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The politics of writing center as location.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Because spatial politics are commonplace in the writing center community and because the political implications of space are often insidious, this article argues that writing center scholars need to carry conversations about writing center space from writing center lore and into research and theorizing.

Introduction

About two months into my new job, a colleague at another institution asked me if my college had a writing center. "Well," I stammered, "we had a writing center, but she just went on maternity leave!" In this moment of responding to my colleague's question, I realized what a potent message the physical space and location and, maybe even more importantly, the lack of space for a writing center sends to the campus community about the worth of the center at that particular institution. At my college, there is no space, no room, not even a broom closet labeled "the writing center." Instead, we had a woman I'll call "Sue" who, among her other duties such as coordinating the campus learning center, advising disabled students, and teaching composition classes, tutored students out of her shared office. Since Sue literally embodied the writing center, when she went on maternity leave, our writing center ceased to exist, in other words, because Sue was both the "concept" of our center as well as its "location," when she was no longer physically present, neither was the writing center.

Unfortunately, this situation is not unusual. Indeed, space issues are so endemic to writing center culture that one cannot escape discussions of it at conferences, in professional meetings, on Wcenter (a listserv for writing center professionals), or when meeting fellow writing center directors. Space and location are of such interest to the writing center community that it is common for host institutions of our regional conferences (and sometimes even the host institution of our international conference, International Writing Center Association) to arrange tours of local writing center spaces. These issues about space and location, however, rarely find their way into writing center literature. A compelling explanation for this lack in the scholarly conversation is easy to discern: When you must defend, at every turn, the legitimacy and importance of the work you do--as writing center professionals have had to do ad infinitum--it seems almost petty to complain about how many chairs...

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