In the next few weeks, we’ll be hosting two more Work in Progress sessions.

On October 29 at 12:00pm Eastern Time, Kathleen Shine Cain, Pamela Childers, and Leigh Ryan will be presenting on Identity, Activity, and Community Practice in the Writing Center and Beyond: What Departing Directors Carry with Them.

On November 11 at 12:00pm Eastern Time, Stephanie Hodde will be presenting on ‘You’ve Got Memory’ - Inventing Memoir Across Generational Publics.

We hope to see you there! Please email lifespanwriting@gmail.com if you are interested in attending and would like a Zoom link.

Abstracts

Identity, Activity, and Community Practice in the Writing Center and Beyond: What Departing Directors Carry with Them (Kathleen Shine Cain, Pamela Childers, and Leigh Ryan)

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. 

Kathleen Shine Cain (caink@merrimack.edu), Pamela Childers (pam.childers@gmail.com) , and Leigh Ryan (LR@umd.edu).

*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.

‘You’ve Got Memory’—Inventing Memoir Across Generational Publics (Stephanie Hodde)

“To write one’s life is to live it twice.” (Patricia Hampl)

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 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.