WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship has released the new Digital Edited Collection “The Post Pandemic Writing Center”. John Katunich, Sarah Rice, and Noreen Lape edited this collection. John and Sarah joined the Slow Agency podcast to explain why this DEC matters and what writing center directors and tutors can take from it to apply in their center. To access the DEC, click https://ship.pressbooks.pub/thepostpandemicwritingcenter/ .

About the podcast guests:

John Katunich (he/they) is the Director of the Writing Program and Norman M. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center at Dickinson College. John holds a PhD in the Language, Culture, and Society Program from the Penn State University College of Education.

Sarah Rice (she/her) is a graduate (spring 2024) of Dickinson College majoring in English and minoring in Sociology. She has worked as a tutor and a writing associate for the Norman M. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center for three years and has had her work published in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. She is currently completing a senior thesis on the Southern Gothic literary canon and plans to continue working in the field of digital editing/publishing after graduation.

Transcript:

Esther Namubiru: Welcome to Slow Agency. This podcast offers a space for Writing Center and Writing Studies people to slow down, think, dialogue, and reflect on issues affecting their professional lives. I’m Esther Namubiru.

Weijia Li: I’m Weijia Li.

Anna Habib: And I’m Anna Habib. We are honored to steward this podcast. To learn more about Slow Agency, Visit Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders, a blog of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship.

Esther Namubiru: A good day to you, listener. Today, I’m joined by John Katunich and Sarah Rice, and they’re here to tell us about the new Digital Edited Collection called the Post-Pandemic Writing Center. John and Sarah, come on in. Tell us about yourselves.

Sarah Rice: well, my name is Sarah Rice. I’m a recent graduate with an English major from Dickinson College. And during my time at Dickinson, I spent four three and a half years, four years working with the Writing Center. Right now, I’m doing some freelance editing work and I plan on working with the United States Army War College as a copy editor in the future.

John Katunich: I’m John Katunich, and I’m the director of the Writing Program and Writing Center here at Dickinson College and, super excited to talk about, this collection that Sarah and I and another colleague of ours Noreen Lape started three years ago. It’s been quite a process but, happy to talk a little bit more about that.

Esther Namubiru: Well, it’s good to have you both. I think Sarah you’ve been on the podcast before.

Sarah Rice: I have, yes. Thank you for having me again.

Esther Namubiru: It’s good to have you back, and Noreen was also on the podcast, John. So, it’s good to see familiar faces and meet a new face, John. So, before we begin this term, digital edited collection, some of our audience might not know what that means so what is a digital edited collection in very simple words?

John Katunich: I can answer that because I had a similar question when we started this project. WLN was the publication venue for a special issue that Noreen, Sarah, and I worked on initially and so Noreen and I put out a call for this Post-Pandemic Writing Center special issue. We got quite a bit of interest. And so, what started as just an idea for a special issue for WLN kind of evolved into both a special issue and a Digital Edited Collection where we could publish it.

Take some of the articles that needed or would benefit from more kinds of multimedia kind of support or multimedia just kind of information. I don’t know, Sarah can say more about this because she was much more on that end, but it was an opportunity to take some of these articles that were condensed for the special edition and expand them, provide more multimedia to allow them to tell the stories that they wanted to tell.

And so it was, it was a learning process for all of us, for sure myself to kind of envision what this book is like, book-length treatment with all of the digital additions might look like. But, Sarah, you probably have a lot more to say since you were the digital editor.

Sarah Rice: I’m glad you mentioned this idea of multimedia elements, John, and that can be a broad term. So, for those who don’t know about these Digital Edited Collections, they include both the writing part, and these multimedia elements including videos, interviews, audio recordings, and images. We even had some diagrams that help contextualize, further inform, or even visualize ideas that are otherwise hard to put into words. So, we just had a greater stage to explore certain ideas and concepts that are otherwise, like I said, difficult to put into words sometimes.

Esther Namubiru: Nice. Is it free? Because journals require subscriptions and all of that. Is the digital editor collection free?

John Katunich: This is an open-access resource. So yes, it is free. So, it was initially hosted on the WLN website. Now that has been integrated into the Colorado State WAC site. And probably the easiest way to get it is just to Google WLN Post-Pandemic writing center, and I think that would probably be one of the easiest ways to get that. But, it’s free and there’s a number of Digital Edited Collections that WLN has put together. And so, this is just the most recent one.

Esther Namubiru: So, the theme for this particular iteration, the Digital Edited Collection is the Post-Pandemic Writing Center. And I suppose 1 of the 1st questions someone would think is. There are so many projects doing that type of thinking right now. What have we learned from the pandemic now that it’s been these many years later?

So, I had to ask what makes this digital edited collection different as a project from those other projects that also talk about what we’ve learned from the pandemic as a writing center community.

John Katunich: So, I don’t know if this is sort of, it’s a little bit of context we, Nori and I put this call out I think in 2022 so it’s been, it’s been a while, and to be honest I was a little reluctant at that point thinking, are we even post-pandemic at this point, right? It felt kind of early to be thinking post-pandemic when things were still really weird and uncertain.

And so, I think one of the things that’s different about this is that we did start this process kind of amid the tail end of the pandemic. Again, full disclosure I wasn’t entirely sure what we were going to accomplish this at the outset. So, we just knew that this was a unique and important time for higher education as a whole but really for writing centers in particular. And we want to do a couple of different things we wanted to just docent kind of as an oral history, what are the things that people are thinking about talking about working on at this point in time also maybe some, some lessons learned. So, some of the things that people figured out that might be helpful in the longer term but probably what emerged as the most interesting thing for me at least, is how the pandemic kind of defamiliarized a lot of practices that we maybe had been taking for granted.

And so for me, the through line for a lot of these pieces that we, that are in the digital day collection is that they’re all Sort of saying in this moment of defamiliarization, in this moment of disruption, what are the new conversations that are now possible? , and what do we do with them?

And because we were collecting these articles still in that moment where we weren’t fully out of the pandemic — I don’t think now we’re fully out of the pandemic — there were moments of learning loss and of community building. And we’re still post-pandemic now even. But what I think our collection does is provide a window into some of these conversations that in the aftermath of that pandemic, in the aftermath of all of the disruption, what are some of the new conversations that that people are having about what a writing center means, what a writing center can do at this moment in time.

Sarah Rice: And it’s interesting that John mentions this idea of disruption because, for a lot of students like myself, I graduated in 2020 and then started Dickinson that same year. So, the only experiences I’ve had with the Writing Center have been in this pandemic and post-pandemic world so I know from a student perspective both as an editor and a viewer of this piece, it’s been really interesting to see these things that I’ve also taken for granted.

What my sense of normal Writing Center is not at all,  what anyone else’s was at that time. Hence, it’s also interesting this DEC, it does include both professors’ perspectives, directors, perspectives, and students’ perspectives. We get a mesh of all of them that does create a pretty cohesive image.

I think obviously there’s still room for growth but a pretty cohesive image of how it’s disrupting for every figure involved. This was collectively a difficult process with growing pains for everyone and I think this collection allowed us to highlight what the different growing pains were for people which otherwise is pretty easy and almost tempting to kind of ignore, move past, especially, you know, now it’s been 4 years since the onset.

And well, it might be easy to kind of ignore the hardships or just kind of you know, look at going forward. We do have to take a step back, I think and reflect.

John Katunich: And just to add a little bit to that, I think, you know, there was a bit of a crossroads early on when we were thinking kind of is this mainly a story of what we’ve lost and how do we kind of bring it back? Or is it a story of kind of these new opportunities? And, and I don’t think it’s an either-or like that form of a binary, but it, it, it felt right to, to sort of, you know, Acknowledge the loss, but also say the lessons that we’re learning are really about these new opportunities that have come out of, again, this moment of disruption for all of us.

Esther Namubiru: Some of the chapters really piqued my interest and even surprised me. So, listener, there are 10 chapters. They are divided into 3 sections. I’ll let John and Sarah tell you about the sections, but one of my favorite chapters was my favorite because it surprised me the question it was this is chapter the chapter, I think it’s chapter three.

Where we’re talking about how we could re-image the writing center. I know, right, Sarah? Or, Sarah, you just This is one of my favorite chapters as well. I know we could re-imagine the writing center, thinking about what our home writing spaces look like. And I just thought, wow, what a thought.

I mean, How did, how did that even get into someone’s mind to think about that question? And then just the way the chapter is laid out with all these different pictures from different students’ writing spaces, what were some of your favorite chapters? , I know, Sarah, you can start with that one. I know I can go on about it, but what was your favorite?

Sarah Rice: So, there’s are you talking of change of scenery? Or radical care at the change of scenery. That’s my favorite as well. It’s a photo collection, actually, and that was 1 of our few pieces that were centered around multimedia. A lot of times we use multimedia to emphasize certain points within the writing, but the change of scenery piece, it was centered on these images of students, in different workspaces, while at home.

And during that 1st, year, the pandemic, especially while everyone was social-distancing, a lot of colleges were shut down it was. Kind of, it felt very personal. We were able to kind of get a sneak peek into what everyone’s workspace life looked like for a moment and while again, these are just pictures of desks and inspirational quotes and little whiteboards. It also seems like a piece of a person and that’s where a lot of their important work was being done. And I know for me, at least the love-hate relationship I have with my space during that time. So, they really get at, I think the idea that location It doesn’t always matter, but it does, too, at the same time. So, it’s very interesting. I love that piece for sure.

Esther Namubiru: I love it, too. Functionality and aesthetics and how to think about that in your home and then take it, take that to the writing center. And I was also surprised that this was a chapter that was worth talking about because of the time that you started this DEC.

John, you said it was three years ago that you started it. And so, you’re sort of in the middle, sort of, in the middle of the pandemic still, and people aren’t really thinking about The physical space of the center necessarily. They’re thinking about online because everyone is online right now so that was a very nice, surprising chapter to run into and to find a lot of useful thoughts to, to apply. John, what was your favorite chapter?

John Katunich: Change of Scenery is up there for sure Pandemic Luxuries Radical Care in the Writing Center, and maybe, I forget the full title, but Lane et al. That’s chapter two. Chapter two was a chapter that spoke to me a lot and it’s actually similar to Change of Scenery in the sense that we get this window into Kind of what people’s lives are like and the way in which they are engaging in this work,  of the writing center from their homes and Lane and also Whitman’s article chapter one and, and I’m sure other ones as well, kind of take on this question that, that I think has been floating around writing centers for quite a few years about like Are we a cozy home or should we be sort of this cozy welcoming space? And what does it mean to do that? What does it mean not to do that? And I think this comes back to the defamiliarization question. I think what these chapters — the change of scenery chapters, the pandemic luxuries chapter — what it really does is in my mind, take us from how we might think of the metaphorical home as a way to describe the writing center [and] taking the metaphor out of it. We’re saying, now we’re actually in our homes when we’re working in the Writing Center. What does that mean? What does that mean for how we want to organize or create a community or create a welcoming space in the Writing Center beyond that?

And so, those are all, I think, interesting questions that I’m still thinking about. And I’m still thinking about how we make sure that people feel like there are as few barriers as possible to get to the Writing Center while still making sure that what we’re doing is meaningful, professional, and as effective as it can be. And, I’m going to be digesting that, I think, for, you know, years to come.

Esther Namubiru: Right. And listeners, so the chapters we’ve just talked about are Chapter Three: Change of Scenery, and Chapter Two: Radical Care at the Center: A Kitchen Table. So, those chapters are within the first section called Disrupting Place and Space. But then the 2nd section is called Disconnecting and Reconnecting. Sarah, do you want to share? What’s that section about? What are those chapters trying to tackle?

Sarah Rice: Absolutely. So, within that 1st section, as you said, we really focused on just the idea that the writing center isn’t limited to a certain place. And within the 2nd set, Of pieces, we kind of start to explore how the writing center also is a group of, it’s not just individual people, although we’re all individual people at our home during the pandemic on our screens it’s still a collective community and the effect of the pandemic on that community is kind of what we’re looking at through different lenses in this section. John, is there anything else you think can describe that?

John Katunich: I think when we’re thinking about the structure that second section to me is a sort of trying to capture that moment of, of kind of flux where we know that we are now working forced to work remotely, but we, You know, as centers want to engage in this process of reconnection, like even very early in the pandemic, knowing, like, how do we keep, you know the writing center as part of our students lives.

And I think that’s, that’s what that second section does. Dana Driscoll and Andrew Yim’s piece called Loss of We, I think exemplifies that section really well and they really look at this, the sort of the phenomenon of asynchronous tutoring and what that rapid shift from mostly in-person to now a big chunk of asynchronous tutoring meant and A really great research study that looked at really like the, the, the corpora of, of the client report forms and found like literally the word we disappeared or didn’t entirely disappear, but like was, was suddenly a lot less present than in the client report forms, you know, that maybe you’re doing, maybe synchronously, which we see a lot of, you know, we did this or we worked on this and, and, And, and I think, you know, there’s no answer to that.

There’s no way to sort of in a magic wand say, okay, we’re going to bring the Wii back. We’re going to, you know, get everybody to reconnect you know, overnight. But I do think it lays out the challenges of you know, when we, when we do start You know, living our lives and doing our writing and, and, and being a writing center that in a more asynchronous way we do need to attend to the we in that equation which I think we are still doing. And I, we, we are still doing or, or we’ll continue to do.

Esther Namubiru: I found chapter six finding participatory hospitality in online writing studios a very interesting chapter as well because I know many of us are still now that we’re in this hybrid. We’re also having to ask that question of what participation looks like now as a group of people, do we need to adjust our expectations about what it means to participate when you’re online versus in person? So, I think that was also a very important chapter to raise after Dana and Andrew’s chapter but then section 3 moves a little bit more into it. Okay, let’s talk about community. Do you want to share a little bit about that section, John?

John Katunich: Sure, so I think this last section was forward-looking, although what was forward-looking in 2022? Maybe just where we are now. I think this is where there’s, particularly in the last chapter, I think a sense of how do we get back to not a normal, I don’t think there’s ever going back to a normal, but sort of kind of getting back to a place where we’re not just trying to make it through, right, where we’re actually then sort of engaging in these initiatives and growing the scope of our work in the Writing Center.

And so the last chapter in that section, Zooming Past Institutional Boundaries really talks about how even amidst all of the disruption and challenges of the pandemic there was a consortium of schools with writing centers that took this opportunity to do community outreach because they now had the capacity to do that remotely to do that online that that really didn’t exist before this kind of baptism by fire. And so that’s what I see sort of this last chapter as you know, what do we It’s really about kind of building on those hard-learned lessons to say what can we do now that, that was maybe difficult or hard to imagine doing, you know, a few years earlier.

Sarah Rice: And having that flexible mindset, I think is really encouraged in this last section both within, as John mentioned, that final chapter where it talks about, you know, removing this idea that the writing center is only within a university or an academic institution, and in the previous chapter called how we write now, that’s where they talk about what we consider to be writing, you know, academic, personal work writing and how they do all kind of mesh together and how there are absolutely benefits and of kind of acknowledging the benefits of all types of writing as opposed to only valuing much academic writing, so, maintaining an open mind after all of this, particularly regarding what the writing center can do if we allow it the space to do that.

Esther Namubiru: I love that. What we can do if we allow space to do that, and how has the pandemic forced us to start really thinking about where is that space located? Did both of you have any personal major takeaways that you feel you’re applying to your work now in the center more immediately, John?

John Katunich: I going back to Lane’s Lane et al the pandemic luxuries, they talk a lot about kitchen table conversations and the sort of this long tradition of what kitchen table conversations mean in, in a lot of different cultures and how suddenly the writing center got to be part of these kitchen table conversations and, and the thing that I really took away that I, that I, I sit with and I really kind of find, find a really helpful framing tool is the distinction they made between a dining room table conversations and kitchen table conversations in the sense that even though I, I worked during the pandemic at my dining room table. So, this is not exactly the way I did it, but like, if you think about dining room conversations, right, these are formal, these are sort of often dictated by you know, etiquette and, and how we’re supposed to set things up and how we’re supposed to do things at a, at a dining room table, as opposed to a kitchen table, which tends to be a little more, you know, Messier, but it’s also more inviting and more personal.

And so, kind of creating spaces for more kitchen table conversations, as opposed to the dining room table conversations, which I think sometimes characterize the conversations about writing in the context of a writing center or a writing center at an Institution of higher education.

And so, really embracing, you know, the kinds of in a very broad sense, kitchen table conversations that hopefully no longer just take place at a kitchen table but that we’re having, you know, in our center around our center post-pandemic.

Esther Namubiru: What about you, Sarah?

Sarah Rice: Absolutely. I would agree that the idea of kitchen table conversations stuck with me. For me, it was more along the lines of the, the. The personal stories, the purse, the personality that comes with those kitchen table conversations so while working on this project, we had 10 different authorial groups, most of which included multiple authors. So, I had the privilege to talk to dozens of people about their experiences within the pandemic after the pandemic before the pandemic and how it all kind of meshed together, and I had to have a more open mind again. I mean, I went into this, I was. And like most college kids, I was focused on my own experience. So, for me, it helped me broaden my perception not only of how the pandemic affects people but how people are able to also come together to move past stuff, learn from stuff, and grow from stuff.

And ultimately, this collection was like a giant piece of collaboration, and this was my 1st big collaborative work. So, it definitely holds a very special place in my heart, and I feel some of the stuff I’m saying might seem a little bit redundant to some of those who have been in academia for a while.

But, just seeing what a group of people are able to come together and do and talk about the hard stuff and have the hard conversations and do the difficult work and put in, you know, 2 plus years of work on it and have the patience for that it was just very heartening to see and it gave me a little bit of faith and confidence in academia as a whole, but also just writing centers. It’s a very niche group of people we’re a very small and mighty group, but it was just really nice to see that there is a presence and they’re going to keep fighting. We’re going to keep fighting and we’re totally together as one community throughout all this something I just wasn’t super aware of before.

Esther Namubiru: I love that. And you mentioned collaboration. I was curious about the editorial undertaking of it. Because, you know, we saw the digital edition, it’s beautiful. It’s on this website. It’s colorful. It’s, it just seems so ready to go and perfect, but we don’t, we don’t always think about the lift behind the scenes.

John Katunich: Well, I want to make a very, very big shout out to Sarah, who was super instrumental in making it look the way it looks and going to those authors helping them craft the diagrams and the visuals recording interviews Sarah took a very, very big role in that stage of the kind of editorial work.

And so, I just want to say in a public forum I’ve told Sarah this before, but I want to say in a public forum that her work is instrumental to this product. And, Noreen and I feel so I was grateful to have a talented digital editor who could guide us through this because neither of us is, to be honest, particularly digitally slash technologically minded folks.

And so, Sarah did an amazing job with that because indeed there was a, there is a lot of collaborators every, almost every article had a number of authors a very long list of authors. And so, that collaborate that collaborative work isn’t easy work and it’s not always efficient work, but you know having a digital editor like Sarah working with them definitely made that process Not just easier, but it really made it possible to have the product that we do.

Esther Namubiru: Sarah, you did an amazing job.

Sarah Rice: Thank you. Again, I mean, John and Noreen, I couldn’t have done it without them. As I said, this was my first time going through the professional editorial process, and they really walked me through each step and gave me support when I didn’t think I could do it.

And again, I think the three of us just really put everything we had into it for two years and I could not have been happier with the result.

Esther Namubiru: Thank you so much for joining us, Sarah and John again, listener, the Digital Edited Collection is called the Post-Pandemic Writing Center. If you want to have a look at it, there will be a link available on wlnconnect.org.