The Idea of a Multiliteracy Center: Six Response
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Date
2012
Authors
Balester, Valerie
Grimm, Nancy
McKinney, Grutsch Jackie
Lee, Sohui
Sheridan, David M.
Silver, Naomi
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This essay—which began its life as a roundtable at the 2011 Computers and Writing Conference— juxtaposes six responses from different administrators and faculty engaged in the turn towards multiliteracy centers. Although our title invokes Stephen North’s 1984 essay in which he tried to assert an identity for the “new” writing center, ours is influenced in approach more by North’s 1994 follow-up article “Revisiting The Idea of the Writing Center” and Beth Boquet and Neal Lerner’s explication of the influence of North’s work in writing center studies. North’s reconsideration critiques his overly “romantic idealization” of writing centers and moves from global axioms to local action (10). Likewise, within this essay, the six authors grapple with local contexts and offer local solutions; none have tried to “romanticize” the difficult trade-offs involved in the changing identities of writing centers, and still none have dismissed the idea outright because it isn’t convenient.