By Alycia Gilbert, Stephanie Kerschbaum
How does your research or teaching philosophy influence your approach to directing UW’s Expository Writing Program?
One track of my research centers on thinking about the ways that disability materializes or takes shape through everyday interactions. In this work I think a lot about how bodies become available for noticing and how that sensory perception translates into meaning.
What does this set of questions about noticing disability mean for EWP directorship? For one thing, it means that I’m working to ensure that conversations about access and accessibility are front and center of every aspect of our work here in EWP alongside our commitments to antiracist writing pedagogy and program praxis.
Concretely, it means thinking about what kind of space the A-11 suite is for instructors and writing program admin team members. It means thinking about how we can build structures and practices that invite open conversation about access rather than funneling most of that discussion through individualized accommodation processes. It means asking after the experiences we create for students in our classes, whether in-person or hybrid.
A second thread of my research is interested in how writing classrooms function as spaces for engagement across difference. My book Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference takes up this question in considering how students negotiate giving feedback on each other’s writing in small-group peer review workshops.
The core insight of that book that I carry with me every day is the reminder of how deeply personal and intimate the work of talking about writing is: it is not easy for people to separate getting feedback on their writing and getting feedback on themselves. The work that goes into being able to engage begins with learning about oneself and coming-to-know one’s own place in the world. Being open to engaging with others requires that we–as teachers, writing program team members, and peers–be open to what we don’t yet know about other people, rather than presuming to know them, and responding to their writing in ways that support growth, learning, and engagement rather than shutting down possibilities.
What most excites you about taking on this position?
I truly have to say a big reason I was excited about this job was because the program is doing so many exciting things in thinking about what it means to ethically engage as communicators and learners producing and engaging all kinds of texts. The more I learned about what Candice Rai, building on the work of previous directors Anis Bawarshi, Juan Guerra, and Gail Stygall, had done in concert with many previous EWP team members, the more I wanted to be part of the team myself.
Hands down the best part of this job is who I get to work with. I’ve most gotten to know the phenomenal team of Assistant Directors–Taiko Aoki-Marcial, Francesca Colonnese, Alycia Gilbert, Missy González-Garduño, Anselma Prihandita, and Joe Wilson. I’m co-teaching with Sumyat Thu, who is also coordinating English 121 and community-engaged learning, and Michelle Liu, Associate Director of Writing Programs and coordinator of English 111 has been giving me so many great ideas and resources for thinking about working with first-year students at UW. And Jake Huebsch has been Program Coordinator Extraordinaire in helping me learn the ropes.
And as I’ve gotten to know the instructors new to our program and teaching English 131 for the first time this fall, I continue to keep pinching myself that these are people I get to learn from and engage with as a teacher and program director.
What new perspective do you hope to bring to our program?
I talked about this a bit above, but I think my expertise in critical disability studies puts me in strong position to continue to deepen the program’s attention to accessibility. I think this is a particularly important question right now, as we return to in-person learning while still experiencing a pandemic and the tremendous exhaustion and fatigue that characterize what it feels like to teach and learn in late 2021. What does it mean to create accessible environments? How can we ethically navigate the tensions and challenges around different access needs and expectations? How can we ensure that lessons learned through remote teaching and learning during 2020-21 are not simply abandoned or left aside in a quote-unquote “return to normal” that presumes the centrality of face-to-face in person interaction?
Just a fun one: what’s your favorite thing you’ve done or seen in Seattle so far?
Gosh, there’s a lot! I’m a midwesterner at heart, and I’ve spent most of my life on land flattened by glaciers, so coming to Seattle and experiencing the mountains and the steep ups and downs has been so fun. My favorite view was a trip to Carkeek Park at high tide, thanks to a recommendation from Candice and being totally blown away by the mountains, the water, the beach, the trees. I feel very humbled by the natural beauty there is to explore here, and that I get to see the trees rising up along Lake Washington from my office window.
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