Join us for our 5th special interest group meeting on lifespan writing. We will be revising a mission and vision statement for lifespan writing research in addition to making plans for our 2024 conference. This is a special meeting as we can apply for Standing Group status at the next conference.

NOTE: Date and time are tentative pending scheduling information from the conference.

Join us for the Lifespan Writing SIG at the Conference on College Composition & Communication. This is an open meeting where we’ll update one another on the state of lifespan writing research. This year’s virtual SIG is open to all—you do not need to be a CCCCs member or register for the conference in order to attend. Contact lifespanwriting@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

‘You’ve Got Memory’—Inventing Memoir Across Generational Publics

Hampl’s dynamic encounter with life-writing in ‘Memory and Imagination’ echoes the Lifespan Collaboration principle that, “(w)riting can develop across the lifespan as part of changing contexts”(Bazerman et al 2). As researchers of both Lifespan and New Literacy approaches argue, these shifting contexts give writers vibrant pathways and responsive tools, ways to orient and share meanings among others.

But how do these ‘changing contexts’ consider a writer’s work with the social? How might a writer’s desire for social exchange influence their writing invention, particularly their efforts to re-imagine ‘life-worlds’—their own, and those they write with? (Dippre and Phillips 2020)

These questions arose after observing snapshots of interacting ‘life-worlds’ in a community-based course, The Rockbridge Memoir Project, which I’ve developed over three years for English ‘Fieldwork’ at Virginia Military Institute. In ten-week workshops, cadet and community writers from three generations--ages 13 to 90--invent, share and publish life-stories for public readings and print anthologies. Using dialogic approaches from social literacy theorists such as philosopher Maxine Greene, I explore how writers’ interactions invent “new conditions and (social) structures” (Greene 55). My hope for this ‘Works in Progress’ talk is to invite ideas that unpack memoir’s interactive, social vocabulary, particularly how writers’ experience intention, audience and reciprocity.

Bazerman, Charles, et al. “Towards an Understanding of Writing Development Across the Lifespan”. Lifespan Group Full Statement, 2018.

Dippre, Ryan J. and Phillips, Talinn. “Murmurations.” Introduction to 2020 Lifespan Conference.

Greene, Maxine. Essays on Education, the Arts and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1995.

Hampl, Patricia. ‘Memory and Imagination’ in I Could Tell You Stories. NY: WW Norton, 2000.

All are welcome to attend! Email lifespanwriting [@] gmail.com for meeting link. All WIP are posted in Eastern Standard (or Daylight) Time.

Identity, Activity, and Community Practice in the Writing Center and Beyond: What Departing Directors Carry with Them

Writer/teacher Wendy Bishop* would argue that even when a writing center director leaves that position, the writing center remains in them. As three longtime directors dealing with retirement, we wondered what that meant. Exactly what values, skills, abilities, and interests did directors take with them when they moved to another position, as Wendy did, or retired, as we did? And how were those manifested? Having now surveyed over 200 former writing center directors, we are currently doing follow-up interviews to get some definitive answers. We will discuss the current status of our research, but, more importantly, seek audience suggestions for other questions we could ask and where we should go next. 

*Bishop, Wendy. 1997. “You Can Take the Girl Out of the Writing Center, But You Can’t Take the Writing Center Out of the Girl: Reflections on the Sites We Call Centers” in Teaching Lives: Essays & Stories. Utah State University Press; pp. 157-166.

All are welcome to attend! Email lifespanwriting [@] gmail.com for meeting link. All WIP are posted in Eastern Standard (or Daylight) Time.

Dana Landry will be sharing from her work and soliciting feedback. Email lifespanwriting@gmail.com for the meeting link.

Join us for the inaugural Lifespan Writing Special Interest Group at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Pittsburgh, PA (Room 411). If you’d like to join us for dinner afterwards (details TBD), please RSVP to lifespanwriting[at]gmail.com by March 7. All conference attendees are welcome.

Join us online to hear Catherine Compton-Lilly share her current research, “Microaggressions across Time: A Documentation of Longitudinal Inequity.”

Abstract: This presentation draws on data from a ten-year study to explore forms of microaggression reported by family members as children moved through elementary school and into middle and high school. I open with reflection on my positionality as a former White teacher in a school that served almost exclusively African American children. A grounded analysis of the data is used to identify four types of microaggressions that recur across the longitudinal study. The focus is on microaggressions that were salient to the children and their families. A set of mega-aggressions that were particularly severe and had devastating effects on students’ academic outcomes are then presented. The paper ends with a focus on one student, Alicia, and the cumulation of microaggressions across her school trajectory. This paper reveals inequity as a longitudinal construction involving the cumulation of microaggressions and mega-aggressions experienced by African American students who live in high poverty communities and attend poorly funded schools.

Join us online as Melissa Bugdal shares about her current research project, “Writing Knowledge Transfer from Basic Writing to Workplace Writing.”

Abstract: Research has been done on writing knowledge transfer in several contexts, including first-year composition to later writing experiences, high school to college transitions, and writing across the curriculum contexts. Likewise, workplace writing is well studied in several contexts and settings. However, the transitions and transfer of writing knowledge for a group that initially placed into a basic writing college course and are now approaching new workplace writing contexts has yet to be thoroughly investigated. My dissertation followed a cohort of 6 students across the first two years of their college writing experience at a large, research-intensive, land grant institution in the northeast region of the USA. This research led to a broader longitudinal study of these writers throughout their full time as college students (including taking courses at branch campuses and community colleges). 4 of the 6 participants have expressed interest in continuing with the study into a workplace writing context, as they make the transition from students to employees, which will constitute the next stage of this longitudinal research project.

Join us online as Sandra Tarabochia shares about her current research project, “Self-Authorship and Faculty Writers’ Trajectories of Becoming.” Details for joining us on Zoom are below.

Abstract: This presentation examines preliminary findings from a longitudinal research study designed to uncover the learning pathways of faculty writers and considers self-authorship as a framework for theorizing faculty writers’ “trajectories of becoming” (Prior 2018). With epistemological (how we know), interpersonal (how we relate to others) and intrapersonal (how we understand ourselves) dimensions (Kegan, 1994; Baxter Magolda, 2001), self-authorship is a promising lens for understanding the experiences of writers transitioning to faculty positions; yet no studies have been conducted toward that end (Werder, 2013). Therefore, using the Subject Object Interview protocol (Kegan et al., 1982; Lahey, et al., 2011) to gather data from faculty writers and qualitative coding methods to analyze transcripts (Saldaña, 2016), my research examines self-authorship as a flexible construct for revealing multiple dimensions of faculty writer development. Findings challenge traditional faculty support efforts focused on writing and research productivity, asking instead how we might create environments that cultivate diverse, holistic processes of becoming.

Zoom Topic: Lifespan WIP

Time: Nov 15, 2018 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Join us online for Lauren Rosenberg’s presentation, “Tracing the Tributaries: Qualitative Literacy Research in Lifespan Studies.”

This presentation focuses on my ongoing research relationship with a group of older adult learners and the ways our interactions continue to change shape across time. At this point, I have known the 4 participants who were in my original study of adult learners writing in informal educational settings since 2005. The initial study concluded in 2006; however, I conducted follow-up interviews and collected writing samples from participants for 4 more years. In 2015, the study was published in a monograph (The Desire for Literacy: Writing in the Lives of Adult Learners). I continued my interactions with the participants in non-research meetings (2015) that led to my new interest in revisiting as a methodology (article under review). The encounters I describe here suggest possibilities for valuing interactions with participants as a means of complicating and extending the research process after publication and shedding light on how we understand the fundamental nature of writing partnerships. Subsequently, I conducted a second study with one participant (Chief) and his spouse (Shirley) in 2018. An article based on that study (“’Still Learning’: One Couple’s Literacy Development in Older Adulthood”), which takes a lifespan perspective, is forthcoming in a special issue of LiCS. The next project I intend to propose will zoom in on the ongoing writing development of Shirley across her lifetime. Although each piece of this research has had its individual objectives, I am interested in looking at the research as a whole in terms of lifespan longitudinal studies. I use the metaphor of a river flowing organically into tributaries to describe this work, which seems to take unexpected pathways based on the conditions of people’s lives, time and aging, and my own career path.