Presentation/Proposal Title
(Re)inventing Social Empowerment: A Writing Center Workshop Model to Promote Community Engagement
Type of Presentation/Proposal
Individual Presentation or Paper
Start Date
6-4-2019 11:15 AM
End Date
6-4-2019 12:15 PM
Keywords
Political engagement, community engagement, workshop model, social justice
Description
In Tactics of Hope, Paula Mathieu (2005) claims “Writing alone is insufficient to change the world, but in a context of human organizing and community building, writing helps bring about and give voice to many changes.” Here Mathieu argues that articulating the personal narratives of individual members of a community is essential to revealing larger communal concerns. Because of writing centers’ unique position within the university, centers have the potential to promote community engagement through supporting individual students writing about their personal experience with larger social issues, thus leading to larger narrative for their respective communities. This idea raises two questions: What kinds of projects can writing centers create to engage students in the university to share their written narratives which may articulate larger community concerns? And how might tutors, students themselves, be instrumental in leading these projects?
This presentation will explore how a tutor used their background to create, fund, and develop a political letter writing workshop to our future Michigan Governor in October 2018, prior to the election. This workshop model, along with assessments completed by the participating students, will be shared. The presentation will discuss how tutors can use their personal interests and backgrounds to create writing workshops designed to engage and empower students on their own campus, thus (re)inventing writing centers as potential sites for social justice.
(Re)inventing Social Empowerment: A Writing Center Workshop Model to Promote Community Engagement
M2320
In Tactics of Hope, Paula Mathieu (2005) claims “Writing alone is insufficient to change the world, but in a context of human organizing and community building, writing helps bring about and give voice to many changes.” Here Mathieu argues that articulating the personal narratives of individual members of a community is essential to revealing larger communal concerns. Because of writing centers’ unique position within the university, centers have the potential to promote community engagement through supporting individual students writing about their personal experience with larger social issues, thus leading to larger narrative for their respective communities. This idea raises two questions: What kinds of projects can writing centers create to engage students in the university to share their written narratives which may articulate larger community concerns? And how might tutors, students themselves, be instrumental in leading these projects?
This presentation will explore how a tutor used their background to create, fund, and develop a political letter writing workshop to our future Michigan Governor in October 2018, prior to the election. This workshop model, along with assessments completed by the participating students, will be shared. The presentation will discuss how tutors can use their personal interests and backgrounds to create writing workshops designed to engage and empower students on their own campus, thus (re)inventing writing centers as potential sites for social justice.
