Our Charge to Keep: Writing Center and Writing Program Administration at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The first book to explore writing center (WC) and writing program (WP) administration in HBCUs, Our Charge to Keep nuances ideas of ethical tutoring, explores Black college students’ beliefs about using Black Language in academic writing, provides new theories about tutoring, and gives insights into infrastructure and challenges facing WC and WP administrators in HBCU settings.

Many writing center directors have taken up the challenge to interrogate the impact of systemic racism on writing center theory, research, pedagogy, praxes, and daily operations, but the focus has largely been on predominantly white institutions (PWIs). As a result, writing center theory and research has unintentionally excluded the practices of everyday HBCU writing centers—their pedagogies, praxes, theories, and research. This edited volume rectifies this marginality by centering the epistemologies, practices, and wisdom of HBCU writing administrators, theorists, and practitioners. Chapters examine antiracist pedagogy, first-year writing challenges, the role of the larger HBCU community, and more.

Our Charge to Keep is a collection of writings that ultimately demystifies the administration of HBCU writing centers and inspires critical curiosity about them. Dr. Wonderful and Kendra Mitchell frame and showcase the resilience of HBCU writing center directors in combating the residual impact of systemic oppression and point the way forward for PWIs to shift toward new HBCU-centered perspectives on how to institute true antiracist policies and initiatives.