The writing program interrupted : making space for critical discourse / edited by Donna Strickland and Jeanne Gunner ; foreword by John Trimbur.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Strickland, Donna.

Gunner, Jeanne, 1954-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching.

English language.

Writing centers--Administration.

Writing centers.

Physical Description:

xv, 214 pages ; 20 cm

Place of Publication:

Portsmouth, NH : Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2009.

Summary:

Writing Program Administrators typically champion reflection, building reflective practice into their students' assignments and instructors' assessments. But immersed in overly busy lives, how many find the time to engage with the historical, social, political, and pragmatic implications of their work?

The Writing Program Interrupted seeks to create that regenerative space and time. Foregrounding critical discourses about writing programs, it opens new paths for intellectual consideration and reexamines conventional assumptions about WPA culture. The thoughtful, stimulating, provocative essays in this volume invite colleagues to look at the material and managerial matters that often remain obscure to those of us who do this work.

The Writing Program Interrupted provides new perspectives on the entrenched discourses of WPA work as they construct the profession and its values, strive to locate "the field", and address material inequities. Contesting the conservative tradition are chapters on the queer writing program, globalization, self-colonization, identity and signification, and the political economy of composition. Whether you are an experienced WPA or a graduate student interested in a WPA career, The Writing Program Interrupted invites you to explore critical WPA issues.

Contents:

Part 1 The Cultural Work of Writing Programs

1 Conservative Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) / Jeff Rice 1

2 Standards and Purity: Understanding Institutional Strategies to Insure Homogeneity / Tom Fox 14

3 Feminisms and the Problem of Complicity in Writing Program Administrator Work / Laura Bartlett Snyder 28

4 How We Do What We Do: Facing the Contradictory Political Economics of Writing Programs / Tony Scott 41

Part 2 Alternative WPA Discourses

5 Freedom and Safety, Space and Place: Locating the Critical WPA / Sidney I. Dobrin 56

6 Redefining Work and Value for Writing Program Administration / Bruce Horner 72

7 Queer Eye for the Camp Program: Toward a Queer Critique of WPA Work / William. P. Banks, Jonathan Alexander 86

8 Inviting Trouble: The Subversive Potential of the Outsider Within Standpoint / Jane E. Hindman 99

9 Laboring to Globalize a First-Year Writing Program / Wendy Hesford, Edgar Singleton, Ivonne M. Garca̕ 113

10 The Pragmatics of Professionalism / Thomas P. Miller, Jillian Skeffington 126

Part 3 Subjectivity, Identity, Reflection

11 The Writing Program Administrator and Enlightened False Consciousness: The Virtues of Becoming an Empty Signifier / Joe Marshall Hardin 137

12 "Acting Out" or Acts of Agency: WPA and "Identities of Participation" / Kathryn Valentine 147

13 Analyzing Narratives of Change in a Writing Program / Margaret Shaw, Gerry Winter, Brian Huot 155

14 Writing Program Administration Outside the North American Context / Lisa Emerson, Rosemary Clerehan 166

15 WPAs and Identity: Sounding the Depths / Christopher Burnham, Susanne Green 175

16 Place, Culture, Memory / Suellynn Duffey 186.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [171]-175).

ISBN:

9780867095937

0867095938

OCLC:

313653282