Composition studies in general, and writing center studies in particular, have developed an increasingly fulsome conversation about archives. Excellent recent work on the theory and practice of creating archives establishes best practices and rationales. Building especially on Stacy Nall (2014), we introduce "flash archiving" as a term and practice for what we call "good-enough archiving," an entry-point approach to archiving for harried writing center administrators and staff. Flash archiving mirrors the knowledge-making that is the de facto outcome of writing center practice: attuned to ephemera in the midst of solving real-world writing dilemmas. The notion of flash archiving arises from our work as writing center administrators in Lebanon and Egypt and offers a less-than-perfect but nonetheless quite viable way of getting a snapshot of writing centers' relational work. Because community engagement is central to the meaning-making practices of writing centers, we trace out the logic for and practical uses of flash archiving as a way of capturing the relational "nonevents" that typify such engagement. The result is a form of knowledge-making and collective self-fashioning attuned to the constitutive vagaries of writing center work.

Our period of foreshortened attention spans corresponds to a glittering array of urgent demands on attention. Within each disciplinary community, scholarship of substance proliferates exponentially...

Book Review| June 01 2016 Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice. Edited by Brian Jackson and Gregory Clark. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014; pp. vi + 270. $59.95 hardcover; available as eBook via Project Muse. Ira Allen Ira Allen American University of Beirut Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (2): 329–333. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0329 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ira Allen; Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2016; 19 (2): 329–333. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0329 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.