Spring 2021 Issue: Accessibility, Advocacy, and Activism Amidst a Global Pandemic: the Writing Center and Beyond

It has been an exhausting year.

We entered 2021 in a prolonged state of chaos–still in a pandemic, surrounded by political, social, and economic turmoil. It is well acknowledged that the collective trauma, mourning, and change sparked by the past year has impacted every aspect of our lives.

In this issue of The Dangling Modifier, we aim to shift focus from the pandemic itself to an investigation of the realizations and adjustments that have emerged because of and despite it. This time has completely rewritten the boundaries for work, school, and personal life, while revealing the ‘cracks in the system.’

As colleges and universities continue to operate virtually, students, tutors, and their families are faced with unprecedented obstacles, exacerbated by systemic injustices and institutional failures. In her recent work Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, Laura Greenfield notes that writing centers “have an ethical responsibility to intervene purposefully” in the systems of oppression that circulate within our institutions (6). Despite these calls in recent scholarship, Greenfield also identifies how “the dominant discourses and practices of our field remain largely unchanged” (6).

At our current moment, when everyday oppression intersects with–and is exacerbated by–the pandemic, we call on writing center tutors to share their tools for survival, tools that have become necessary for flexibility and forgiveness. As we continue to interrogate and confront the systems around us, the writing center should be no exception. The writing center can be a resource for coping with difficult circumstances on all levels, a space for challenging ourselves and the institutions around us to think radically about the ways that we can emerge from this chaos with more sustainable, inclusive, culturally responsive practices. We adopt the vision set out by Kaidan McNamee and Michele Miley in “Writing Center as Homeplace (A Site for Radical Resistance)” in characterizing “the Writing Center as a homeplace where we accept the existence of intersecting oppressions, even if we are not socially positioned to appreciate the full scope of their extent and effect; where we understand that when writers and tutors come into our ‘cozy home,’ they bring with them the cumulative wounds inflicted by a world that prevents their healing.”

In this issue of The Dangling Modifier, we invited writers to consider how our current moment has affected accessibility, advocacy, and activism in the writing center. We now invite you to consider them as you read:

  • Consider accessibility, advocacy, and activism, including but not limited to racial and economic injustice, disability rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. How has the pandemic shifted your experience or perception of these issues? How can injustices be addressed in the writing center?
  • How can empathy be brought into the writing center? What does “too much” or “too little” empathy look like? How can the writing center be a space for refuge amidst all this chaos?
  • Do you miss physical or in-person tutoring? How have platform changes and increased technology use affected your tutoring experience?
  • What are the benefits and challenges of tutoring ELL (English Language Learners), international, and multilingual students during this time? How has tutoring changed for these students?
  • How do we care for ourselves as tutors, especially in an at-home setting, while being a resource for students?

About the Editors

About the Interns

Issue Reviewers

Contents

“Attending to Emotions”: The Significance of Rapport-Rooted Peer Tutoring in the COVID-19 Writing Center
Percy Verret

Balancing “Correctness” with “Voice” for Linguistically Diverse Writers: Training Modules for Inclusive Writing Support
Manuela Novoa Villada
Victoria Gutierrez

Cluck COVID: Pandemics, Poultry, and Self-Care
Amanda Seney

The Common Ground of The Coronavirus: Mental Health Work in the Writing Center
Ashton Sippel-Edwards

Confronting Student Misconduct at the Writing Center
Jessica Kovalick
Morgan Haley
Marissa DuBois

Cracks in the System: Ethics and Tensions of Mandatory Reporting for Writing Center Professionals
Bethany Meadows

Empathizing and Humanizing: Reconsidering Communicative Practices in a Virtual Writing Center
Ryan Fallert

Expanding our Listening into Digital Spaces
Morgan McGlone-Smith

Making Space for Virtual Empathy: Research and Reflections of Undergraduate Writing Tutors
Navah Fried
Sarah Plaut

Minimizing Discomfort, Maximizing Clarity: Working with Multilingual Writers in Writing Centers During the Era of COVID-19
Angela Meyers

On the Importance of Accessibility of Digital Writing Center Spaces
Meghan Morrison

Pandemic Consultations Create Space for Accessible Practices Through Technological Affordances and Reflection
Emma J. Harris
Emily L. Kayden

Peer Writing Tutor, Not Pythia
Kenneth Gatten III

The Social and Material Dimensions of Virtual Consulting
Charlotte Kupsh
Erika Luckert

Stronger Together: Building Empathy through Partnerships between Tutors and Faculty
Tom Geary
Monica McFerrin

Training, Accessibility, and Translation: An Advocacy Essay for ESL Students
Annie Cigic

The Trouble with Empathy in Zoom: Tools for Connection & Emotional Fatigue
Jennifer Burke Reifman

We Didn’t Sign up for This: Revising empathetic strategies in the virtual writing center
Christine Neuman
Emilie DeFazio