Student Major

Computer Science and English Literature

Presentation Abstract or Description

We, two undergraduate writing consultants and two faculty directors of a writing center in a metropolitan city on the US west coast, seek to explore how writing centers can challenge dominant cultural notions of success predicated on maintaining standardized language ideology, academic rigor, and productivity. The effects of COVID-19 pandemic, the move to remote consultations, and the arrival of generative AI, along with social and political unrest necessitated reckoning with our obligation to support one another and our clients. We grappled with the expectation of maintaining “business as usual” and explored the need for wellness as a need to challenge disempowering structures in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Grounded in Black feminist frameworks which theorize wellness as “triumph over disempowering structures” (Carey, 2016, p.62 in Hashlamon, 2021), informed by scholarship that center wellness in writing centers (Degner, et.al. 2015; Giaimo, 2020, 2023; Nicklay, 2012), and studies that interrogate notions of academic rigor (Brooks & McGurk, 2022, Draeger et al. 2015, Francis 2018), and generative AI potential threat to linguistic justice (MLA-CCCC, 2023; Liang et. al 2023, Nee et. al, 2022), we grapple with grand narratives of the Writing Center as safe spaces (Camarillo, 2019; McNamee and Miley, 2017) and share our journey to intentionally re-imagine it as a space that promotes wellness through empowerment. Speaker 1 analyzes current policies on editing (e.g. Grimm, 2011), while exploring the AI paradox of the risk of centering monolingual standardized practices and the benefit of affording access to editing tools. Speaker 2 examines how rigor often manifests as a "code word for white racial habits of language” (Inoue, 2020) and insists on assimilation within such expectations. Reconceptualizing rigor through the lens of “compassionate challenge” (Cavanagh 2023) helps resist such notions of rigor that are grounded in logics of scarcity, competition, and hierarchy. Speaker 3 reflects on his work at the writing center and how wellness and communal/interpersonal engagement can be maintained in the digital landscape. Finally, Speaker 4 discusses the implications of generative AI as an effective and empowering tool in writing consultations. While imagining a future, each speaker will explain the strategies used to resist standardized English supremacy, empower individuals to choose their own means of expression, support campus community in adapting translingual approaches and non-oppressive pedagogies, and maintain wellness. We will be honored to share our experience and to learn from colleagues working in various contexts.

Presentation Format

Discussion Panel

Conference Name

2024 European Writing Centers Association (EWCA) Conference : The Future of Writing Centers

Conference Date(s) and Location

June 10-15, 2024 in Limerick, Ireland

Faculty Mentor

Hidy Basta and Alexandra Smith

Quarter Award Was Given

Spring 2024

Document Type

Article

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