Noise From The Writing Center
Noise From The Writing Center
ELIZABETH H. BOQUET
Copyright Date: 2002
Published by: University Press of Colorado,
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt
Pages: 180
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nwjt
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Book Info
Noise From The Writing Center
Book Description:

In Noise from the Writing Center, Boquet develops a theory of "noise" and excess as an important element of difference between the pedagogy of writing centers and the academy in general. Addressing administrative issues, Boquet strains against the bean-counting anxiety that seems to drive so much of writing center administration. Pedagogically, she urges a more courageous practice, developed via metaphors of music and improvisation, and argues for "noise," excess, and performance as uniquely appropriate to the education of writers and tutors in the center. Personal, even irreverent in style, Boquet is also theoretically sophisticated, and she draws from an eclectic range of work in academic and popular culture-from Foucault to Attali to Jimi Hendrix. She includes, as well, the voices of writing center tutors with whom she conducted research, and she finds some of her most inspiring moments in the words and work of those tutors.

eISBN: 978-0-87421-467-3
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.1
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.2
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-xii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.3
  4. PROLOGUE
    PROLOGUE (pp. xiii-xvi)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.4

    Since the Writing Center is located in the main Faculty Office Building, I would expect you and your staff to act with appropriate courtesy. I think it is inappropriate and discourteous to make such a racket as I heard coming from the Writing Center this evening. Even after I politely asked if the door could be closed, I again was interrupted by loud noises periodically coming from the Writing Center. When I politely mentioned this to James McMahon, who was working there, he acted as if I was somehow in the wrong to ask for quiet. Further, at no time...

  5. INTRODUCTION: Making a Joyful Noise
    INTRODUCTION: Making a Joyful Noise (pp. 1-6)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.5

    I ran into PC in the hall several days after the rapid-fire memo exchange you just read in the Prologue. He seemed somewhat mollified by my response. He admitted that he had been in the office late on a Sunday evening because he was struggling to meet the deadline for his tenure and promotion application—enough to put anyone in a bad mood. I understood. Things are fine.

    But few moments in my professional life have nagged at me the way this moment nags at me. I consider it a profound irony that his memo, this piece of writing, which...

  6. 1 TUTORING AS (HARD) LABOR: The Writing Clinic, The Writing Laboratory, The Writing Center
    1 TUTORING AS (HARD) LABOR: The Writing Clinic, The Writing Laboratory, The Writing Center (pp. 7-34)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.6

    I now direct a writing center that I do not imagine to be characterized by the same sense of dislocation as the one in which I worked with Todd.¹ But I can’t be sure of that. In fact, I am less sure of it at this point in the semester, having just held the last class meeting of the year in my tutor-training course. The final few weeks of that course are usually marked—and this class was no exception—by a stream of students visiting my office, not to talk about end-of-term projects (as we might expect) but to...

  7. 2 CHANNELING JIMI HENDRIX, Or Ghosts in the Feedback Machine
    2 CHANNELING JIMI HENDRIX, Or Ghosts in the Feedback Machine (pp. 35-82)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.7

    On June 28, 2000, the Arts and Entertainment section of The New York Times covered the opening of Seattle’s Experience Music Project (Hendrix fans will recognize the reference in the project’s title), focusing particularly on the museum’s showpiece, a work entitled If 6 Was 9 (also known as Roots and Branches), “a giant sound sculpture made up of 600 guitars strung along the branches of a metal tree rising more than 30 feet into the air,” and on the sculptor of the piece, Trimpin (like Cher and Madonna—one name only, please). The article chronicles Trimpin’s “more-than-20-year obsession with turning...

  8. 3 TOWARD A PERFORMATIVE PEDAGOGY IN THE WRITING CENTER
    3 TOWARD A PERFORMATIVE PEDAGOGY IN THE WRITING CENTER (pp. 83-136)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.8

    My friend Geoff arrived for a visit on a Sunday afternoon and went straight for my guitar. “I heard this song on the radio on the way down here, and I want to play it for you,” he said. “I think you’ll like it.” He smiled gently as he plucked the strings along the neck, shy as always about inviting a demonstration of his musical talent, and then he rendered the song perfectly without exactly reproducing it. I was so jealous I could hardly breathe.

    I am a literate musician. I never played a note until I had learned to...

  9. 4 CONCLUSION: Thanks for Listening, Folks
    4 CONCLUSION: Thanks for Listening, Folks (pp. 137-150)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.9

    Our honeymoon trip, a fall foliage trek through Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, included a stop at Mass MoCA, the newly-constructed Museum of Contemporary Arts in Massachusetts. The building was spectacular; the work was uneven; and I spent most of our afternoon there sitting on the stairs watching one performative piece: Tim Hawkinson’s Uberorgan, “a giant, self-playing reed organ” commissioned by Mass MoCA to fill its largest gallery, some twentyeight feet from ceiling to floor and 300 feet long. I thought about Trimpin’s work as I sat there watching this piece work (or is it play?):

    [T]he gallery and its contents...

  10. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 151-154)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.10
  11. REFERENCES
    REFERENCES (pp. 155-160)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.11
  12. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 161-162)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.12
  13. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR (pp. 163-163)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt.13