Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change

Brief Description: "Noting a lack of sustained and productive dialogue about race in university writing center scholarship, the editors of this volume have created a rich resource for writing center tutors, administrators, and scholars. Motivated by a scholarly interest in race and whiteness studies, and by an ethical commitment to anti-racism work, contributors address a series of related questions: How does institutionalized racism in American education shape the culture of literacy and language education in the writing center? How does racism operate in the discourses of writing center scholarship/lore, and how may writing centers be unwittingly complicit in racist practices? How can they meaningfully operationalize anti-racist work? How do they persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in their daily practice? The conscientious, nuanced attention to race in this volume is meant to model what it means to be bold in engagement with these hard questions and to spur the kind of sustained, productive, multi-vocal, and challenging dialogue that, with a few significant exceptions, has been absent from the field."-- Provided by publisher. Marc Notes: Includes index.; Noting a lack of sustained and productive dialogue about race in university writing center scholarship, the editors of this volume have created a rich resource for writing center tutors, administrators, and scholars. Motivated by a scholarly interest in race and whiteness studies, and by an ethical commitment to anti-racism work, contributors address a series of related questions: How does institutionalized racism in American education shape the culture of literacy and language education in the writing center? How does racism operate in the discourses of writing center scholarship/lore, and how may writing centers be unwittingly complicit in racist practices? How can they meaningfully operationalize anti-racist work? How do they persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in their daily practice? The conscientious, nuanced attention to race in this volume is meant to model what it means to be bold in engagement with these hard questions and to spur the kind of sustained, productive, multi-vocal, and challenging dialogue that, with a few significant exceptions, has been absent from the field.-- Provided by publisher.; Motivated by a scholarly interest in race and whiteness studies, and by an ethical commitment to anti-racism work, contributors address a series of questions related to institutionalized racism in American higher education, especially in college and university writing centers-- Provided by publisher. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Call to Action / Laura Greenfield, Karen Rowan -- Part 1. Foundational Theories on Racism, Rhetoric, Language, and Pedagogy -- 1. The Rhetorics of Racism: A Historical Sketch / Victor Villanueva -- 2. The Standard English Fairy Tale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions about Language Diversity / Laura Greenfield -- 3. Should Writers Use They Own English? / Vershawn Ashanti Young -- Part 2. Toward an Antiracist Praxis for Writing Centers -- 4. Retheorizing Writing Center Work to Transform a System of Advantage Based on Race / Nancy M. Grimm -- 5. Bold: The Everyday Writing Center and the Production of New Knowledge in Antiracist Theory and Practice / Anne Ellen Geller, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll -- 6. Beyond the Week Twelve Approach: Toward a Critical Pedagogy for Antiracist Tutor Education / Laura Greenfield, Karen Rowan -- 7. Organizing for Antiracism in Writing Centers: Principles for Enacting Social Change / Moira Ozias, Beth Godbee -- Part 3. Research, Critical Case Studies, and the Messiness of Practice -- 8. Bias in the Writing Center: Tutor Perceptions of African American Language / Nancy Effinger Wilson -- 9. Diversity as Topography: The Benefits and Challenges of Cross Racial Interaction in the Writing Center / Kathryn Valentine, Monica F. Torres -- 10. Racial Literacy and the Writing Center / Michelle T. Johnson -- 11. Breaking the Silence on Racism through Agency within a Conflicted Field / Jane Cogie -- Part 4. Stories of Lived Experience -- 12. The Quality of Light: Using Narrative in a Peer Tutoring Class / Ann E. Green -- 13. Caught in a Firestorm: A Harsh Lesson Learned Teaching AAVE / Barbara Gordon -- 14. On the Edges: Black Maleness, Degrees of Racism, and Community on the Boundaries of the Writing Center / Jason B. Esters -- Index -- About the Authors. Publisher Marketing: Noting a lack of sustained and productive dialogue about race in university writing center scholarship, the editors of this volume have created a rich resource for writing center tutors, administrators, and scholars. Motivated by a scholarly interest in race and whiteness studies, and by an ethical commitment to anti-racism work, contributors address a series of related questions: How does institutionalized racism in American education shape the culture of literacy and language education in the writing center? How does racism operate in the discourses of writing center scholarship/lore, and how may writing centers be unwittingly complicit in racist practices? How can they meaningfully operationalize anti-racist work? How do they persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in their daily practice? The conscientious, nuanced attention to race in this volume is meant to model what it means to be bold in engagement with these hard questions and to spur the kind of sustained, productive, multi-vocal, and challenging dialogue that, with a few significant exceptions, has been absent from the field."