Storying Writing Center Labor for Anti-Capitalist Futures
By Genie Nicole Giaimo and Daniel Lawson
With Chapters from 34 Colleagues
Copy edited by Caitlin Kahihikolo. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
Rooted in storying and testimony, Storying Writing Center Labor offers an inclusive, theoretically grounded, labor-oriented approach to writing center scholarship and praxis. While emotional labor and other wellness-related topics have long received attention in the field, issues of precarity, austerity, workism, and related concerns remain under-examined. Marrying ethnography and storying to uncover trends and circumstances related to writing center labor, this book offers insights into the lived working experiences of writing center professionals along with actionable items for creating just, sustainable, and intentional workspaces. Importantly, Storying Writing Center Labor tackles long-established labor issues in the field that have been and continue to be exacerbated by higher education’s austerity politics and reliance on disaster capitalism to inform decision making.
Table of Contents
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Act I. Where We’ve Been: Project Frame
Chapter 1. Writing Center Labor in the Neoliberal University: Where Have We Been (So Far)
Chapter 2. Methodology: Counterstorying, Testimony and Narrative as Research Work
Chapter 3. Key Concepts in the Book
Chapter 4. The Untold Stories, The Hard Truths
Act II. Where We Are: Stories and Interchapters
Chapter 5. Genie and Dan’s Origin Stories
Theme 1. Career Trajectories and Labor
Chapter 6. Laboring to Grow an Academic Field, Muriel Harris
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.06
Chapter 7. Curriculum Vitae: An Alternative History, Neal Lerner
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.07
Chapter 8. My Writing Center Side Hustle, Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.08
Chapter 9. Why Write?: Writing Center Publishing as Labor, Rebecca Hallman Martini
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.09
Chapter 10. Moving On to Move Up, Joseph Cheatle
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.10
Chapter 11. The First Year: A New Director’s Experience, Allie Sockwell Johnston
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.11
Chapter 12. From Dream Job to Unsustainable, Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.12
Theme 2. Precarity and Failed Advocacy
Chapter 13. Writing Fellows; Fellow Students, Eva Dunsky
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.13
Chapter 14. I’ve Got a Secret: I’m Contingent. (Wait, You’re Contingent Too?), Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.14
Chapter 15. Into and Out of the Tutoring Center, Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.15
Chapter 16. Writing Center as Life Raft: The Fracturing of the Grand Narratives of Working in Higher Education, Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.16
Chapter 17. Counterstory: Ignored Labor with a Writing Center, Lucy (Pseudonymous)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.17
Chapter 18. “... at least for now”: A Story About Undergraduate Writing Centers and Labor Compensation in Five Parts, Scott Whiddon
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.18
Chapter 19. Advocating for Equitable Tutor Pay with Campus Partners, Katherine E. Tirabassi
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.19
Chapter 20. Benefits and Drawbacks of Hiring Professional Academic Tutors, Libby Anthony
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.20
Chapter 21. From the Archive of a Tutor Representative’s Email Correspondences (Summer 2022), Anonymous
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.21
Chapter 22. “I Have No Idea What I’m Doing”: Why Training is An Essential Part of Labor Conversations in Writing Centers, Olivia Imirie
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.22
Chapter 23. Overloaded: Balancing the Ethics of WC Administration and Student Labor, Megan Keaton
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.23
Chapter 24. Writing Center Exile: Third Gender as Third Class in a Third Space, Silk Jade (Pseudonymous)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.24
Chapter 25. Thank You for Carrying Me Through, Thank You for Your Labor, Saurabh Anand
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.25
Chapter 26. Coaching Queerly: Healing in Writing Center Work, Molly Ryan
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.26
Chapter 27. “Fucking Up” and Listening in the Writing Center, Ryan Witt
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.27
Chapter 28. Boundless, Genie Nicole Giaimo
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.28
Theme 5. Trauma and the New Workplace Normal
Chapter 29. A Story of Writing Center Labor in a Violent Age, John Chadderdon, Maggie M. Herb, and Elijah Hundley
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.29
Chapter 30. Tragedy in the Writing Center, Vincent Belkin (Pseudonymous)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.30
Chapter 31. Boundaries and Labor During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Anne McMurtrey
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.31
Chapter 32. Bearing Witness: The Emotional Labor of (Pandemic) Tutoring, Margaret Lundberg
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.32
Theme 6. Care Work and Sustainability
Chapter 33. Care and Work/Spaces: Writing Center Labor During COVID-19, Janine Morris
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.33
Chapter 34. Labor of Love: Managing the Writing Center and New Motherhood during the Pandemic, Mary Elizabeth Skinner and Jaclyn Wells
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.34
Chapter 35. What the COVID-19 Pandemic Taught Us About Writing Center Work: The Joys of a Tutor at the Laboratory of Academic Literacy (LLAC), Oluwatosin Mariam Junaid
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.35
Chapter 36. Mike, Jonathan M. Green
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.36
Chapter 37. Growing Like Moss: Theorizing the Labor of Writing Center Placemaking, Candis Bond
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.37
Chapter 38. Disruptive Labor: The Transformational Work of Pushing Boundaries, Tiffany-Anne M. Elliott
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.38
Chapter 39. Keep Writing Centers Weird, James Donathan Garner
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401.2.39
Act III. Where We’re Going: Conclusion and Call to Action
Chapter 40. Reclaiming Metalabor
Chapter 41. What Can We Do? Adopting an Anti-capitalist Framework in Writing Center Work
Appendix A. Email to Workshop Participants
Appendix B. Letter to Accreditors
Appendix C. Playbook for Unionizing
About the Authors
Genie Giaimo is Associate Professor and Director of the Writing Center at Hofstra University in New York. They are the author of Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond and the editor of Wellness and Care in Writing Center Work: A WLN Digital Edited Collection. Their award-winning work has been published in Praxis, Journal of Writing Research, The Journal of Writing Analytics, TPR, Composition Studies, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Research in Online Literacy Education, Kairos, Across the Disciplines, Journal of Multimodal Rhetoric, and several edited collections. They are past President of Northeast Writing Center Association and past Co-Chair of the IWCA Summer Research Institute (2022). Their current research utilizes quantitative and qualitative models to answer a range of questions in and around writing centers, such as tutor attitudes towards wellness and self-care practices, tutor engagement with writing center documentation, and the effects of directed self-placement on student learning outcomes.
Daniel Lawson is Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Central Michigan University. His work on writing centers has appeared in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, Praxis, The Learning Assistance Review, and Journal of College Literacy and Learning. His work on media studies, games, and comics has appeared in Journal of Comics and Culture and Studies in Comics as well in edited collections such as Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age, Critical Insights: The American Comic Book, and The New Work of Composing. His research interests revolve around affect, labor, transfer, and reflection in the writing center.
Publication Information: Giaimo, Genie, and Daniel Lawson. (2024). Storying Writing Center Labor for Anti-Capitalist Futures. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401
Digital Publication Date: September 3, 2024
Print Publication Date: Pending
ISBN: 978-1-64215-240-1 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-241-8 (ePub) | 978-1-64642-689-8 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401
Contact Information:
Genie Nicole Giaimo: geniegiaimo@gmail.com
Daniel Lawson: lawso3d@cmich.edu
Practices & Possibilities
Series Editors: Aimee McClure, Clarke University; Kelly Ritter, Georgia Institute of Technology; Aleashia Walton, University of Cincinnati; and Jagadish Paudel, University of Texas at El Paso
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
Copyright © 2024 Genie Giaimo, Daniel Lawson, and the authors of individual parts of this book. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 270 pages, with notes, illustrations, and bibliographies. This book will be available in print from University Press of Colorado as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in digital formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.