Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the Wpa Workplace

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 status 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

Cristyn L. Elder is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing and cofounder of the Stretch and Studio Composition program at the University of New Mexico, for which she was cowinner of the 2016 Award for Innovation from the Council on Basic Writing. She received the 2015–2016 award for Outstanding New Teacher of the Year and the 2015 Golden Louie Award for Outstanding Faculty Student Service Provider, both at the University of New Mexico.

Bethany Davila is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing and cofounder of the Stretch and Studio Composition program at the University of New Mexico, for which she was cowinner of the 2016 Award for Innovation from the Council on Basic Writing. She received the 2013–2014 award for Outstanding New Teacher of the Year at the University of New Mexico, the Best New Scholar Award in 2012 from Written Communication, and the Dimond Best Dissertation Award in 2011 from the University of Michigan School of Education.