September 29th and 30th 2006
Negotiated Alliances: When Writing is Public, Urban, and Academic

Writing centers are intensely public spaces. They necessitate a continual
engagement with intellectual conversation, which, in turn, impels academic
writing to exceed its pedagogical or scholarly intent. We seek to
determine the meaning of this excess, how it makes public oppositions in
the academic community, and how students, writers, and faculty negotiate
these oppositions/alliances. How are community conflicts reproduced or
altered in such a public space? How do these conflicts play out on the
page? How is the space of a writing center racialized? What is the
function of gender in "peer" relationships? What difference does class
make at a writing center?

Writing centers generate a rich array of perspectives, interpretations,
and learning that are often in contradiction with the center's own
pedagogies and the goals of the institutions that house them. This
conference is an opportunity for writing centers to engage theoretically
with the larger community of stakeholders: the faculty, writers, and
tutors
who both "use" writing centers and construct writing as part of the
university public. As public forums, writing centers are communities that
are unique not only to the university, but to conceptions of public space.

Who counts as a peer in this space?
Whose authority extends to the tutoring session?
What actually gets negotiated in a tutoring session?
Are peer Writing Centers really as democratic as they claim? Should they be
democratic?
How is this space gendered? Racialized?
How are alliances negotiated between different bodies within the university?
What is the relationship between hypertext (or other digital tools) and
the space of the Writing Center?
How do the canonical texts of Writing Center theory currently operate?
Who are the stakeholders in determining the various agendas Writing
Centers must address?

This conference is sponsored by the Writing Center and English Department
at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

All submissions should consist of a 250 word abstract including the title
of the paper, home and office numbers, complete mailing address, e-mail
address, and requirements for technological support (overhead, slide
projector, etc.). Full panel proposals are also acceptable. Panels are
scheduled for one hour with reading time for individual papers no more
than fifteen minutes.

Submission deadline: January 25, 2006

Please send the 250 word abstract and accompanying information as a word
attachment to Vainis Aleksa at: uicwritingcenter_at_hotmail.com

Visit our website for updates at: http://www.uic.edu/depts/engl/writing/

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Received on Tue Nov 08 2005 - 17:12:44 EST