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Our Body of Work invites administrators and teachers to consider how physical bodies inform everyday work and labor as well as research and administrative practices in writing programs. Combining academic and personal essays from a wide array of voices, it opens a meaningful discussion about the physicality of bodily experiences in the academy.
 
Open exchanges enable complex and nuanced conversations about intersectionality and how racism, sexism, classism, and ableism (among other “isms”) create systems of power. Contributors examine how these conversations are framed around work, practices, policies, and research and identify ways to create inclusive, embodied practices in writing programs and classrooms. The collection is organized to maximize representation in the areas of race, gender, identity, ability, and class by featuring scholarly chapters followed by narratively focused interchapters that respond to and engage with the scholarly work.
 
The honest and emotionally powerful stories in Our Body of Work expose problematic and normalizing policies, practices, and procedures and offer diverse theories and methodologies that provide multiple paths for individuals to follow to make the academy more inclusive and welcoming for all bodies. It will be an important resource for researchers, as well a valuable addition to graduate and undergraduate syllabi on embodiment, writing instruction/pedagogy, and WPA work.
 
Contributors: Dena Arendall, Janel Atlas, Hayat Bedaiwi, Elizabeth Boquet, Lauren Brentnell, Triauna Carey, Denise Comer, Joshua Daniel, Michael Faris, Rebecca Gerdes-McClain, Morgan Gross, Nabila Hijazi, Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott, Maureen Johnson, Jasmine Kar Tang, Elitza Kotzeva, Michelle LaFrance, Jasmine Lee, Lynn C. Lewis, Mary Lourdes Silva, Rita Malenczyk, Anna Rita Napoleone, Julie Prebel, Rebecca Rodriguez Carey, Ryan Skinnell, Trixie Smith, Stacey Waite, Kelsey Walker, Shannon Walters, Isaac Wang, Jennie Young
 

The first book to explore writing center (WC) and writing program (WP) administration in HBCUs, Our Charge to Keep nuances ideas of ethical tutoring, explores Black college students’ beliefs about using Black Language in academic writing, provides new theories about tutoring, and gives insights into infrastructure and challenges facing WC and WP administrators in HBCU settings.

Many writing center directors have taken up the challenge to interrogate the impact of systemic racism on writing center theory, research, pedagogy, praxes, and daily operations, but the focus has largely been on predominantly white institutions (PWIs). As a result, writing center theory and research has unintentionally excluded the practices of everyday HBCU writing centers—their pedagogies, praxes, theories, and research. This edited volume rectifies this marginality by centering the epistemologies, practices, and wisdom of HBCU writing administrators, theorists, and practitioners. Chapters examine antiracist pedagogy, first-year writing challenges, the role of the larger HBCU community, and more.

Our Charge to Keep is a collection of writings that ultimately demystifies the administration of HBCU writing centers and inspires critical curiosity about them. Dr. Wonderful and Kendra Mitchell frame and showcase the resilience of HBCU writing center directors in combating the residual impact of systemic oppression and point the way forward for PWIs to shift toward new HBCU-centered perspectives on how to institute true antiracist policies and initiatives.