Locating the Writing Center: Texts, Actor Networks, and Spatial Analysis

• In Event: Roundtable Session 77
  In Roundtable Session: Undergraduate Writing: Desire, Beliefs, and Self-Regulation

Abstract

The following questions, discursive as well as methodological in nature, are central to the study:

• What texts and representations are present in writing center tutorials?
• How do these elements speak, merge, circulate, and position themselves? In other words, how are they spatially arranged and connected?
• How/where do we look for overlaps, interconnections, and tensions?
• What do these relationships imply for research and practice in writing centers?

To answer such questions, the study draws on tutorials at two university writing centers. Using Actor Network Theory to understand writing center activity as a socio-spatial practice, the study calls into question traditional models of tutoring and suggests implications for future writing-center research and practice.

Author

• Jason Lovvorn, Belmont University