Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020)

From the Editors: Inclusion in the Writing Center

Fiza Mairaj
University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

Kiara Walker
University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

We here at Praxis are proud to present our fall issue, the last issue of this calendar year. Although this year will remain as the one with turmoil, confusion, and unrest, we at Praxis want to step back and reflect on writing centers’ practices that ensure and guarantee a safe space for writers. The articles put together in this issue discuss ways through which writing center practices and policies may be improved to include groups of students and writers, previously neglected in the writing center spaces and scholarship. 

In this issue, we acknowledge the dearth of supports and supportive policies for various kinds of writers in the writing centers, which include writers with disabilities, creative writers and writers who rely on online tutoring services for various reasons. This issue shows our audience some of the ways to improve our practices in all these fronts to truly commit to the promise of continuing to evolve and improve. 

Along the same lines, we at Praxis are proud to announce the Summer 2021 Special Issue on the topic of re-envisioning the writing center narratives under a lens of responsibility and, to generate a more thorough understanding of what the work might entail for those invested in social justice and anti-racist work in the writng centers. We will have Anna Sicari and Romeo Garcia as guest editors for the special issue and the deadline to submit manuscripts for publication in the special issue is January 15, 2021. The Call for Papers can be found here.

We open with Sipai Klein’s and Lauren DiPaula’s column, “The Tutor Exchange: A Multi-Institutional Tutor Education Project.” In their column, Klein and DiPaula reflect on the pilot of their cross-institutional tutor education project, aiming to engage with writing center tutors as tutor-researchers. The authors show how such a project can provide tutors with an opportunity to become further involved in the writing center community and to see the similarities and differences present across centers.

Staying on the topic of inclusion with J. M. Dembsey’s “Naming Ableism in the Writing Center,” where the author leans on a work of art to engage in a deep analysis of ways writing centers have remained disengaged with the disabled writers. Dembsey moves on to discussing the concepts of interdependence and access intimacy through which the writing centers can move from a culture of ableism to a culture of access. 

In “Writing Center Tutors’ Attitudes towards Tutoring Creative Writers,” Havva Zorluel Özer reports on the results of a mixed-methods survey research. The study examines the background factors that influence the writing center tutors perceptions and concerns about tutoring such writing. This article argues for the value of genre awareness pedagogy and improvisation practices to help tutors work with any genre in writing centers.

Ana Wetzl and Pam Lieske consider the quality of online tutoring services, especially for students attending regional campuses. In “The Benefits and Limitations of Online Peer Feedback: Instructors’ Perception of a Regional Campus Online Writing Lab,” Wetzel and Lieske use their study of writing instructors’ perceptions of their campus’s tutoring options to provide insight into their campus-based online tutoring services. Based on their study, the authors indicate the need for more resources to improve campus-based online tutoring services.

Our issue closes with Alicia Brazeau’s and Tessa Hall’s focus article, “A Pedagogy of Curation for Writing Centers.” This piece borrows insight from the field of curation to discuss how writing center spaces speak to us and our writers, and how spaces and objects and visitors interact in critical, even pedagogical ways. The authors assessed their writing retreat program through a curation pedagogy and found a new understanding of how materials and spaces functioned.      

Finally, we here at Praxis want to take a moment to formally welcome our new Assistant Editor, Kiara Walker to Praxis this semester. She is a fourth-year doctoral student, specializing in rhetoric. As an assistant editor, she is looking forward to firsthandexperience with helping to maintain an academic journal as well as the opportunity to support the work and mission of writing centers through Praxis.