Strategically Queer: The LGBTQ Tutor in the Writing Center

Deeds Boardroom

Nancy Grimm once suggested that “a playful, curious ‘what if” writing center practice” is the best method for tutors and tutees to engage. But many queer tutors find embodying their own queerness in the Center anything but “playful.” Often hesitant to step into visibility, queer tutors engage in the same avoidance tactics they use elsewhere in life (what Yoshino identifies as "covering" mechanisms). To borrow Sondra Perl’s term, just as writer’s develop a “felt sense” as they generate text, LGBTQ tutors develop a felt sense about the “text” they articulate in their words, actions, and bodies, texts shaped both by the perceived divide between them and tutees, but also by their own internal conflicts. This presentation uses surveys conducted with queer tutors to explore what it means to be “strategically queer” in the writing center.