CFP: WLN Special Issue on Writing Centers and Disability Justice

[ten grrl]

Hello, all!

I'm writing to share our exciting new CFP for a special issue of WLN: "Writing Centers and Disability Justice."

The text of the CFP is below, and at the bottom of this email I'll share a link to the Google Doc version as well as an attached .docx version.

If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to contact me at moro...@msu.edu.

My editorial team and I look forward to reading your submissions!

Text of the CFP

"We invite you to submit a proposal to a special issue of WLN on the topic of Writing Centers and Disability Justice. This issue will include articles considering the embodied experience of disability in writing center work -- ranging from physical disabilities to invisible disabilities, neurodivergence, and thinking through access needs. We are particularly interested in article proposals that weave a “BodyMind” (the idea that our bodies and minds are one, not separate) experience together with theoretical and pedagogical structures, engaging both narrative and rigor as they relate to disability. We reject the notion of accommodation-as-cure, and we invite you to “crip” the center.

Writing center scholars have done much to deconstruct the myth of the white writer (Young, and others), the cisgender and/or heterosexual writer (Denny, Miley, and others), the middle class or second-generation writers inhabiting our centers -- but we have done less to deconstruct the implicit myth of the abled writer, the abled consultant, the abled administrator or faculty member. Does the writing center community embrace disabled writing consultants, or writers, or administrators? How do we “see” our disabled colleagues -- or do we see them? Not all disabilities are visible, and not all disabilities get addressed or accommodated. Disability scholar Margaret Price poignantly notes that disability is often “apparitional” (2014) -- it becomes clear through the vulnerability of disclosure, the risk of making visible the “liminal space where impairment meets world” (2014). Writing centers have the opportunity to better navigate the liminal space Price describes.

Writing center scholarship has more commonly addressed physical disability, mental illness, and even brain injury before seeking to address mental or cognitive disabilities -- perhaps because of the risks (both social and professional) and stigmaphobia (McCruer, 2006) still inherent in “outing” one’s self as disabled in these ways. This issue seeks to challenge the near silence that surrounds mental disability in our field -- particularly the lack of scholarship centering on neurodivergences such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Dyspraxia, Synesthesia, Alexithymia, and Tourette’s Syndrome, amongst others.

Disability -- in its visible forms, its invisible forms, its tangible forms, and its ephemeral or ineffable forms -- haunts the work of writing centers. As a student support service, Writing centers exist to provide both social and educational resources to students in need -- but we must continue to reflect, imagine, learn, and take accountability for what those needs might be. Building on the work of writing center scholars like Babcock, Daniels, Hitt (2017), Quinn (2019), Murphy (2020), Fleming (2020), and Moroski-Rigney and Appleton Pine (2020), this special issue of WLN hopes to continue the pursuit of disability justice. Considering the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the embodied, the permanent, and the temporary -- we hope to create an archive of scholarship that illuminates disability and access within the work of a writing center.

For this special issue of WLN, we seek 300 word proposals for articles that will be roughly 3,000 words in length as well as shorter, narrative pieces (1,500 words) in the form of Tutor Columns. Of note: all submissions chosen for publication will require the appropriate accessibility measures (captions, formatting, etc.), and the editor will work with the authors of text-based submissions to create accessible audio versions of their texts to be hosted on SoundCloud. We invite submissions that consider BodyMind connections and experiences; push back on notions of cure (Clare, 2017); challenge ableist training, hiring, or consulting practices; share strategies for developing accessible programming; and engage one or several of the following questions (or imagine still further points of inquiry):

• What is disability justice? How is it carried out in the work of a writing center?
• How does your writing center engage disability? Does it? What training, materials, strategies, or relationships does your writing center have in place to support the disabled community on your campus?
• How does your writing center address invisible disability within your own staff or with/for your writers?
• Does your writing center recruit disabled consultants, writers, or administrators?
• What risks or challenges are inherent in writing center professionals (whether consultants or administrators) identifying as disabled? What benefits or opportunities emerge in the disclosure process?
• How do standard writing center practices such as non-directive tutoring, face- to-face consultation, drop-in consultation, and synchronous tutoring uphold cultures of ableism? How might we rethink these strategies or tenets to foster access?
• Does the medical model of disability and/or a reliance on campus disability services shape your writing center’s ability to meet access needs of writers or consultants or administrators?
• How does your disability affect your work in writing centers? What do you need? Is our field providing it?"

Schedule

• Send article proposals (300-500 words) by May 31 to Karen Moroski-Rigney at moro...@msu.edu. Please provide full contact information with your submission. In your proposal, clearly describe your focus, the theoretical and research base from which you will draw, and your plans for structuring a 3000-word article or a 1500-word essay for a Tutor’s Column (Works Cited and Notes included in the word count).
• Invitations to submit full articles will be issued July 1.
• Manuscripts for WLN will be due January 1, 2022.

Works Cited

Clare, Eli. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Duke U P, 2017.

Dolmage, Jay. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. U of Michigan P, 2017.

McRuer, Robert and Michael Berube. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York U P, 2006.

Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. , U of Michigan P, 201

Link to Google Doc of CFP:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aC7s1ZruLYAd47PmYLXN1fpA6kzGopRlzXj-AU0O-34/edit?usp=sharing

--

Karen Moroski-Rigney, PhD
[Pronouns: She | Her | Hers]

Associate Director of The Writing Center

Michigan State University

434 Farm Lane, 300 Bessey Hall

East Lansing, MI 48824

 

Managing Editor, The Peer Review

Series Editor: Practices and Possibilities, WAC Clearinghouse

Board Member, IWCA

Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg—Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.