Race & Writing Centers
Last Friday, my writers' group got together for our monthly lunch at Misty's, a Lincoln institution. We’re five women in English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who get together to critique manuscripts, eat, and dish the dirt. It’s a great, funny, supportive group, and our meetings are one of the highlights of my month.
This month, we were critiquing a piece by Frankie Condon, a brilliant, warm woman who directs UNL’s Writing Center director and is the co-author of The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. She’s due to give the plenary keynote lecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s conference Race in the Writing Center: Towards New Theory and Praxis, which looks pretty cool.
This month, we were critiquing a piece by Frankie Condon, a brilliant, warm woman who directs UNL’s Writing Center director and is the co-author of The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. She’s due to give the plenary keynote lecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s conference Race in the Writing Center: Towards New Theory and Praxis, which looks pretty cool.
So we chomped on our salads and baked potatoes and discussed the manuscript of Frankie’s talk, which is all about how people—white people as well as people of color—can do anti-racism work in the university writing center. It was a terrific essay: smart, well theorized (from Sontag to Barthes to Sandoval to Anzaldúa), and actually—for an academic lecture—unusually moving, due to the anecdotes Frankie incorporated from her personal life and professional experience.
I’ve been interested in this issue for a long time. In graduate school, I was lucky enough to take a course on the theory and pedagogy of writing centers from the gifted Valerie Balester, who also works on issues of race and who was a terrific educator and mentor. Tutoring in the writing center and learning from Valerie completely changed my approach to teaching.
Good luck, Frankie! I wish I could be there to hear you!
I’ve been interested in this issue for a long time. In graduate school, I was lucky enough to take a course on the theory and pedagogy of writing centers from the gifted Valerie Balester, who also works on issues of race and who was a terrific educator and mentor. Tutoring in the writing center and learning from Valerie completely changed my approach to teaching.
Good luck, Frankie! I wish I could be there to hear you!
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