Utah State University Press is proud to announce the publication of Precariously Centered: The Experiences of Contingent Women Writing Center Administrators, edited by Liliana M. Naydan, Maggie M. Herb, and Clint Gardner.
Precariously Centered
The Experiences of Contingent Women Writing Center Administrators
by Liliana M. Naydan, Maggie M. Herb, and Clint Gardner
“This powerful and compelling work takes up, from a unique perspective, issues that have long concerned writing center studies.”
—Lauren Fitzgerald, Yeshiva University
“Compelling, incisive, timely, ethically and exhaustively researched, Precariously Centered traces how feminized labor and its attendant precarity has shaped writing center work and what we can do now to create academic worker solidarity, advocate for better working conditions, and detach from productivity-centered workplace narratives.”
—Genie N. Giaimo, Hofstra University
“It’s hard to be detailed and analytically clearheaded about labor at the intersection of gender, contingency, and writing centers, while still offering grounds for solidarity-building and hope. Fortunately for all of us who care about higher ed labor in general and writing centers in particular, Naydan, Herb, and Gardner have done exactly that in Precariously Centered.”
—Seth Kahn, West Chester University
Precariously Centered confronts the troubling intersection of gender and contingency in administrative writing center work—an intersection that has haunted writing centers for decades. Featuring findings from a groundbreaking qualitative study of a diverse group of contingent women writing center administrators, Liliana M. Naydan, Maggie M. Herb, and Clint Gardner demonstrate that gender and its intersections have personal, professional, disciplinary, and pedagogical consequences in writing centers.
This report on interview-based qualitative research documents the experiences of sixteen writing center administrators—how their working lives are often complicated by the intersection of gender, contingency, and other identities. The authors address precarity, identity-based discrimination, extensive and invisible emotional labor, limited resources, lack of institutional support, and barriers to promotion. The words of these administrators come into conversation with scholarship on identity, feminist theory, and the current labor crisis in higher education and reveal challenges ranging from a dearth of resources to discrimination. Their words also reveal dire disciplinary and pedagogical consequences for our institutions and higher education.
Amid increasingly distressing labor conditions in the early twenty-first century, Precariously Centered addresses how writing center professionals—and all academics—can better address contingency, the corporatization of higher education, and the patriarchy. It emphasizes the value of discourse about working conditions, intersectional solidarity, and organizing for labor justice.
Paper: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-64642-873-1
Hardcover: $87.00
ISBN: 978-1-64642-872-4
Ebook*: $20.95
Pages: 178
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Laura Walker
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UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO | UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS
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I live and work on the territories of the Lower Tanana Dené Athabascan Peoples.