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eBook details

• Title: Medieval Literacy in the Writing Center
• Author : Writing Lab Newsletter
• Release Date : January 01, 2009
• Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 61 KB

Description

As an erstwhile medievalist who administers a writing center, I am struck by the fact that a seemingly disproportionate number of us who have studied the Middle Ages are also drawn to composition studies and writing center work--not merely by default but as a conscious choice. One factor might be that the study of medieval texts cultivates and requires approaches similar to those used in the writing classroom or the writing center: a sensitivity to language, a willingness to identify with others, and a constant focus on how texts are produced and who produces them. However, I believe that the writing center in particular attracts medievalists because it reproduces modes of literacy that are in fact centuries old. Looking for the medieval in the writing center reveals the pedigree of some of our most common attitudes and practices: the treatment of composition as a collaborative act, the utilization of multiple modes of literacy, and, most importantly, the values-driven concept of writing as a personally transformative process. I examine the parallels between the medieval and the modern not so much to offer writing center practitioners another metaphor for our work (our field is rich in metaphors already) but to challenge the common tropes of writing centers as (1) inherently innovative in their practices and (2) marginalized and necessarily counter to the predominant modes of academic discourse. We have typically relished the practices that distinguish writing centers from traditional classroom pedagogies and institutional cultures--a contrarian stance that Melissa Ianetta, drawing on even older perspectives on literacy, terms Socratic (45). I believe that questioning these common self-perceptions is necessary, however, because they ultimately limit our effectiveness by cutting off fruitful areas of collaboration and denying us a sense of groundedness. As thoughtful writing pedagogies take hold within the disciplines and post-process writing teachers focus on individualized instruction, what happens in the center may not be that different from what happens in the writing classroom. Recontextualizing our practices historically likewise shows us that our practice extends well beyond the conventional birth date assigned to it in the late twentieth century. Viewed in a medieval light, writing centers in fact return to a discourse even older than the founding of the first university at Bologna in 1088. Recognizing the old in what we do, therefore, perhaps paradoxically, takes our work out of the margins and recognizes its place in the centuries-old continuum of writing instruction. Seeing the medieval in our work is also downright counter-cultural, since it flies in the face of the modernizing narrative that has so governed Western culture since the Renaissance: every day, in every way, we are not necessarily getting better and better.

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