Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace

Queerly Centered explores writing center administration and queer identity, showcasing LGBTQA labor undertaken but not previously acknowledged or documented in the field’s research. Drawing from interviews with twenty queer writing center directors, Travis Webster examines the lived experiences of queer people leading writing centers, the promise and occasional peril of this work, and the disciplinary implications of such work for writing center administration, research, and praxis. Focused on directors’ queer histories, administrative activisms, and on-the-job tensions, this study connects and departs from oft-referenced lenses, such as emotional and invisible labor, for understanding work in higher education. The first book-length project that exclusively bridges writing centers and LGBTQA studies, Queerly Centered is for researchers, administrators, educators, and practitioners of all orientations and backgrounds in writing center and writing program administration, rhetoric and composition, and higher education administration.  

About the Author :
Travis Webster is assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Virginia Tech University. He was the University of Houston–Clear Lake Writing Center director from 2015 to 2018 and has worked in writing centers since 2002. His research also appears in College Composition and Communication, Writing Center Journal, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and The Peer Review.  

Review :
“An incredibly valuable contribution to the field. Queerly Centered illuminates ways in which all writing center professionals—regardless of their sexuality—might engage in educational missions at their institutions with an eye toward diversity, equity, and inclusion.” —Liliana Naydan, Penn State Abington   “A valuable contribution to the field vis-à-vis calling attention to capital, labor, activism, and taxing as it pertains to queer bodies and a great contribution for writing center consultants and administrators.” —Romeo Garcia, University of Utah "[Queerly Centered] marks a deliberate evolution of thought in the work of considering embodiment in writing center work; it serves as a meaningful intervention into reconsidering who we are as we write and how we might support one another in the work of writing." —College English