The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration

Emotional labor is not adequately talked about or addressed by writing program administrators. The Things We Carry makes this often-invisible labor visible, demonstrates a variety of practical strategies to navigate it reflectively, and opens a path for further research. Particularly timely, this collection considers how writing program administrators work when their schools or regions experience crisis situations.
 
The book is broken into three sections: one emphasizing the WPA’s own work identity, one on fostering community in writing programs, and one on balancing the professional and personal. Chapters written by a diverse range of authors in different institutional and WPA contexts examine the roles of WPAs in traumatic events, such as mass shootings and natural disasters, as well as the emotional labor WPAs perform on a daily basis, such as working with students who have been sexually assaulted or endured racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise disenfranchising interactions on campus. The central thread in this collection focuses on “preserving” by acknowledging that emotions are neither good nor bad and that they must be continually reflected upon as WPAs consider what to do with emotional labor and how to respond. Ultimately, this book argues for more visibility of the emotional labor WPAs perform and for WPAs to care for themselves even as they care for others.
 
The Things We Carry extends conversations about WPA emotional labor and offers concrete and useful strategies for administrators working in both a large range of traumatic events as well as daily situations that require tactical work to preserve their sense of self and balance. It will be invaluable to writing program administrators specifically and of interest to other types of administrators as well as scholars in rhetoric and composition who are interested in emotion more broadly.
 

Courtney Adams Wooten is director of composition at George Mason University. She is a member of the Council of Writing Program Administrators Executive Board and book review editor for the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She is a coeditor of WPAs in Transition, and her work has been published in Composition Studies, Harlot, WPA, and Peitho as well as in several edited collections.

Jacob Babb is associate professor of English at Indiana University Southeast and a coeditor for the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. He is a coeditor of WPAs in Transition, has published articles in Harlot, WPA, and Composition Forum and chapters in several edited collections, and received the Distinguished Research and Creativity Award for Junior Faculty from IU Southeast in 2017.

Kristi Murray Costello is associate professor of English and associate chair of writing studies and general education at Old Dominion University and has served as a WPA of many different kinds of writing programs—bridge, basic writing, living learning communities, first-year composition, WAC/WID, writing centers, and writing studies. Her work has been published in Composition Forum, Creative Nonfiction, The Peer Review, Women in Higher Education, WPA, and several edited collections. She was named Arkansas College English Teacher of the Year 2016–2017.
 
Kate Navickas is director of the Cornell Writing Centers and teaches in the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell University. In addition to emotional labor, her research centers on feminist pedagogy and writing assignments. Her work has been published in Pedagogy, Composition Forum, and several edited collections.