WHERE ARE WE GOING,

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?: The

Logistic and Aesthetic

Pathologies of Writing Centers

Stacy Kastner (@smkastner) Mississippi State University#Spacematters SWCA 2014, East Carolina University

“[C]ategoric pedagogical practices have associated space types...”

From “The Consequences of Pedagogy and Space: Empirical Research in New Learning Environments,” Presentation by J.D. Walker and D. Christopher Brooks From “Linking Pedagogy and Space,” Presentation by Ken

Fisher

…the floor was carpeted, and 34 carrels equipped with Wollensak Tape Players and Sawyer Slide Projectors and five tables for programmed materials and testing were moved in.

Pictures were hung on a picture rail around three sides of the room, a wallpaper mural of a wooded scene was out on the fourth wall beside the shelves, and hanging baskets of devil’s ivy and planters of fiscus trees completed the décor.

Stone, Virginia. “ELC at Del Mar College.” Writing Lab Newsletter 2.8 (1978): 5.

Referenced in “Inhabiting the Writing Center: A Critical Review” by Nathalie Singh-Corcoran & Amin Emika. Kairos 16.3 (2012)

St. John’s Writing Center, Queens Campus

“Visual Walk- Through”

Noel Studio

“Working in a group, one of the breakout

rooms is really great for that;

they have really comfortable

chairs in there…”

“A writing center cannot define itself as a space—we’re often kicked out of our spaces” (8).

“Writing centers are spaces inside other spaces: corners of classrooms, glassed-in sections of libraries, rooms or stairwells available semester-by-semester. Writing centers exist in cyberspace—between correspondents, between readers and writers, quite literally between the lines. Writing centers are conferences in offices and dorm rooms and under trees. Writing centers defy spatial definition. And that bothers us because it conflicts with conventional private office spaces in traditional institutions” (9). “Our oak table, carpets and stuffed chairs, our coffee pot and potted plants were our stable spatial constants. As we moved, we grew to know ourselves, and the college grew to notice our presence” (10).

Bonnie S. Sunstein. “Moveable Feasts, Liminal Spaces: Writing Centers and the State of In-Betweenness.” The Writing Center Journal 18.2 (1998): 7-26.

“Here in Second Life, we provide a

virtual environment

as comfortable

and welcoming as our real center.”

UMSL Writing Lab in Second Life

Michigan State U

Writing Center in

Second Life

“It is our job at the writing lab to make

students feel comfortable and confident about

their writing. The atmosphere that can be created in Second Life can

promote ease and openness when

students are talking about their writing.”

“[the writing center] is set up so that students who walk in first see the receptionist's desk and a smiling face staring at them, as well as couches, the plants, and the informal arrangement of tables and chairs around the room . . .The room is also a mix of comfortable, old donated couches, tables, plants, posters, coffeepots, a recycling bin for soda cans and paper, and even a popcorn machine, all of which signal (we hope) that this mess is also a friendly, nonthreatening, nonclassroom environment where conversation and questions can fly from one table to another” (6).

Harris, Muriel. “A multiservice writing lab in a multiversity: The Purdue University writing lab.” In Joyce Kinkead & Jeanette Harris (Eds.), Writing centers in context: 12 case studies (pp. 1-27). Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. 1-27.**Referenced in “Inhabiting the Writing Center: A Critical Review” by Nathalie Singh-Corcoran & Amin Emika. Kairos 16.3 (2012)

“[S]paces tell us a story about what they are and how we may use them...”

If we consider writing center space as communicative, as a projection of pedagogic intent—and—if we also consider this space wrought with the baggage of materiality, and, to borrow from Pemberton, structural metaphors that work against us (like the prison, the madhouse, the hospital)…what kind of tensions surface/result/do we recognize that we do, indeed, deal with in our everyday lives as directors and tutors?