English Language and Literature Commons^™

Partnering With Your Local Public Library, Amy Banks

The Utah English Journal

School libraries are an excellent resource for English classes, often serving as a central hub for research and literacy. But it is not the only library schools can access: public libraries can also support English classrooms. After teaching English in junior high and high school, as well as teaching adjunct writing classes at Brigham Young University, I shifted into librarian work, where I now design after-school reading, writing, and social programs for teens and adults.

Book Review: Race Against Time, Amanda Burrows

The Utah English Journal

US Supreme Court, 1923. More than 50 years after the ratification of the 14th amendment and the end of the Civil War, the promise of" equal protection of the laws" was under attack. Moore vs Dempsey was the first case where the federal court overturned the ruling of a state court; more significantly, it was the first case to rule in favor of a black defendant. Four years earlier, in Elaine, Arkansas, a meeting of sharecroppers at a local church had been bombarded with gunfire. After a few days of rioting, -five white men and an uncounted number of black …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 50, 2022: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

"Comic"Ally Calling For Cultural Competency: Using Graphic Narratives To Teach Social Justice In The Writing Classroom, Travis Moody

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Beyond Transactional Narratives Of Agency: Peer Consultants’ Antiracist Professionalization, Amy T. Cicchino, Katharine H. Brown, Christopher Basgier, Megan Haskins

The Writing Center Journal

Social justice movements, especially Black Lives Matter, inspired many writing center administrators to reflect on their commitments to antiracism and engage with antiracist professional development with their staff. However, there is continued need to study the impact antiracist professional development has on writing center consultants’ ability to practice antiracism in sessions. This article presents a predominantly white institution (PWI) writing center’s attempt to do this work, with a particular emphasis on how antiracist professional development complicates portrayals of consultant agency within the writing center. The study analyzes qualitative data collected from consultants’ reflective writing, survey, and interview responses. Results illustrate …

Writing Centers, Enclaves, And Creating Spaces Of Change Within Universities, Bronwyn T. Williams

The Writing Center Journal

Writing center scholarship often highlights the ways in which their distinctive, less directive, nongraded, and individualized instruction can make them distinctive social and pedagogical spaces. There is a simultaneous argument, however, that writing centers are often institutionally vulnerable and may be unable to engage in or promote such differences within the larger college or university. Yet, despite their size and possible vulnerability, the daily practices and institutional positioning of writing centers can help change conversations and work toward a different vision, political approach, and institutional presence. Drawing on Victor Friedman’s concept of “enclaves of different practice” and Brian Massumi’s theories …

Generation(Al) Matters: Story, Lens, And Tone, Louise Weatherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

This essay tells a story of how “generation” came to matter in rhetoric and composition/writing studies; analyzes and advocates for “generation” as a lens through which to examine disciplinary studies and activities; and considers how we can productively engage in generational relations between individuals and groups. It adopts a framework of “hospitality” (adapted from Richard and Janis Haswell) to develop a concept of “cross-generational relations” as an aspirational category. An ethic of hospitality is proposed to facilitate respectful, productive relations among generational groups, which recognize and enact interdependence but allow for a wide range of stances and strategies of interaction …

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter for Writing Center Journal 40.3.

From The Field: Using A Simple Guide To Help Students Write Better Abstracts., Rochelle H. Holm, Anna Karin Roo

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often write abstracts for research assignments but may not understand the purpose of an abstract. This paper presents the pilot of a simple guide for writing abstracts which gave student support to two undergraduate Malawian ELL students for their undergraduate research assignment. The two students and the instructor found the handout was helpful for the students to develop technical writing skills for the abstracts.

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 40.3.

Does Peer-To-Peer Writing Tutoring Cause Stress? A Multi-Institutional Rad Study, Matthew Nelson, Kathleen Weaver, Sam Deges, Pornchanok Ruengvirayudh, Savannah Garcia, Sarah Dunn

The Writing Center Journal

Writing center literature often notes the stress and anxiety of students as a special concern for peer writing tutors, and tutor training manuals offer advice for tutors on how to manage student writers’ anxiety and stress in sessions. Few writing center sources, however, examine the stress/anxiety tutors may experience as a result of their work in the writing center, despite increasing interest in emotions and emotional labor in writing centers. This multi-institutional study examines whether peer writing tutors experience increased stress/anxiety while tutoring. Using a mixed-methods approach combining both surveys and physiological data (salivary cortisol levels controlled against days when …

Meet The Tutors: Student Expectations, Tutor Perspectives, And Some Recommendations For Sharing Information About Tutors Online, Jessica Robbins, Jaclyn M. Wells

The Writing Center Journal

This article presents findings from an IRB-approved study about tutors’ online information on writing center websites, scheduling systems, and social media. The study used surveys to investigate students’ responses to tutors’ online information and focus groups to investigate tutors’ rationale for the information they shared. While many researchers have studied how writing centers are presented online, little research considers how tutors are represented. The authors argue that such representation merits attention, as tutor profiles can affect students’ comfort with the writing center staff and their microdecisions about who to see and how to interact with them (Salem, 2016). The authors …

Multidisciplinary Staffing In A Graduate Writing Center: Making Writing Labor Visible, Valued, And Shared, Nancy Welch, Diana Hackenburg, Leigh Ann Holterman, Judith Keller, Seth Orman, Vanesa Liliana Perillo, Rebecca Stern, Ashley Waldron

The Writing Center Journal

Writing studies and writing center scholars have recently focused much-needed attention on how graduate student writers are taught, mentored, and supported. This scholarship also points to a persistent and stubborn conundrum: Graduate students must write their way into disciplinary belonging, yet most advisors lack a language for, or even awareness of, the specialized practices and tacit expectations shaping written discourse in their fields. While graduate student–serving writing centers help fill this writing-support gap, a reliance on English and humanities graduate students for staff reproduces a status quo in which the genre awareness and rhetorical vocabulary needed to mentor advanced academic …

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for WCJ 40.2.

Review: Queerly Centered: Lgbtqia Writing Center Directors Navigate The Workplace, Tyler Martinez

The Writing Center Journal

Dr. Travis Webster’s monograph reports on qualitative research conducted into the working lives of 20 LGBTQIA-identifying writing center directors. From those interviews, Webster identifies three features of LGBTQIA writing center administrative labor: the unique capital with which their identities equip them, the activist labor that their identities call them to perform, and tensions between their labor and identities. He calls on writing center professionals and higher education administrators to become accomplices in the struggle against workplace injustices, moving beyond allyship that is all too often based in kind words rather than sustained action. The insights available in this book are …

Front Matter, Keb Editorial Board

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Why Do I Cry?, Synthia Shelby

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Full Edition, Keb Editorial Board

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Sound Of Stars, Megan Russell Harbin

The Utah English Journal

One glance at Alechia Dow's stunning cover for The Sound of Stars drew me in, but I wasn't prepared for the beautifully told, relevant story that followed.

The Sound of Stars is written from two, distinct perspectives: Janelle (Ellie) Baker, a human teenage girl, and M0RrlS, a labmade Ilori alien. M0Rrls is part of the alien invasion that has taken over Earth, where Ellie resides. Over the past two years since the takeover, M0Rrls has been in charge of creating a "vaccine" for the humans, per orders from the superior "true Ilori." This "vaccine" will provide the true Ilori with …

Book Review: Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide To Engaging Families For Student Success, Leah Day

The Utah English Journal

A devastating pandemic has now shaped nearly all aspects of our lives, including education. Students are more disengaged than ever, and we need to take a reflective look at how to drive student success-through engagement with their families.

Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success is a plentiful resource for all types of educators looking to up their game in connecting with families in their learning community.

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter and editors' introduction to The Writing Center Journal 39:1–2 (2021).

Praising Papers, Clarifying Concerns: How Writers Respond To Praise In Writing Center Tutorials, Mike Haen

The Writing Center Journal

In face-to-face writing center tutorials, tutor praise is an action that builds rapport and motivates writers (Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2013). Drawing on and extending prior interactional analyses of praise, this article examines writers’ responses to text-based praise across 10 tutorials, with a particular focus on interactional segments in which writers reformulate their previously mentioned concerns in response to tutor praise. Unlike more common responses that signal acceptance of the praise, such as appreciation, overt acceptance, and alignment, this responding action reflects some momentary misunderstanding between tutor and writer in the tutorial interaction. Despite this, these segments also show writers taking …

Faith, Secularism, And The Need For Interfaith Dialogue In Writing Center Work, Anna Sicari, Liliana M. Naydan, Andrea Rosso Efthymiou

The Writing Center Journal

This article argues that religious and secularist identities complement and intersect in political ways with race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality and that they inform writing center practice because belief exists along a spectrum that involves all writing center inhabitants and affects all writing-centered conversations. We suggest that this spectrum of faith is evocative of the spectrums that theorists of race, gender, and sexuality in particular have discussed, yet often faith has been overlooked in discussions of identity in writing center work (Denny, 2010). We propose that theories of race, gender, sexuality and other identities that have served as springboards …

The Neglected “R”: Replicability, Replication, And Writing Center Research, Susanne Hall, Holly Ryan

The Writing Center Journal

This article makes an argument for the value of both replicable research and replication research in writing center studies. In their discussion of replicability, the authors argue that writing about empirical research so that this research can be replicated will improve the quality of communication in writing center studies whether or not replication studies are subsequently undertaken. The authors further provide for researchers specific guidance on how to create replicable studies, focusing on best practices for describing data sets and sampling, sharing surveys and interview protocols, detailing coding efforts, establishing infrastructure to share data sets, and writing about statistics. Further, …

Review: Advocating, Building, And Collaborating: A Resource Toolkit To Sustain Secondary School Writing Centers Edited By Renee Brown And Stacey Waldrup, Jenny Goransson

The Writing Center Journal

The past decade has shown enormous growth in the number of SSWCs and a need for increased scholarship and research from this group. Inspired by the work of previous secondary school writing center director (SSWCD) authors, the content offered in the Advocating, Building, and Collaborating toolkit is rooted in directors’ real experiences in K–12 schools, rather than in the post-secondary context we find in most writing center scholarship.

Agents Of Change: African American Contributions To Writing Centers, Sue Mendelsohn, Clarissa Walker

The Writing Center Journal

African Americans and their contributions to our field’s first pedagogical models and operational structures are absent from writing center histories. This archival research invokes their presence by recounting the stories of five African American innovators—Bess Bolden “B. B.” Walcott, Coragreene Johnstone, Anne Cooke, Hugh Gloster, and Percival Bertrand “Bert” Phillips—spanning four decades at three historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Their stories invite an expansive understanding of writing center work, moving beyond a focus on traditional tutoring and strictly alphabetic literacies and into “strategic literacies”—the survival skills needed to stand up for oneself and one’s community in the face of …

Unicorn Status, Queer Activism, And Bullied Laboring: Lgbtq Writing Center Directors Reflect On Invisible Work, Travis Webster

The Writing Center Journal

This article showcases interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) writing center directors about their administrative work. In it, findings reveal that participant work distinctly departs from recent empirical writing center research about labor (Geller & Denny, 2013; Caswell, Grutsch McKinney, & Jackson, 2016), particularly in ways that practitioners’ invisible administrative work is informed and complicated by their LGBTQ identities. Across 20 interviews, participants communicated that their work extends to making queer activist space through their writing centers; to supporting tutors, students, and colleagues of all orientations with issues central to queer communities and mental health; and to …

A Balancing Act: Black Women Experiencing And Negotiating Racial Tension In The Center, Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison

The Writing Center Journal

Writing centers increasingly have been concerned with issues of race and racism in the center. However, most of the conversation around race has centered on student writers, with references to tutors of color given only in passing or in the context of larger discussions on race. This study uses interview data and a grounded theory methodology to examine the experiences of racism and anti-Blackness in writing centers for female Black undergraduate and graduate peer tutors, categorizing the experiences in three ways: attacks on character and identity, denials of credibility, and silencing. Connections are drawn with the experiences the tutors have …

“Was It Useful? Like, Really?”: Client And Consultant Perceptions Of Post-Session Satisfaction Surveys, Katie Levin, Sarah Selz, Meredith Steck, Eric Wisz

The Writing Center Journal

Client satisfaction surveys have long been a cornerstone of writing center assessment, but to date, research on satisfaction surveys has largely focused on analyzing client responses from the survey and their administrative uses. Research rarely investigates why clients provide the responses they do and how consultants process these responses. This study, therefore, involved conducting separate client and consultant focus groups to learn about each population’s interactions with one writing center’s optional post-session satisfaction survey and the survey results. The findings revealed that while client participants used the survey to communicate high levels of satisfaction, client participants also thought about the …

Contingent Writing Center Work: Benefits, Risks, And The Need For Equity And Institutional Change, Dawn Fels, Clint Gardner, Maggie M. Herb, Liliana M. Naydan

The Writing Center Journal

This study investigates and reports on the personal, professional, and programmatic benefits and risks associated with contingent writing center work. Interviews were conducted with 48 contingent writing centers workers, including directors, assistant directors, associate directors, graduate student workers, and tutors. Survey data of the interview participants showed contingent writing center workers are usually White women with advanced degrees. Most of this article focuses on interview data, analyzed using grounded theory. Interviews revealed participants’ understanding of what contingency means and revealed their struggles with instability, insecurity, and uncertainty even while they lauded the flexibility, freedom, and autonomy their contingency afforded them. …