Writing Centers Between Past and Future: Outstanding Scholarship Award Texts and Student Success
WRITING CENTERS BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS AND STUDENT SUCCESS A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University College of Education, Health, and Human Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Leah A. Schell-Barber May 2020 © Copyright, 2020 by Leah A. Schell-Barber All Rights Reserved ii A dissertation written by Leah A. Schell-Barber B.A., The University of Akron, 2003 B.A., The University of Akron, 2003 M.A., The University of Akron, 2006 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2020 Approved by __________________________________, Co-director, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Natasha Levinson __________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Tricia Niesz __________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Alicia Crowe Accepted by __________________________________, Director, School of Foundations, Leadership Kimberly Schimmel and Administration __________________________________, Dean, College of Education Health, and James C. Hannon Human Services iii SCHELL-BARBER, LEAH A., Ph.D., May 2020 Cultural Foundations WRITING CENTERS BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS AND STUDENT SUCCESS (204 pp.) Director of Dissertation: Natasha Levinson, Ph.D. This project uses Hannah Arendt’s concept of gaps to show how writing centers will perpetually be in a state of becoming. The term gap signifies a place in time where there is potential for revolution and transformation and is inadvertently opened revealing things that wouldn’t ordinarily be within view. Through Outstanding Scholarship Award- winning texts, I investigate how writing center identity and conceptions of student success have shifted over time and are currently within a gap between past and future. As writing centers began to professionalize as a legitimate field of study in the 1980s, their focus on student success shifted from supporting institutional expectations for student writers to questioning those expectations in relation to student capital.
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