Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace

"This isn't just a book for WPAs or composition teachers—this is a book for everyone who lives inside the discipline of Rhetoric and Writing studies. This collection opens an important conversation about the acts of aggression and everyday incivilities that too many of our us have experienced, witnessed, or fought against in our roles as administrators, teachers, colleagues. By naming these acts as what they are—bullying, racism, sexism, classism, etc.—instead of writing them off as part of the job or as the product of institutional politics, the editors of this collection are asking us all to hold a mirror to our actions, and to the actions of others. This book goes onto the ‘use every day’ shelf of my bookcase.”
—Malea Powell, Michigan State University

“This collection of essays contributes not only to writing program administration studies but also to an important conversation about bullying in academia as a whole. . . . Many readers will recognize their own experiences in these chapters.”
—Shirley K Rose, Arizona State University, from the foreword

Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace is the first volume to take up the issue of bullying in writing programs. Contributors to this collection share their personal stories and analyze varieties of collegial malevolence they have experienced as WPAs with consequences in emotional, mental, and physical health and in personal and institutional economies.
 
Contributors of varying statuses in different types of programs across many kinds of institutions describe various forms of bullying, including microaggressions, incivility, mobbing, and emotional abuse. They define bullying as institutional racism, “academic systemic incivility,” a crisis of insularity, and faculty fundamentalism. They locate bullying in institutional contexts, including research institutions, small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and writing programs and writing centers. These locations are used as points of departure to further theorize bullying and to provide clear advice about agentive responses.
 
A culture of silence discourages discussions of this behavior, making it difficult to address abuse. This silence also normalizes patterns and cultivates the perception that bullying arises naturally. Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace helps the field to name these patterns of behaviors as bullying and resist ideologies of normalcy, encouraging and empowering readers to take an active role in defining, locating, and addressing bullying in their own workplaces.
 
Contributors: Sarah Allen, Andrea Dardello, Harry Denny, Dawn Fels, Bre Garrett, W. Gary Griswold, Amy C. Heckathorn, Aurora Matzke, Staci Perryman-Clark, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Erec Smith