Our Body of Work: Embodied Administration and Teaching

by Melissa Nicolas (Editor), Anna Sicari (Editor)

Overview

Our Body of Work invites administrators and teachers to consider how physical bodies inform everyday work and labor as well as research and administrative practices in writing programs. Combining academic and personal essays from a wide array of voices, it opens a meaningful discussion about the physicality of bodily experiences in the academy.
 
Open exchanges enable complex and nuanced conversations about intersectionality and how racism, sexism, classism, and ableism (among other “isms”) create systems of power. Contributors examine how these conversations are framed around work, practices, policies, and research and identify ways to create inclusive, embodied practices in writing programs and classrooms. The collection is organized to maximize representation in the areas of race, gender, identity, ability, and class by featuring scholarly chapters followed by narratively focused interchapters that respond to and engage with the scholarly work.
 
The honest and emotionally powerful stories in Our Body of Work expose problematic and normalizing policies, practices, and procedures and offer diverse theories and methodologies that provide multiple paths for individuals to follow to make the academy more inclusive and welcoming for all bodies. It will be an important resource for researchers, as well a valuable addition to graduate and undergraduate syllabi on embodiment, writing instruction/pedagogy, and WPA work.
 
Contributors: Dena Arendall, Janel Atlas, Hayat Bedaiwi, Elizabeth Boquet, Lauren Brentnell, Triauna Carey, Denise Comer, Joshua Daniel, Michael Faris, Rebecca Gerdes-McClain, Morgan Gross, Nabila Hijazi, Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott, Maureen Johnson, Jasmine Kar Tang, Elitza Kotzeva, Michelle LaFrance, Jasmine Lee, Lynn C. Lewis, Mary Lourdes Silva, Rita Malenczyk, Anna Rita Napoleone, Julie Prebel, Rebecca Rodriguez Carey, Ryan Skinnell, Trixie Smith, Stacey Waite, Kelsey Walker, Shannon Walters, Isaac Wang, Jennie Young
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646422333
Publisher:	Utah State University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2022
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Melissa Nicolas is associate professor of English and director of composition at Washington State University.
 
Anna Sicari is writing center director and assistant professor in the English Department at Oklahoma State University.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction: Institutional Embodiment and Our Body of Work Melissa Nicolas Anna Sicari 3

1.1 Painting Rita Malenczyk 26

Discomfort and Pain

2 Embracing Discomfort: Embodiment and Decolonial Writing Center Praxis Isaac Wang 33

2.1 An Embodied Life: My Postpartum Writing Story Rebecca Rodriguez Carey 43

Surveillance

3 What on Earth Am I Even Doing Here? Notes from an Impossibly Queer Academic Stacey Waite 49

3.1 Nonlinear Transformations: Queer Bodies in Curriculum Redesign Alex Gatten 59

3.2 Embodying Structures and Feelings Anna Rita Napoleone 65

Liminal Spaces

4 Embodiment in the Writing Center: Storying Our Journey to Activism Trixie G. Smith Wonderful Faison Laura Gonzales Elizabeth Keller Scotty Seacrist 71

4.1 As Time Moves Forward Dena Arendall 88

4.2 An Academic Career Takes Flight, or the First Year on the Tenure Track, as Seen from Above Jasmine Lee 91

Resilience

5 Graduate Student Bodies on the Periphery Kelsie Walker Morgan Grass Paula Weinman Hayat Bedaiwi Alyssa McGrath 97

5.1 Down the Rabbit Hole Elitza Kotzeva 110

5.2 Writing in the Body Janel Atlas 113

Emotional Pain

6 "Never Make Yourself Small to Make Them Feel Big": A Black Graduate Student's Struggle to Take Up Spaces and Navigate the Rhetoric of Microaggressions in a Writing Program Triauna Carey 119

6.1 Bodies in Conflict: Embodied Challenges and Complex Experiences Nabila Hijazi 131

6.2 Out of Hand Jennie Young 137

Culture of Whiteness

7 Bodies, Visible Joshua L. Daniel Lynn C. Lewis 143

7.1 Dancing with Our Fears: A Writing Professor's Tango Mary Lourdes Silva 158

7.2 "Do Not Disturb-Breastfeeding in Progress": Reflections from a Lactating WPA Jasmine Kar Tang 163

Relationships

8 The Circulation of Embodied Affects in a Revision of a First-Yea Writing Program Michael J. Faris 169

8.1 More Bodies Than Heads: Handling Male Faculty as an Expectant Administrator Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott 184

8.2 About a Lucky Man Who Made the Grade Ryan Skinnell 188

Trauma

9 A Day in the Life: Administering from a Position of Privileged Precarization in an Age of Mass Shootings Shannon Walters 195

9.1 When Discomfort Becomes Panic: Doing Research in Trauma as a 5urvivor Lauren Brentnell 208

9.2 Embodied CV (Abridged) Denisc Comer 212

Cancer and Death

10 WPAs and Embodied Labor: Mina Shaughnessy, (Inter)personal Labor, and an Ethics of Care Rebecca Gerdes-McClain 219

10.1 Somatophobia and Subjectivity: Or, What Cancer Taught Me about Writing and Teaching Writing Julie Prebel 237

10.2 A Scholar Anew: How Cancer Taught Me to Rekindle My Embodiment Research Maureen Johnson 241

10.3 A Comp Teacher's Elegy: To Carol Edleman Warrior Michelle LaFrance 244

10.4 Born for This Elizabeth Boquet 248

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

“A vital intervention.”
—Christina Cedillo, University of Houston-Clear Lake
 
“This work is powerful.”
—Hannah J. Rule, University of South Carolina
 

“This book is for everyone who wants to (re)focus on the bodies attached to the minds privileged in academia; from early-career graduate students to senior faculty, everyone in rhetoric and composition can benefit from its expansive coverage.”
—Composition Forum

From the Publisher