Table of Contents
Editors’ Note: What the Pandemic Taught Us About Writing Centers
Disrupting Place and Space
The Writing Center is Not a Place: Kara Wittman, Jenny Thomas, and Ashlee Moreno
This chapter asks the reader to sit with the paradox of Writing Center as place: the exigencies of the pandemic has forced writing centers to rethink what we do when dis-placed. The authors describe how the “fracture” of losing a place prompted critical redefinition of “what communication–and support for that communication–look like on a college campus.”
Radical Care at the Centre: A Kitchen Table Autoethnography: Julia Lane, Mohsen Hosseinpour Moghaddam, Kate Elliott, and Mackenzie Graves
Recognizing that the metaphor of “home” has often informed how we think of welcoming writing centre spaces, the authors invite us to look at the implications of when this metaphor is no longer figurative and what radical care means when we are literally working with writers at their kitchen tables– and our own.
Change of Scenery: Examining At Home Writing Spaces to Improve On-Campus Writing Centers: Makenna Myers, Kaylee De La Motte, Kirstie Skogerboe, and Seth Skogerboe
How can the experience of writers writing at home inform the ways in which on-campus writing center spaces can be more hospitable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing for the writers who come there? The authors of this chapter share the images of at-home writing spaces that they elicited from writers along with writers’ reflections of what mattered in those spaces. They then examine how looking at these writing spaces that writers created during the pandemic can inform post-pandemic changes to on-campus writing center spaces.
Gamifying Writing Center Design: Christopher LeCluyse
This chapter brings together the way in which gamification and design came together in the process of collaboratively reimagining a writing center physical space in the face of social distancing requirements through Roll20, a virtual tabletop website used for roleplaying games. The author explores how gamification can, beyond an immediate response to the pandemic, center collaboration and agency in writing center design and practice.
Disconnecting and Reconnecting
The Loss of We: An Empirical Investigation of Synchronous and Asynchronous Tutoring Experience Before and During the Pandemic: Dana Driscoll and Andrew Yim
This chapter is an empirical exploration of how the inclusion of asynchronous tutoring, as a result of the pandemic, shaped writing center sessions at one institution. Focusing most notably on the loss of “we” in writing center session logs, the authors grapple with recuperating the “we” to better meet the needs of writers.
Finding Participatory Hospitality in Online Writing Studios: Abby Bernard, Niah Wilson, and Michelle Miley
This is the first of two chapters (see Abraham et al. below) that examine how pandemic exigencies made writing center practitioners newly aware of the interpersonal dynamics of tutoring conversations. The writers use the lens of “participatory hospitality” to examine the moves tutors can make to “invit[e] meaningful participation” from writers, particularly in online settings.
Beyond the Binary: Towards a Culture of Care-Based Inquiry in the Writing Center: Vanessa Abraham, Emily Poland, Ben Warren, and Anna Wendel
In this chapter, four undergraduate writing tutors draw on their experience as novice college writers during the pandemic to argue in its wake for the renewed importance of building rapport throughout a session. Drawing on personal narratives from post-pandemic as well as session transcripts from pre-pandemic times, they grapple with the gendered implications of privileging care over productivity as they pose a new tutoring heuristic that they term “care-based inquiry.”
Rebuilding Community
Remotely Sustaining Community and Enhancing Professional Development in a Writing and Communications Center during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Nikki Chasteen, Kelly Concannon, Kevin Dvorak, Eric Mason, and Janine Morris
This chapter details one writing center’s comprehensive approach to transitioning fully online during the pandemic. The authors describe how they functioned as a community of practice with attention to the wellness and social justice concerns of writers and tutors.
How We Write Now: A Preliminary Study of the Culture of Writing on Campus during the Pandemic: Jack Friedman, Ryann Liljenstolpe, Dominique Morra, Alex Rodriguez, Andrea Scott, and Gabriel Scherman
This multi-voiced chapter shares one writing center director’s story of a course she taught in the midst of the pandemic–a course that engaged students as researchers of the ways in which the campus writing culture changed due to the pandemic. The chapter also presents the research findings of those student researchers who interrogated threshold concepts in writing studies in order to explore “what, how, and why” of writing at the height of COVID-19.
Zooming Past Institutional Boundaries to Tutor in a Community: Ryan Madan, Kristina Reardon, and Christina Santana
This chapter examines how some writing centers were motivated to reach out to their communities, despite how challenging that became during the pandemic. The writing center directors from three different institutions who collaborated on this article detail how they developed an online, community writing center rooted in social justice, reciprocity, and community engagement.
