In formal postcolonial jargon, writing back signifies an interplay where one cultural practice-commonly called the Western-is being modified, resisted or abandoned to give room for alternative modes of expression and creation."

If as educators we do not abide by the First Amendment , if we believe some speech is more equal than other , then all our trumpeting about "academic freedom " is hypocritical rot. -Jeanne Simpson3

Our heritage] stretches back... to Athens, where in a bus y marketplace a tutor called Socrates set up the same kind of shop: open to all comers , no fees charged , offering, on whatever subject a visitor might propose, a continuous dialectic that is, finally, its own end. -Stephen North, "The Idea of a Writing Center" Recent explorations of writing center research encapsulate the often -conflicting professional demands we face as administrators. On the one hand, we acknowledge the need for research to improve our understanding of the past narratives, present effects and future possibilities of writing center work. On the other hand, our individual identifications and disciplinary ethos often rely on the notion of a writing center director whose priorities include, as Harvey Kail writes, "teaching, service, service, service, and then research-on our service" (28). Added to this already-overburdened schedule is the privileging of place in writing center studies; if each center is uniquely shaped by its context, as the common argument goes, what kinds of research can speak across these myriad locations, moving beyond what Jeanette Harris has termed the "this -is -what -we -do -at -my-writing-center" genre? ("Review" 663). In other words, both our individual professional lives and the scholarship of our field are marked by our attempts to reconcile our identification as a highly communal professional group with our allegiance to the primacy of individual context.

Reading The Center Will Hold makes me feel hopeful about writing

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Two scenes emerge as I revisit this piece: first, the excitement of the early-eighties Montana State University WAC/WC/FYC collaborations, and, second, the array of WC/WAC configurations that now enrich our campuses. This piece grew out of a "How can we do all that with these paltiy resources?" moment in Bozeman, Montana, a moment that John Bean, John Ramage, and Jack Folsom seized and renamed "an opportunity for conceptual blockbusting." They made us believe, and out of some wonderfully nave questions about writers, texts, instructors, and pedagogies came a revamped FYC program, a WAG program, and a writing center that functioned as the hub for campus writing. This pivotal activity remains for me a model of thoughtful, collaborative risk taking, one that I hope continues to inform the ways we in writing centers work with our present theoretical, political, and pedagogical possibilities.

As pink-bewigged Mrs

At many writing labs and centers, students offer feedback about sessions on some type of post-session evaluation form. In many cases, this feedback is overwhelmingly positive.

The Second Coming " As a metaphor for wrting center work, carnival frames this work as , to borrow Susan Millers words , a " relation between high and low discourses , " in this case , between frequently marginalized wrting centers and the larger university or academic 'structures that contain-and depend on-these centers.

Over the years, many writers have offered theoretical constructions of writing

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It will come as no surprise, perhaps, to say that writing centers have long been grounded in -some would say "bounded by" -the conventions of printed text. True, writing centers, like most of the rest of the world, have been influenced by advances in computer technology, most recently through the explosive growth of Online Writing Labs (OWLs) and computer-mediated conferencing with students, but fundamentally, most of the interactions between students and tutors still center on the handwritten or printed texts that are placed on a table between them or, perhaps, shared in a wordprocessed file. These texts are structured linearly and hierarchically, moving along a single path from beginning to end, following well-known and universally taught discourse forms that have emerged from a print -based rhetorical tradition.

ESL writers present a common dilemma to writing centers-the desire for sentencelevel interventions from their tutors.Our staff often experience such interventions as contradicting the aim of writing centers, formulated by Stephen North

Technology makes many colleagues uncomfortable

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Discusses general issues related to attitudes towards writing, which may be of interest to those working with English-as-a-second-language students, especially students coming from educational settings where writing is not traditionally taught. Presents the practice of the Writing Center at Central European University, one of the few centers in Eastern Europe, in dealing with students' attitudes towards writing

This case study explores the symmetries between the processes of designand writing. It then goes on to report on the authors’ research that contrastsdesign students’ approaches to writing and their approaches to design. Thepaper concludes by setting out practical suggestions that can be used toencourage students to see the links between design and writing.

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On a blusteiy morning, the two of us sat together in Neal's office on the MIT campus-back issues, manuscripts, announcements, subscriber lists, and budget sheets strewn about-editing our first issue.Up until now, our meetings have consisted of frequent phone calls and even more frequent email messages (most of which with attachments).Thus, we feel grateful to be able to do this work face -to -face, and we feel grateful to the WCJ editors, all 10 of them (3 pairs, a trio, and our one beloved lone wolf, Dave Healy), who have shaped the Journal over the past 2,2, years.We are especially thankful, of course, to Joan Mullin and Al DeCiccio, not only for their inspired vision of the directions writing centers might be taking-two of our favorite issues in this regard being the "Where are We Going?Where Have We Been?" issue ( 2,0.2, , Spring/Summer 2000) and the international issue (22.2,Spring/Summer 2002)-but also for their advice and assistance during this transition period.If you've been receiving WQ J for awhile, one of the first things you'll see about our inaugural issue is a new look.In its 22 -year history, WCJ has undergone three different design changes.We wanted to introduce a fourth, updating the look of the journal to reflect its seriousness as an academic publication but also to increase its accessibility and attractiveness.

I use this term [contact zones] to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today. (Pratt 34) When Maiy Louise Pratt applied her thorny idea of the contact zone to literacy communities, she raised a complicated challenge for writing centers to move beyond the usual paradigm. Certainly writing center pedagogy is radical, envisioning ( la Bruffee) peers meeting to share writing in process, thus replacing hierarchy with collaborative learning.

The frustration level at a recent writing center staff meeting rose with the first mention of tutoring non-native -English-speaking (NNES) students.

Statement on Professional Concerns," by Jeanne H. Simpson, which outlined ideal conditions for writing enter directors and sought to "encourage a trend toward graduate programs that

The editors of this long-awaited volume have aimed "to open, to formalize, and to further" the writing center research dialogue in order "to encourage and guide other researchers," as well as to present the "new knowledge that has resulted from the studies it reports" (back cover). They have succeeded.

survey data Christopher Ervin provides in the September, 2002, edition of The Writing Lab Newsletter. Ervins survey reveals that of 194 writing center directors polled, only 46% reported having held their positions for more than five years, and, of the remaining 54%, roughly 12% had held their positions for less than one year. We've known all along that the writing center community is characterized by a large pool of transient student staff, but these data reveal that it is also characterized by an overwhelming percentage of relatively inexperienced, and perhaps transient, administrators as well.