Writing Center Staff Website

Writing Center Study Group

The Writing Center Study Group (WCSG) meets once a month during the Fall and Spring terms. We also have a discussion board for the WCSG at wc.pittcomp.net. Anyone who is interested in reading selected essays on writing center theory and scholarship, composition studies, or related literature is welcome to participate. Peer interns come as part of their research.

We are happy to help writers develop their own projects on writing center theory and practice.

We announce the next WC Study Group meeting on our home page. Let Jean know if you would like to be part of the WCSG or if you would like copies of the articles that we will discuss.

For AY 2008

Download the reading: "Deriving Backwriting from Writing Back" by Rebecca Moore Howard from Writing Center Journal 24:2 Spring/Summer 2004.

For Academic Year 2007:

Summer book for the Writing Center Study Group: Dave Bartholomae's Writing on the Margins: Essays on Composition and Teaching. We will discuss the book in September.

For Academic Year 2006:

"Creating Theory: Moving Tutors to the Center," Sue Dinitz and Jean Kiedaisch. WCJ Vol. 23, No 2 Spring/summer 2003.

Muriel Harris, "Writing Center Administration: Making Local, Institutional Knowledge in Our Writing Centers," in Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, eds Paula Gillespie, Alice Gillam, et al. Malwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.

Nancy Welch, "Playing with Reality: Writing Centers after the Mirror Stage," College Composition and Communication 51.1, Sept. 1999

Peter Carino, "Reading Our Own Words: Rhetorical Analysis and the Institutional Discourse of Writing Centers," in Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, eds. Paula Gillespie, Alice Gillam, et al. Malwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.

ESL Writers : A Guide for Writing Center Tutors by Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth.

For Academic Year 2005:

Nancy Maloney Grimm's "Rearticulating the Work of the Writing Center," CCC 47.4, Dec. 1996, 523-5-48.

Neal Lerner's "Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the 'Proof' of Our Effectiveness" from The Center Will Hold.

"Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Resarch in Composition Studies," CCC 55:4, June 2004).

Elizabeth Boquet's ""Disciplinary Action: Writing Center Work and the Making of a Researcher," from Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, edited by Paula Gillespie, et al (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002).

Beth Boquet's book, Noise from the Writing Center

For academic Year 2004:

Margaret Marshall's "Sites for (Invisible) Intellectual Work," from The Politics of Writing Centers, edited by Jane Nelson and Kathy Evertz (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001).

David Bartholomae. "Inventing the University" in When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing Problems, ed. Mike Rose.

Christina Murphy. "Writing Centers in Context: Responding to Current Educational Theory" in The Writing Center: New Directions, ed. Ray Wallace and Jeanne Simpson.

Dale M. Bauer. "Embedded Pedagogy: How to Teach Teaching," College English Vol 65, Number 4, March 2003.

Stephen North. "Revisiting 'The Idea of a Writing Center.'" The Writing Center Journal 15.1 (1994).

Paul Kameen's book Writing/Teaching: Essays Toward a Rhetoric of Pedagogy.

For academic year 2003:

"Introduction," Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, eds. Paula Gillespie, Alice Gillam, Lady Falls Brown, Byron Stay.

Stephen M. North, "The Idea of a Writing Center," in Landmark Essays: On Writing Centers, ed. Christina Murphy and Joe Law.

For more information, contact Jean Grace at (412) 624-5661 or jgrace@pitt.edu.

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