways. Writing centers that support these multimodalities are reframed as multiliteracy centers, spaces that David Sheridan argues…

• are equal to the diversity of semiotic options composers have in the 21st century;
• are staffed by consultants who have the rhetorical, pedagogical, and technical capacities to support this diversity; and
• facilitate the competent and critically reflective use of technologies and other material, institutional, and cultural resources. (“Introduction” 6-7)

In 2000, John Trimbur observed that writing centers were starting to support oral presentations, online tutorials, and workshops in evaluating web resources (30). Trimbur argues that this multiliterate shift is an opportunity and “a challenge to develop more equitable social futures by redistributing the means of communication” (30). I want to emphasize these “equitable social futures” because as writing center spaces shift, it’s important to consider rhetorical implications from a disability perspective: how the physical spaces change, what social practices occur within them, and which bodies can access them. For this talk, then, I want to address the following questions: How is disability currently framed in writing center discourse? How do shifts to multiliteracy centers work to reframe disability? What role does the physical space of the multiliteracy center play in shaping both rhetorical practices and constructions of disability?

How is disability currently framed in writing center discourse?

Like the first-year composition classroom, writing centers must potentially serve all university students regardless of their disciplines, expertise, or abilities. As the number of students with disabilities increase, whether their disabilities are (un)documented or (in)visible, writing centers must be better prepared to serve them. Writing centers haven’t historically supported students with disabilities, despite emphases on individualized instruction, alternative pedagogies, and creating inclusive spaces where students feel comfortable. Indeed, students with disabilities are often treated differently within these spaces. This rhetorical construction of disability as Other can be seen most clearly in writing center scholarship.

The two main models of disability are the medical and the social. The medical model defines disability in terms of individual deficit that requires some sort of rehabilitation (Little). Within writing center discourse, this often coincides with a “remediation” model of tutoring that constructs students with disabilities as individuals who need “cured” of their bad writing. Often, the medical model manifests in notions that students with disabilities cannot be served—or remediated—within these spaces, that they are somehow beyond the expertise or qualifications of tutors. This can be seen in the scholarship from the mid-1980s, such as “How Do Others Deal with Such Special People?” and “Understanding the Dyslexic Writer,” and from the 1990s, such as “Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can’t Help.” Such scholarship constructs disability as something that cannot be addressed within the writing center, what Tanya Titchkosky calls a “you can’t accommodate everybody” attitude that sees particular bodies as “‘naturally’ a problem for some spaces” (35). Generally, though, few current writing center conversations situate disability this clearly into a medical model.

This could suggest a social turn. The social model defines disability as a “social construction in which disability results from the interaction of impairment and the social, political, spatial, architectural and cultural environment” (Little). Yet despite the great work done by writing center scholars such as Jean Kiedaisch & Sue Dinitz about universal design, and Rebecca Day Babcock’s careful qualitative work with deaf students, writing center conversations are not quite at this social level. Many still retain remnants of the medical model through a focus on individual deficit. Heavily influenced by Shannon Walter’s articulation of an “impairment-specific” model that targets particular disabilities and creates particular solutions (429), I see writing centers operating within an accommodation model—a well intentioned approach to disability that seeks to meet students’ needs yet still rhetorically constructs disability as something different that is particular to individual students rather than to writing spaces and practices.

A classic example of the accommodation model is Julie Neff’s anthologized essay, “Learning Disabilities and the Writing Center,” a resource used by both directors and tutors. Here, Neff writes, “Although learning-disabled students come to the writing center with a variety of special needs, they have one thing in common: they need more specific help than other students” (382). This specific help comes in the form of treating students with LD as “the intelligent, resourceful persons they are” (382) yet asking them “seemingly obvious” and “simple” questions (385) to trigger ideas. This cues tutors that they need to treat students with disabilities differently from “normal” learners. This is emphasized by the fact that the essay begins with a medical discussion of the causes of LD and a translation of medical knowledge to proposed practice. Though Neff is well intentioned, convinced that writing centers can meet the needs of students with disabilities, she relies on medical discourse and stereotypes to support that point.

This historical framing of scholarship speaks to larger representations and conversations, showing how the WC community values (or doesn’t) disability. What the overview shows—that conversations are largely focused on targeting and accommodating particular disabilities rather than changing systemic practices—is as important as what’s left unsaid. Absent in these discussions about disability is the role of space. Nathalie Singh-Corcoran and Amin Emika write that “No conversation is more pervasive [in WC discourse] than writing center space: where a center is located, what a center should look like, what a center should feel like, what should happen in the space, and what should be the uses of the space.” Yet, conversations about disability and space don’t intersect. There’s a lack of discourse of how space functions rhetorically to grant or deny access to particular bodies, how space accommodates needs, and how space is deeply interconnected with accessible practices.

How do shifts to multiliteracy centers work to reframe disability, and how do these new spaces shape both rhetorical practices and constructions of disability?

A writing center, or a multiliteracy center, is a social space. Henri Lefebvre proposes a useful spatial theory for thinking about this space—a conceptual triad consisting of spatial practice (or perceived space), representations of space (or conceptualized space), and representational space (or lived space). This triad is important not only for understanding how space and practice are connected, but also for thinking about disability’s construction within the space. For example, if the writing center is conceived as a space that values able-bodied practices, then students with disabilities will be perceived as radically different from other students and will be represented differently, Othered. If, however, a multiliteracy center is conceived as a space intended to support a diverse range of composing and learning needs, and all students are perceived as having a variety of abilities, then students with disabilities will be represented within the larger context of twenty-first-century learners with diverse needs.

Let’s return to that original image of a writing center: a one-room center with chairs and tables clustered to support talk, to support able bodies and able-bodied forms of communication. What happens to this social space when it becomes a multiliteracy center? James Inman argues that multiliteracy spaces must be inclusive to print, oral, audio, video, and webtext composing and multiple interactions with texts (24). At the end of his chapter on space, Inman turns to disability, writing, “A final, but vital, consideration should be the accessibility of any zoned space for individuals with disabilities. In this pursuit, the idea is not just to make spaces minimally accessible, but instead to consider how the disabled may be able to most fully participate in the uses for which the spaces were designed” (Inman 27). Here, Inman conceives of disability as integral to spatial considerations, yet the brief mention at the end of the chapter represents disability as a rhetorical afterthought instead of a leading concern of spatial equality.

Syracuse University Writing Center, individual cubicles in the front room

Spatial equality necessitates a removal of features that could disable users from interacting within that space. Bertram Bruce and Maureen Hogan note that physical environments construct disability because, as tools, technologies, and practices become naturalized, people who cannot use them are represented as disabled (297). This aligns with Lefebvre’s theory. If we think of chairs as a natural part of the writing center environment, then they disable students who are unable to use them (Hitt 3). Similarly, Cathy Davidson argues that we are more likely to label a student as LD if she is unresponsive to our dominant pedagogical practices (10). If we think of talk and the read-aloud model as standard practices, then, students who don’t engage with them are disabled. The shift toward multiliteracy centers presents an opportunity to place disability and space in conversation and to more fully consider what accessible spaces look like.

When a multiliteracy center creates spaces for different composing practices, it becomes more accessible to students with disabilities and to a wide range of diverse learners and composers. Multiple and flexible spaces create more possibilities for all students. For example…

• Cubicles designed for small group work could also benefit students with ADD who may be distracted in larger settings or students with autism-spectrum disorders who may prefer to be in less populated spaces.
• Computers stations benefit students working on multimodal projects while also benefiting students who use or prefer technologies to communicate.
• Spaces with manipulatives that students can physically arrange encourage brainstorming, aiding kinesthetic learners or students who need to move or play to stay focused.
• Whiteboards and areas where students can storyboard can also help students brainstorm and visually map their ideas, which can be useful for visual learners and students with LD who may struggle with writing and need an opportunity to visually develop and connect their ideas.
• Finally, spaces with mobile furniture to encourage collaborative work can be useful for students with physical disabilities who may have difficulty navigating a center where the furniture is grounded and grouped closer together.

Syracuse University Writing Center, main room with tables for consulting, computer stations, and chairs arranged for collaborative work

What does this mean for our one-room writing center with tables and chairs? A shift in space that better conceives of different learning and composing needs. For some centers, this means a total redesign to support multiple rooms and new technologies. As Sheridan reminds us, though, sometimes a center doesn’t have the funds, resources, or space to build a center from scratch, and it’s important to recognize that a center doesn’t need to change completely to implement accessible practices (Hitt 3). What makes a multiliteracy center accessible is not necessarily the space, but a dialogue between space and practice.

Conclusion

Lefebvre reminds us that the physical spaces we inhabit affect our actions within those spaces; in turn, our actions and social practices impact those spaces. When we talk about practice, then, we should also be talking about space. And when we talk about either of these, we should be talking about accessibility. Just because a multiliteracy center has multiple rooms and resources and supports multiple and flexible practices does not mean that the center will be accessible to all students. Even within these spaces, explicit conversations about disability are necessary to ensure that the needs of all students are met. Such conversations must move away from historical and current conversations about disability that target particular disabilities, identifying characteristics and assuming that students with disabilities are a homogenous group that must be treated a particular way. Instead, multiliteracy encourages us to think more inclusively about students’ learning and composing needs, to recognize that all students can benefit from engaging with texts in different ways in different contexts. All students have a variety of rhetorical, intellectual, and physical abilities, and multiliteracy centers must be ready to adapt not only their physical spaces and practices, but also the way they construct disability and the needs of all learners (Hitt 6).

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Works cited info is available upon request.

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“Unlearning Accommodation: Universal Design for Learning and Multimodal Pedagogies”

Disability diagnoses are steadily rising. According to the CDC, one in six children has a developmental disability, such as autism, ADD/ADHD, cerebral palsy, or an intellectual disability (Boyle et al.). And in her 2010 report, “Accommodating College Students with Learning Disabilities,” Melana Zyla Vickers claims that 2% of college students have a documented learning disability, which doesn’t include students with intellectual disabilities, autism, or other severe diagnoses (3). Of course, this also excludes undocumented disabilities. It is estimated that only half of college students report their disabilities, and many forego accommodations for fear that they will be treated differently by their instructors and peers (Walters 427). These numbers have significant implications for the composition classrooms that must serve all university students regardless of their disciplines, expertise, or abilities.

At the same time, these numbers may not be particularly significant other than to indicate what Cathy Davidson argues is an increase in labels. We are more likely to label a student as learning disabled (LD) if she doesn’t fit into our educational system or doesn’t respond to our pedagogical practices (10). Davidson asks, “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school—the term paper—and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” (101). This question points to an interesting tension: What if our writing pedagogies, and not our students, are at fault? What if, instead of limiting our classroom practices and providing accommodations for students who can’t succeed within those limitations, we create more accessible writing pedagogies? Can a multimodal pedagogy ensure this accessibility?

In many ways, a multimodal pedagogy supports accessible practices through its attention to multiplicity in various modes and media and in its focus on flexibility in processes and products. Disability studies also offers a valuable lens for supporting pedagogical accessibility: Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Adapted from Universal Design (UD), the idea that all spaces must be physically accessible to all people, UDL focuses on creating equitable and flexible pedagogies for all learners. I offer UDL as an opportunity to include disability as a critical modality and to unlearn current notions of disability and accommodation, which position disability as an individual issue, ignoring larger pedagogical inaccessibility. UDL offers a framework for identifying such inaccessible practices and crafting multimodal pedagogies that do more than offer a retrofitted model of accommodation.

Unlearning Accommodation

Jay Dolmage writes, “For all students to have access to those things composition has to offer—literate ‘skills,’ a voice, the words to write the world—we must ensure that disability is recognized and respected” (15, emphasis added). Others, too, have called for recognizing dis/ability as an academic inquiry. Brenda Jo Brueggemann argues that comp classrooms have a “long, proud history of making the invisible visible and of examining how language both reflects and supports notions of Other” (370). James Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson argue that disability is both a social construction and a critical modality (301), arguing for including not just disability but also disability studies. As writing instructors, we work to develop students’ critical thinking and writing, and according to Margaret Price, pedagogies that incorporate DS are necessarily critical because the DS discipline is founded on the critique of social and political assumptions (57). Incorporating Disability Studies into our multimodal pedagogies is a step toward increasing accessibility and respecting disability.

Respecting disability requires moving away from the ideas that disability is a student deficit and that university-sanctioned accommodations are the only support for students with disabilities. These notions position students as subjects who must be “cured” of their individual deficits in order to succeed within our classrooms. Linda White argues that this understanding of disability as an individualized issue allows education systems to frame disability as an “unexpected” failure that doesn’t require systemic change (726). While accommodations are important for providing students with academic support, the accommodation process emphasizes disability as something that students must take responsibility to support.

• First, the student must self-disclose, pay for a diagnosis, and follow up with documentation.
• Then, an administrator or committee decides whether she qualifies for services.
• If so, a coordinator meets with the student to discuss and determine services.
• The office then sends the student’s relevant professor(s) a note for accommodations needed on a certain day or certain period of time.

Even if a student successfully acquires accommodations, Kimber Barber Fendley and Chris Hamel remind us that accommodations rarely apply to writing classes:

1. Accommodations attend predominantly to product-based changes.
2. They are top-down policies that are the same nationwide, which means they often can’t take particular student needs into consideration.
3. They do not explicitly support the work promoted within comp classrooms.
4. And, as mentioned, accommodations require student-initiated change—emphasizing the idea that disability is an individual matter. (528-29)

Then, there is the reminder that most college students don’t request accommodations, so many students don’t even have this basic level of support.

The question remains: How can we meet the needs of all students without relying solely on accommodations for some? Linda White argues that including DS in our pedagogical considerations, in crafting assignments and assessments, can allow us to examine “whether teaching practices that require accommodations are really necessary” (728). Not without its own faults, I offer UDL as an opportunity to include DS in our pedagogies. UDL does not replace accommodations because, even in a universally designed class, some students will need more specific support. However, a multimodal pedagogy that applies the principles of UDL better recognizes and supports students’ different physical abilities, types of knowledge, and modes of learning. Then when students do request accommodations, it’s not an Othering process because a universally designed class acknowledges the different learning and composing needs of all students.

The Three Principles of UDL

The National Center of UDL’s website states, “UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone—not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs” (CAST). Such curricular practices are equally important overlaps to multimodal writing pedagogies. For the rest of this talk, I want to focus on these overlaps between UDL’s three principles—multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement—and three multimodal practices: teaching, composing, and learning.

Principle 1: Multiple Means of Representation via cast.org

The first principle of UDL is Multiple Means of Representation, which is useful for thinking about teaching and how we share information with students. The guidelines for this first principle are 1) to provide options for perception, 2) to provide options for language, mathematic expressions, and symbols; and 3) to provide options for comprehension. Here I see perception and comprehension as very interconnected concepts that we can apply to the multimodal classroom.

To reduce barriers to learning, it’s important to provide the same information through different modalities. Even in a multimodal classroom, it’s easy to default to talking as the major mode of communication. Students can perceive the same information in a number of different ways, and it can be useful both to share those perceptions and to switch up the privileged modality. One way to do this is a class blog where different students take notes and post them on the blog in whatever mode they think is most useful—textual, visual, etc. This provides students with the opportunity to perceive the information differently while also aiding in comprehension. The CAST website states, “The purpose of education is not to make information accessible, but rather to teach learners how to transform accessible information into useable knowledge.” Our practices are inaccessible if students can’t take that information and usefully apply it. Providing time to supply background knowledge and to demonstrate or model new modes is important for ensuring that all students have equal opportunities to create knowledge with the information we share.

Principle 2: Multiple Means of Action & Expression via cast.org

The second principle, Multiple Means of Action and Expression, emphasizes this creation of knowledge through students’ composing processes. Multiple means of action and expression include 1) providing options for physical action, 2) providing options for expression and communication, and 3) providing options for executive functions. This principle links directly to the work that happens within multimodal composition classrooms, and it provides an opportunity to reflect on what exactly we mean when we say “multimodal.”

Pedagogies that encourage the use of technology to compose and learn create opportunities for students who don’t engage with traditional teaching and composing practices, but they also exclude students who don’t have the tech savvy to think rhetorically about how to use technology to create meaning. They also exclude students who may benefit from physical engagement. Because of this, it’s important to remember that multimodal pedagogies do not necessitate digital tools and media, even though both multimodality and UDL often rely on technology. Jody Shipka, for example, has argued for a broader understanding of multimodality that includes print and digital texts, performances, photographs, and intact or repurposed objects (300). This understanding is more accessible: if students want to compose essays, collages, videos, or webtexts, these all fit within the framework of multimodal pedagogies.

This broadening of multimodality emphasizes that we cannot just simply shift from one mode to another. Sometimes, multimodal pedagogies replace alphabetic print and textual practices with a particular modality, such as sound or visuals. I worry, though, that such one-to-one replacements are not truly multimodal or accessible. CAST warns against offering only one mode or media because “it is important for all learners to learn composition, not just writing, and to learn the optimal medium for any particular content of expression and audience.” Allowing students to choose from a wide range of modalities—rather than delineating one—provides more options for students who may not have access to particular modalities. It also allows students to develop a wider range of expression and to make more informed decisions about using particular modalities in particular rhetorical contexts.

Principle 3: Multiple Means of Engagement via cast.org

This development of critical skills leads to UDL’s third and final principle: Multiple Means of Engagement, which connects to students’ different approaches to learning and processing information. This last principle’s guidelines are 1) to provide options for recruiting interest, 2) options for sustaining effort and persistence, and 3) options for self-regulation. Interest, in particular, can teach us a lot about unlearning perceptions of disability, and I return to Davidson who claims that students are failing because school doesn’t interest them. As an example, she cites ADD: “ADD almost never applies to all activities, only those in which the child is not interested. This isn’t a disability (a fixed biological or cognitive condition) but a disposition (susceptible to change depending on the environment). Keep the kids interested and ADD goes away” (80). This echoes the idea that students are labeled as failures or as LD if they don’t respond to our pedagogies. We live in a world with multiple modes—digital, non-digital, and always embodied—and our pedagogies must reflect that if we want to engage students.

Multimodality can help to increase interest by supporting students’ values in both individual and collaborative contexts. Students can often pursue their own topics in comp courses, but, as I’m sure we all know, that isn’t always enough to sustain interest. Multimodality adds an extra element to interest, encouraging autonomy and value through choices in mode and media. If a student has personal interests in music, she can focus on music as a content inquiry and make a music video or recording for her project. When students’ values are supported and students are given responsibility for their own learning, they can learn more about the rhetorical choices of processes and methodologies, technologies and materials, and how product(s) will be delivered and received by an audience (Shipka 287).

Finally, supporting students’ values allows us to better support differences. Here, I think again of Davidson and “collaboration by difference,” which entails a level of unlearning, of seeing opportunities for collaboration when others may see shortcomings of difference. Davidson writes, “Collaboration by difference respects and rewards different forms and levels of expertise, perspective, culture, age, ability, and insight, treating difference not as a deficit but as a point of distinction” (100). Positioning difference as deficit risks students’ disengagement from the class. Collaboration by difference, however, recognizes that all students have particular strengths and expertise that add value to their group and, ultimately, to the class.

UDL and multimodality have a lot of intersectional value. I see UDL’s potential for incorporating Disability Studies into the composition classroom, not only as a critical modality, but as a way to recognize that all students have particular abilities and needs. I see opportunities for extending the great work that many multimodal composition instructors already do to further reduce learning barriers. Finally, I see potential for beginning to unlearn some of the limitations of accommodation—not the good work that accommodations do to support students—but the constraints that accommodation policies place on this support and the individual stigma that they often associate to disability.

My mother and I circa 1987-88, prior to my christening.

My mother died on May 8, 2009—23 days before her 56th birthday, 9 days before I graduated from my undergraduate institution, and 2 days before Mother’s Day. There are few occasions where I find myself angry that my mother is dead. Guilty? Sad? Totally overwhelmed? Of course.

Mother’s Day makes me angry.

Like many holidays, Mother’s Day is one day out of the year where everyone buys into the idea that we should celebrate something, if only for 24 hours. There are cards sold, flowers bought, fancy brunches made, and lots of competitive Facebook statuses posted: Happy Mother’s Day. My mom is better than yours.  

Part of what makes me so angry is that, for the longest time, I bought into that rhetoric. The idea that my mom should only be celebrated on one day. The idea that I needed to show her that I appreciated her with material things.

My mom and I went through an extended mother vs. teenage daughter period.  By the time she was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer, I was 17 and about to graduate from high school. At that point, we were not even close to being out of our contentious period. If anything, the fact that she was so sick for so long, the fact that I was scared and she needed me to not be, added to that tension.

Enter Mother’s Day. Even when we were at our worst, I would stay up the night before Mother’s Day, cutting out hearts or flowers that had sayings on them and posting them all over the house so she would see them in the morning. Since neither my brother nor I knew how to cook, my dad would make my mom breakfast, and we would get her gifts—just like we were supposed to do.

My mom and our dog, 2006.

Once my mom was sick, Mother’s Day was harder for me. Its generic features no longer fit our situation. Hallmark doesn’t sell a card that says, “Happy Mother’s Day. If you die tomorrow, I want you to know that I love you. I’m sorry for being such a jerk.” And four years of chemo make an already questionable brunch less appetizing. And upon realizing that my mom never used the gift cards I was buying her for pedicures—something she used to treat herself to—she told me that she wasn’t supposed to paint her toenails. Of the many things it affects, chemo also affects your toenails, and her feet and nails had become too sensitive.

Once she got sick, I began to realize how shallow Mother’s Day is. My mom didn’t need brunch or flowers or a gift card to a salon. She needed constant support, encouragement, and friendly faces who assured her that fighting was the best choice.

But Mother’s Day isn’t marketed as long-term support. Instead, it expounds a rhetoric of give-your-mom-your-best-for-the-next-24-hours, encouraging a be-extra-nice-just-today attitude. My mom needed more than one day of appreciation. She had (diagnosed) cancer for over four years, and she needed Mother’s Day to be every day.

In many ways, Mother’s Day is an opportunity to remind your mom that she means everything to you. For me, it is a reminder of how superficial Mother’s Day can be, how it is designed to be. And that makes me furious.

I’m angry that I half-assed Mother’s Day celebrations in the past without realizing it.

I’m angry that I don’t have any more Mother’s Day opportunities to spend with my mom.

I’m angry that we never had time to move past my cranky teenage years and into a stage of healing.

Most of all, I’m angry that the consumerist rhetoric that Mother’s Day supports turns this day into a competition to find the best card, the brightest flowers, the most awesome thing to say about our moms. And I’m angry that when Amazon starts reminding me about Mother’s Day three weeks in advance, it doesn’t take into account so many people who are hurt by such a callous reminder: people who have lost our moms, people who are estranged from their moms, moms who have lost children, women who are struggling to conceive.

I’m not against people celebrating moms everywhere, but I do question the idea that such a celebration should occur on a single, arbitrary day. I also question the corporate appeals that we must buy particular things and act in particular ways in order to do Mother’s Day right, to fully and graciously thank our mothers the right way. 

Moms deserve better than a one-day, corporatized appreciation fest. I know mine did.

My brother, mom, and I at Lake MacDonald, 2008.

Here are some of the highlights in [roughly] chronological order:

• Joining the CCR Graduate Circle, a group of really devoted people who are passionate about fostering departmental community.

• Potlucks with the Profs. Okay, this is kind of an extension of the former (which may be cheating), but I love this event. The Circle hosts potlucks with different professors a couple times a semester, and it allows us to hang out with professors who we may not see on a regular basis. This is awesome on three levels: I get to meet new professors, hang out with people in the department, and eat really awesome food. Seriously? The people in this department are serious about potlucks. They bring it.

• Taking classes in the Disability Studies Program. I have always had very personal interests in dis/ability but have never had the opportunity to take a DS course. The courses I have taken and the scholarship I’ve read has already greatly influenced my own research interests. [Fun fact: SU is home to the nation’s first DS program.]

• Hosting the department Halloween party. Disclaimer: I’m not the most sociable person. As new people in town, though, my partner and I wanted to reach out to people in the department, and it turned out to be a great time!

• Publishing a book review. A very dear mentor edits this recently launched journal, which houses a combination of scholarly articles, creative works, and reviews. The Question of Access is an excellent read, and it was great having the opportunity to review it.

• IWCA and CCCC. This was my first time going to Cs, and I loved it! I met a lot of great people and attended a number of really inspirational, interesting panels. The IWCA Collaborative before Cs was also a nice, low-pressure opportunity to meet really engaged writing center folks.

• Organizing a conference. This year, the Circle decided to take on a major project: organizing a conference that would reach out to students, faculty, and community members. On May 5th, we hosted the inaugural Conference on Activism, Research, and Rhetoric. Although it may have been a somewhat naïve decision to agree to be on the core organizing committee while taking four classes, it was a great experience and such a wonderful event!

• Publishing a peer-reviewed article. Wow. Wow. Wow. At the end of last semester, I did a multimodal project about disability and accessibility within writing centers—specifically, the SUWC. When Praxis: A Writing Center Journal put out a call for papers about multiliteracies, I began thinking about how my research fit within that theme. I submitted a draft in January, was accepted by the editor in April, and today, the spring issue was launched!

So, it’s been a good one. I think back to the first day of classes—being so nervous that I couldn’t eat anything before class—and smile. I didn’t know what I was in for, but it is not at all what I expected. Where I feared competition, I found community. When I worried about isolation (from the fellowship), I found friends. When I was nervous about sharing my work, I found encouragement and an overwhelming amount of support.

I still have two conferences left this month (RSA and Computers & Writing), and then I’m looking forward to rejuvenating a little bit over the summer—taking time to read (for fun!), revising some projects, and maybe taking this really cool online course about web accessibility. I’ll definitely continue blogging over the summer break—hopefully even a bit more regularly.

Here’s to the end of a great first year. Thank you so much to all involved!

Critical imagination.

Critical imagination is “a critical skill in questioning a viewpoint, an experience, an event, and so on, and in remaking interpretive frameworks based on that questioning” (19). That is, critical imagination is an “inquiry tool” (20) for speculating about what we know and how we came to know it. It provides an opportunity to rethink and reexamine people who have gone unnoticed, places that have not been seriously explored, practices and conditions that have been overlooked, and genres that have not received careful consideration (72). This remaking presents a number of new opportunities for inquiry:

When we study women of the past, especially those whose voices have rarely been heard or studied by rhetoricians, how do we render their work and lives meaningfully? How do we honor their traditions? How do we transport ourselves back to the time and context in which they lived, knowing full well that is not possible to see things from their vantage point? How did they frame (rather than we frame) the questions by which they navigated their own lives? What more lingers in what we know about them that would suggest that we need to think again, to think more deeply, to think more broadly? How do we make what was going on in their context relevant or illuminating for the contemporary context? (20)

Critical imagination also presents opportunities for the classroom. When learning academic discourse, students are eager to gain traction in any way they can, which is often evident through hasty claims, opinions, and evidence. Kirsch describes critical imagination as a way to “encourage students to go out into the world, explore unlikely sources, be open to chance discoveries, and consider the relevance of seemingly irrelevant documents, artifacts, and encounters” (79). Similarly, Royster explains that critical imagination encourages students to set aside assumptions, to delay judgments, and “to engage in their inquiries fully but courteously and respectfully—even when they disagreed with or became uncomfortable with something that they were seeing or hearing” (80).

Strategic contemplation.

Strategic contemplation overlaps with critical imagination as it, too, focuses on withholding judgment and resisting hasty conclusions (85). Strategic contemplation differs from critical imagination, though, with its overt connections to both the body and to time. Strategic contemplation reclaims meditation, which requires “taking the time, space, and resources to think about, through, and around our work as an important meditative dimension of scholarly productivity” (21). It also splits the research process into two parts (or journeys). One is the journey in real-time, real-space, which involves going into a field site to see where the research subject lived (85). The second journey is more internal and reflexive, providing space for the researcher to engage with her own embodied experiences in order to reimagine rhetorical situations and events (89). By focusing on lived or embodied experiences, strategic contemplation moves toward a politics of location that accounts for sociohistorical contexts, cultural traditions, and the lived experiences of both research subject and researcher. This methodological concept presents the following lines of inquiry:

What do we notice when we stand back and observe? How do we imagine, connect with, and open up a space for the women—and others—we study? How does their work speak to our minds, our hearts, and our ethos? What is most prominent? What lingers at the margins? What can our own lived experience teach us? How do we respond to—and represent—historical subjects when we discover that we may not share their values or beliefs? How do we honor, or do justice to, those who no longer can speak back to us? How can an ethos of humility, respect, and care shape our research? How do past and present merge to suggest new possibilities for the future when we create time and space for contemplation, reflection, and meditation? (22)

In terms of the classroom, strategic contemplation has a lot to offer in terms of both reflection and embodiment. Kirsch asks her students “to be mindful, to pause, to reflect, to pay attention to the world around them without rushing to judgment, to be open to chance discoveries, to new ways of seeing the world” (93), which overlaps with her approach to critical imagination. Royster, on the hand, moves closer to the embodied aspect of strategic contemplation, asking her students to imagine rhetoric as a “whole-body experience” (95). In this way, rhetoric becomes something more than disembodied academic practices: “I asked them to think about their bodily responses to what they were reading and writing, the part of the body to which they thought a text was connecting or trying to connect: the head (logos), the heart (pathos), the backbone (ethos—as related to beliefs), or the stomach (ethos—as related to aesthetic pleasure or revulsion)” (95).

Social circulation.

Social circulation is a point of departure from the previous two methods. This concept centers on “connections among past, present, and futures in the sense that the overlapping social circles in which women travel, live, and work are carried on or modified [generationally] and can lead to changed rhetorical practices” (23). Part of what social circulation seeks to do is disrupt the dichotomy of the public domain of men versus the private domain of women (98). Instead of focusing on how women participated in either the public or the private domain, social circulation works as a metaphor “to indicate the social networks in which women connect and interact with others and use language with intention” (101). Influenced by Stuart Hall’s ideas of language as a privileged medium for creating circles of shared meanings, social circulation presents new questions about women’s use of language in social situations:

Where were the spaces in which women chose/were permitted to speak? What were their fora, their platforms, the contexts of their rhetorical performances? Who were their audiences? What were their concerns? What tools for interaction did they use? How did they construct their arguments? What were the impacts and consequences of their rhetorical performances? How were they trained? How did they convey legacies of action? 100-01

Social circulation also prompts us to imagine new ways of positioning the reader in relation to new forms of texts as rhetorical sites, subjects, contexts, and practices  shift (108). Kirsch argues that this is an important opportunity to pay attention to, and appreciate, different reading practices (108). Royster argues that this is an opportunity to reflect on how place literacy and rhetorical education in social circulation within our classrooms: “We have the privilege and power of helping our students to liberate themselves as thinkers and self-defined users of language in full understanding that a liberation process does indeed mean, in effect, that we set in motion a process of casting “bread on the water” and creating circles of response—social circulations—the outcomes of which we might never be able to imagine—nor should be able to” (109).

Globalization.

Lastly, globalization differs most from the other methodological concepts, not necessarily because it’s underdeveloped so much as it isn’t developed quite as clearly—maybe because it is the one they suggest needs the most attention. Royster & Kirsch argue that feminist rhetorical scholars are actively moving toward “better-informed perspectives of rhetoric and writing as global enterprise; rescuing, recovering, and (re)inscribing women rhetors both distinctively in locations around the world and across national boundaries; and participating in the effort to recast perspectives of rhetoric as a transnational, global phenomenon rather than a Western one” (25). Though this movement doesn’t reflect intellectual dominance in the field, Royster & Kirsch argue that it does reflect presence (121). That is, people are interested in engaging with global feminist rhetorical studies, and scholars are using frameworks that connect feminist, rhetorical, and global studies (125). The challenge, then, is not necessarily a lack of research interest, but perhaps a lack of classroom application and an uncertainty of how to measure and value global knowledge:

How then do we explore the experiences of others without the encumbrances of our own cultural and linguistic prisms? How do we recast what we know in the face of the expanded scope of the unknown terrains before us? How do we create linkages between local and global points of view, knowledge, experience, achievement? Do the shifting paradigms of feminist rhetorical studies offer more-generative springboards as we search for new questions, gather data that may look different and actually be different, search for other ways to consider these data, and pursue an enhanced sense of rhetorical value? 127

Royster & Kirsch optimistically look toward the classroom, as part of the “world in us,” to think about some of these questions. They suggest trying to recognize and respect the globality that exists within our classrooms, “seeking more deliberately to gain experience in connecting internal globality (the world in us) to external globality (us in the world), as we tack out to other geopolitical locations” (128).

Questions

• Were there particular methodological concepts that y’all were more or less drawn to? that you see yourself enacting or engaging with in your own research or teaching? Were there (aspects of) any that seemed impractical or more difficult to incorporate into our research or classroom practices?

• When discussing strategic contemplation, Royster & Kirsch write, “In more recent years, any considerations of deliberately taking time away from the relentless march of making progress in the completion of a scholarly project—short of dramatic and often traumatic life experiences—have not been viewed as strength moves for serious scholars” (86). In the beginning, Royster writes that Traces of a Stream took 17 (!) years to complete. How do we find time to take on these types of projects? As graduate students, how can we engage with strategic contemplation in our own work? Or, how can we incorporate it into the 15-week space of a writing classroom?

• For each methodological concept, Royster & Kirsch graciously give us some insight into their own pedagogical practices. We don’t really see that same attention in the globalization chapter, though. Does that just speak to the difficulties of bringing global practices into Western classrooms?

• This is only slightly related, but how did y’all see their organizational framework of rhetorical assaying relating to, or departing from, these methodological concepts? How important was the geographical metaphor for the methodological discussion?

 
 
Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Gesa E. Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2012. Print.

Most of the material was from the SU Phi chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity. In the very late 1960s, the SU brothers of APO became deeply invested in campus accessibility. Two perspectives likely prompted this: one national, one local. First, the Architectural Barriers Act was passed in 1968, prohibiting “architectural barriers” in all federal buildings. Second, one of the SU brothers was a wheelchair user, which prompted the fraternity to become more involved with making SU (and then campuses nationwide) more accessible to their students. The problem of architectural barriers is interesting because, as the policy states, it only affected federal buildings. For a private university like SU, then, the law had no real effect. The brothers distributed surveys to APO chapters at other campuses nationwide, surveying schools for the accessibility of their buildings, and eventually published a book, The Elimination of Architectural Barriers—a resource for identifying and eliminating inaccessible physical features on campuses. Hundreds of people (and organizations) wrote to the SU brothers for copies of the book as they tried to make their own campuses more accessible to students with disabilities.

The story of these fraternity brothers in the late 1960’s to mid-1970’s is fascinating. They rhetorically positioned themselves as accessibility “leaders” and disseminated information and resources nationwide. Seriously? That’s awesome.

It’s so awesome, in fact, that I don’t know how to do it justice. We’ve read so many great social histories this semester—Shirley Wilson Logan’s exploration of African American rhetorical education, Jacqueline Bacon’s work on abolitionist rhetoric, Catherine Hobbs’s edited collection of nineteenth-century women writers, and Carol Mattingly’s accounts of temperance women. All of these authors are so careful and complete with the claims they make and with the evidence they share. Yet their clarity leaves room for nuance. These authors all manage to let history speak on its own terms, an idea that we have returned to again and again as the semester progresses.

And I’m not sure how to do that. I’ve never tried to write anything that involves archival work, and I’m finding that it requires a different approach to researching and writing than what I’m used to. For every few sentences I write, I stop, re-read, fret, revise.

I think I’m going to grab an iced coffee and do what I tell my students to do: Write without worrying about how the words sound or how the ideas are organized. Write until you have your ideas out, then worry about all the other stuff: the organization, the eloquent wording, the nuance. Hopefully that works. If not, it may just be useful to remind myself that a first attempt at writing an abbreviated history will not (and cannot) be perfect. For that matter, no history, no matter how awesome (props to all you historians!) can be perfect. Whew…

These are a couple of the questions we discussed in my Universal Design class this week after watching the video below: “Roger Ebert: Remaking My Voice.”

I really appreciated this video. It’s interesting to hear Ebert “talk” with Alex (and to hear Roger 2.0) and to hear Ebert’s story told through the voices of his wife and friends. Then, there’s the story itself: his jaw surgery, the multiple ruptures of his carotid artery, the switch from a famed movie critic to someone with whom “people don’t want to make eye contact.” Ebert says, “It is human nature to look away from illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.” These are simple statements, yet they indicate how we construct physical disability as Other, how we make assumptions about people based on their physical appearances and their speech.

Ebert asks, “What value do we place on the sound of our own voice? How does that affect who you are as a person?” These questions have interesting applications for the classroom. We ask our students to find their voices through their writing, but what does this mean? Do we privilege particular students’ voices over others? Culturally, we privilege the norm: Standard American English (just like the way we privilege “normal” bodies).

Ebert, Disability Studies folks, and many Rhet/Compers would likely ask us to reconsider the ideal written standard.

Voice is personal, embodied. We want to take the time to find a voice that “fits” our particular writing styles. Because voice is so subjective, though, it can be difficult to teach. I often find that my students are overwhelmed when we talk about voice because they assume that I want them to write in a particular voice, but they don’t know what that voice sounds like or how it relates to their own embodied voices.

I think Ebert’s video offers a few starting points that could be useful for getting students to feel comfortable sharing their voices, to respect other people’s voices, and to think critically about how voices are manifested differently.

First, none of this is possible without a welcoming, respectful classroom environment. Ebert’s presentation is powerful in part because of the respect he has from his wife and friends. Learning to respect others’ voices—whether typical or atypical, standard or colloquial—is important for creating a “community of learners” where students feel comfortable experimenting with and developing their voices.

Second, Ebert’s presentation is also successful because of its strong content. He tells a story that is deeply personal, meaningful, both serious and funny. Yet it’s not standard. Ebert’s voice—his physical delivery—isn’t standard, yet it would be difficult to argue that his presentation isn’t good. Ebert has a strong voice, regardless of whether or not it matches our standardized ideals. I think it could be empowering for students to know that they can have atypical voices—whether spoken or written—and still be powerful, effective rhetors.

Third, there are different modes (and opportunities) of delivery. Ebert uses multiple voices and bodies to deliver his argument, and he could have used any number of modes—talking through Alex for the entire presentation, supplementing the talk with visuals, creating a video with captions. If we think of a multimodal writing pedagogy as one that encourages students to learn and compose using different modes and media, voice adds an interesting layer to the process of multimodal writing and how students represent their voices through different modes.

Opening up discussions of voice could be really valuable for shaping a writing environment that is more respectful and inclusive to the diverse range of voices (and bodies) that deviate from the standard.

1) Metaphor (or Topos) of Disorder.

Like the first four chapters, metaphors continue to play a pervasive role in Cintron’s analyses. One that I thought might be useful to examine a little more closely was framed as a rhetorical theme, a topos: “that of madness, disorder, and irrationality” (182). Cintron argues that gang members use madness to “create a ‘rep’ that no one wanted to ‘mess with’” (183), which is a way to create respect under conditions of little or no respect. Thus, disorder became a tool for power, a “kind of freedom” (183). Like he does with all points, though, Cintron provides a counter: “Instability, whose metaphor is rampant disease, whether in the physical body or social body, is not allowed its full power to destroy” (210). This occurs in his discussion of instrumental rationality and shows the limitations of “power” through disorder.

Generally, madness/disorder is constructed in opposition to social order, but it has larger connections to disability. Harkening back to Valerio, for example, disorder (e.g. LD) is prominent in the lives of these Mexican males. Because they seem to struggle with reading and writing, it seems likely that the LD label is racially motivated, that it’s a matter of not knowing enough white, middle-class English rather than not being intellectually “up to par.” This resonates with the Juárez family narrative, too, as we read about Alberto’s feelings about his own education and discrimination and how it has disabled him economically.

Taking this one step further, moving into “quicksand” (195) as Cintron might say, the theme of disorder has more explicit implications for the gang members as a disabled group. Cintron writes, “The reaction against the topos of madness/disorder, particularly when it becomes embodied in gang-related shootings, is that it represents both a threat to life as well as a withering away of the social controls that shore up the strongholds of the system world” (185). The gangs are abnormalized through a refusal to adhere to social norms; their physical bodies (their clothing, jewelry, performative characteristics) are marked differently from other Angelstown inhabitants; and they are literally disabled through physical violence.

2) Metacommentary on Ethnography.

From the first page, Cintron tells us that we will be getting a different kind of ethnography: “At one level, I critique the making of ethnographic texts, this book in particular” (ix). And Cintron holds true to this, dropping in questions and comments about ethnographic methods and practices as he explores various themes.

These are just a few that I think are worth revisiting:

• “What was I to make of values and beliefs that seemed to run contrary to my own?” (130)
• “How does one textualize such encounters, such people? How do I render the density and subtlety of life lived if, as the observer, I felt that mostly nastiness and short-sightedness were to be found there?” (130)
• “What is this ethnography, or, as I prefer to call it, this project in the rhetorics of public culture or the rhetorics of everyday life?” (228)
• “Like other ethnographies exposed, [this one] would reveal how innumerable particulars were sifted through, leaving most behind, and how the ones that remained were denuded of their contexts so that they could be distilled into a set of tenuous generalities.” (231-32)
• “Can we ask ethnography to be more exact or more complete or more faithful to the fieldsite? Other than demanding honesty and hard work of any fieldworker, I do not think that more can be asked.” (232)

3) The “E” Word.

It almost makes me cringe, but I’ll address it anyway: ethics. Cintron’s book has a different flavor than others we have read: it is poetic, sometime painful, and very personal (don’t ask me how I only chose “p” words). He constantly gives us both sides of the story and of his own claims, never settling for one true answer. For someone who argues the importance of ethos, he constructs a mighty trustworthy and honest ethos himself. In many ways, then, I want to say that he addresses ethical issues virtuously—that he is an ethical superhero ethnographer, but there were a few places that raised red flags for me that I want to share.

a. “Yeah, I was being judgmental, but the Juárez family had always summarized for me a certain innocence and trouble whose points of origin were deeply embedded in the larger social system” (133). He also discussed the family giving him headaches. It’s a side of the researcher that I’ve never seen, and I appreciate it. At the some time, it makes me question how the Juárez family functions in this book. I keep thinking back to our discussions about representing research participants and what to do when your analysis negatively portrays them. It’s difficult here, though, because these people aren’t just participants for Cintron; they are a family, a group of friends. It makes me wonder, how would the Juárez family feel about these brief, intimate snippets about their family dynamic?

b. “I was in a kind of mini-crisis. On the one hand, listening to stories of vengeance with a supposedly neutral ear seemed morally bankrupt; on the other hand, since I had never articulated a system that both understood vengeance and opposed it, I didn’t know how to reply to such stories” (146). Here, Cintron is struggling as he listens to Martín’s story of vengeance. To me, this is similar to the Juárez family narrative (to me) and the division between friend and researcher. Cintron, however, is so deeply affected by these stories of vengeance that the situation moves beyond a researcher/friend dilemma and moves to a deeper, personal dilemma about moral consciousness itself. What can we make of this moment and others like it? What does it show us about the level of engagement involved in a research project that spans nearly a decade?

c. “We interviewed those individuals who accepted us and became friends with a few, and occasionally we stumbled onto caches of information that we had no right to see” (164). This excerpt is part of a discussion about becoming part of a research project about gangs without having any personal experiences with gangs. It follows a quotation from Sanyika Shakur: “There are no other gang experts except participants” (163). And though Cintron claims that he doesn’t want to be a gang expert (164), the fact remains that he is researching gangs.This brings up a question that we’ve tossed around a few times: How do you research and become part of a community to which you have no personal ties?

This question gains speed when you factor in the high privacy of gang activity (from graffiti to physical acts of violence). Cintron argues that gang members are an important part of determining how people with no respect can gain respect, but beyond that, what are the benefits of studying gangs and their particular members in this chapter or in any context? Who benefits from this study?

Cintron, Ralph. Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. Print.

I’ve been told that CCCC panels can be pretty hit or miss, but I think I lucked out with a pretty solid set of panels. Here’s the breakdown of sessions I attended:

• A.01—Performing the Archive: Practice, Stories, and Materiality
• B.11—Black and Brown Literacies: Gateways to Transformative Theories, Practices, and Meaningful Engagement(s)
• C.01—Gateways and Barriers: Disability Policy in the Writing Classroom, Program Administration, and Composition’s Disciplinary History
• D.31—Checking Up on Wired Writing Programs: Emerging Perspectives on Program-Wide Technology Integration
• E.19—Access Denied? Universal Design, Privacy, and Socio-economic Access
• F.22—Affect, Embodiment, and the Tensions of “Unruly” Rhetorical Writing Pedagogy
• G.02—Writing History in the Digital Age: New Gateways for Feminist Historiography
• I.04—Mixing and Revising: Writers and Texts
• J—Access: a Happening

I don’t want to go through all of the panels (you can check out my tweets of the separate sessions @ahhitt), but I do want to give a shout-out to my Syracuse peers. It was really great to listen to their research, and I had the opportunity to check out five of their presentations: B.11 and F.22. In B.11, Latoya (Scholar for the Dream!) examined the literacy practices of black girls in hip-hop culture and online spaces, specifically Nicki Minaj’s literacy practices through Twitter. Latoya argued that we need to continually reexamine what we lose by exclusively focusing on academic discourse, ensuring that we continue to create informal virtual writing spaces without surveillance (where people can explore and practice writing in ways that shape their identities). The session’s respondent, Valerie Kinloch, reminded us that this kind of research must move beyond words and toward action, which necessitates that we think about how to transfer critical pedagogical practices to communities.

Then, in F.22, more SU peers worked through how to critically and supportively engage with feminism, queerness, and race in the writing classroom. Kate extended Nancy Welch’s concept of rhetorical sidetaking to discuss how a white female graduate student can be a responsible ally with students and with feminist women of color. Anna discussed how to reclaim public voices in the classroom, noting that this reclamation must account for our students’ particular bodies (as ethos is embodied), acknowledging that particular student bodies receive more discrimination and, thus, are more at risk of reclaiming those public voices. Finally, Tim, much like Kate, explored how a white male can try to address radical rhetorical alliances, citing stronger rhetorical listening as one possibility.

Of course, there were other SU folks who represented at Cs whose sessions I couldn’t attend. I heard that Ben knocked it out of the park with his presentation on his community work in Syracuse and his new edited collection, I Witness: Perspectives on Policing in the Near Westside. And I heard a lot of good things about our faculty presentations.

Cs was a great opportunity to hear people’s research and to meet new folks with similar research interests—the Disability Studies SIG was particularly awesome for that. However, Cs was also a great opportunity to support my peers and the work that they do. I was so amazed with their research and how well they presented themselves, and the conference experience reminded me how grateful I am to be part of this community.

Last week, I attended my first Conference on College Composition and Communication, and it was awesome. It was an overwhelming experience (so many people! so many sessions!) in a really positive way (lots of engaging panels and people). The first part of my CCCC experience was the IWCA Collaborative that was held all day Wednesday.

The IWCA Collaborative was focused around activism, specifically, “Writing Center Activism: From Ideals to Strategies.” It was a self-identified (“un”)conference, and we spent the whole day participating in non-traditional conference activities: workshops, roundtables, collaborative writing circles, and round robins. No paper presentations. Awesome.

Session A.

The (un)conference opened with a session where we articulated our ideals about writing center activism, the goals of our work, and our values. We collaboratively brainstormed definitions of activism, writing them on giant pieces of post-it paper around the room. The breadth of the definitions amazed me, and I appreciated the shared values that surfaced as people shared their definitions aloud:

• Activism for writing centers is multidimensional and dependent on context—region, institution, and situation.
• Activism is community awareness.
• Activism is advocacy for students and diversity.
• Activism is being active in institutional and administrative conversations; opening up and participating in dialogue.
• Activism is channeled energy. Writing centers are places where power happens (students are in power and power is energy).
• Activism is dissolving student stereotypes in tutor practice and honoring students’ identities and writing styles.
• Activism is exporting what we know to others (in our institutions and beyond), being role models for others.
• Activism and radicalism are acts of responsibility.
• Activism is labor advocacy—for contingent faculty, pay wages, recognition.
• Activism is talk: talk as action, talk + action.
• Activism is countering oppressive conditions of racism, sexism, classicism, ableism.

Session B.

With these definitions of activism in mind, our (un)conference began. The activity in our opening session was actually a really nice bridging activity to the workshop that I co-led with two colleagues from Syracuse (Jason and Kate). Our workshop was “Public Narrative and Writing Centers: Stories of Self, of Us, of Now.” Here’s the abstract for that session:

This workshop will borrow methods from Marshall Ganz’s public narrative approach in order to (1) demonstrate a way of organizing with consultants at our own centers, and (2) to address challenges and threats confronting writing centers today. Through structured personal and communal storytelling activities, participants will articulate a set of shared values and parlay those values into commitments for change, both at home in their local institutions and within the more cosmopolitan arena of writing centers.

It felt like a really productive workshop, and the participants identified some important shared experiences, such as “falling in” to writing center work through serendipitous moments and trying to figure out how to defend the value of WCs as more than “remediation centers.” They also articulated some important shared values:

• the non-evaluative and non-authoritarian environment
• collaboration
• learning with students/tutees
• applying tutoring knowledge to pedagogy
• recognizing the importance of flexible practices

Session C.

After our workshop, I attended a roundtable entitled “Writing Center as Partner: Effective and Ethical Activism across Campus and in the Community” run by some WC folks at Eastern Michigan University. Ann Blakeslee talked about some interesting community outreach initiatives, such as the Family Literacies Initiative and Disciplinary Literacies Initiative. Other EMU consultants discussed training, engaging in literacy practices that move beyond particular assignments, constructing clear and detailed assignment prompts, and the importance of talk. One of the discussions I found most productive was about regional activism and how writing centers can advocate for other centers by constantly telling stakeholders what we do (e.g. successful conferences, projects and initiatives, etc.).

Session D.

The next session I attended was Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s workshop, “Generating Writing Center Stories: Action Research as Activism,” which was super informative. I’m taking a methods class right now, and I’ve read a few articles about action research, but I’m not making claims to knowing much about it. In the workshop, Jackie gave us some background information about action research itself—it’s collaborative, defined in our own contexts, planned, and action-oriented—and argued that writing centers could benefit from taking up action research to make more informed decisions about change/activism. Specifically, she argued that action research and writing centers have shared values in their focuses on pairing theory and practice, self-reflexivity, and an emphasis on local settings and contexts.

We had a chance to sketch out a plan for an action research project, which I will definitely return to when crafting a Research Proposal in my methods class. The annotated bibliography and critical lit review I just wrote were both based on writing center research, and approaching my WC interests from an action-research perspective will be really useful.

Session E. 

Finally, the (un)conference closed with some collaborative brainstorming about how to translate our ideas into strategies. We were asked to write down one concern—and issue that had surfaced from the workshop—that we wanted to do something about. Then, we passed that concern around our table, and everyone wrote down one concrete strategy for approaching that issue. And although I was on information-overload at the point, it was a fun activity.

With my interests in dis/ability and writing centers, my concern was the lack of writing center research/scholarship/resources about students, tutors, and directors with dis/abilities. I received some interesting feedback about how to raise money for resources and some people to read who engage that work (such as Rebecca Day Babcock). I also received some troubling feedback that one person already does this work and that disability scholarship already exists. Placed within the larger context of the collaborative itself, it bothered me to think that these are not concerns worth pursuing if one person is already doing this or if similar scholarship exists elsewhere. I think it’s important for writing center scholars to take up issues of dis/ability and accessibility as they relate specifically to WC spaces and WC inhabitants.

If there was one major takeaway for me from this (un)conference, it was the importance of collaboration in both research and in practice. By addressing these topics more collectively, we gain richer understandings of how to make these spaces and practices more accessible to a range of students. The collaborative at large was a great opportunity for framing how we can begin working toward social change, and I look forward to continue reading and meeting people who do this type of work.