Return to the video essay: Writing Center Ecologies: Drawing Insights from Environmental Systems
Descriptive Transcript
00:00 – [A dense cluster of green ferns with long, narrow fronds, growing outdoors. Sound of birds chirping, windchimes, and trees rustling in the background]
00:02 – [Text on screen: “Writing Center Ecologies: Drawing Insights from Environmental Systems. By Jeanetta Mohlke-Hill, Claire Oldham Griffith, and Rofiat Bello”]
| Audio Content | Video Content |
| 00:05 – JEANETTA: “In the spring of 2023, the three of us, Rofiat, Claire and I – three PhD students at Michigan State University – got together to talk about ecology and writing. Each of us approached this subject from different positionalities, disciplines, and experiences within environmental systems.” | Footage of ferns transitions to three people working on laptops at a table in a colorful writing center. The ceiling is decorated with painted ceiling tiles. |
| 00:26 – JEANETTA: “After taking a position at our Writing Center as the Professional Development Coordinator, I invited Claire and Rofiat to craft a curriculum about our writing center ecology.”
00:36 – CLAIRE: “Drawing on insights from ecocomposition, critical ecology, and environmental justice, we took inspiration from environmental systems and cross-disciplinary knowledge about ecology to enhance our writing center practices, actions, and policies.” |
Pans from the ceiling of the writing center with various colorful tiles and a hanging disco ball to the colorful consulting space with tables and chairs |
| 00:56 – CLAIRE: “For this Professional Development series, we defined ecology as a metaphor illustrating the interdependence of living and nonliving actors within writing center spaces, as well as a tool for understanding the way power circulates within these spaces.” | Text on screen: “Metaphor” and “Tool” over mossy background |
| 01:05 – ROFIAT: “This video essay narrates how we came to make sense of this series– how each of our individual stories and relationships led us to the creation of the professional development curriculum. To facilitate curriculum development, we worked together to outline some principles of ecology that we saw highlighted in the literature and our lived experiences: scale, relationality, sustainability, care & well-being, belonging, and justice. We wanted to reveal the dynamic ways in which social and political factors shape the environment, a phenomenon extending to educational spaces like our writing center and the words on the page.” | Clips of mountains, close ups of plants in the winter, and the sun shining through trees with text on the screen appearing on screen as the words are spoken: “scale, relationality, sustainability, care & well-being, belonging, justice.” Followed by a close up clip of the items at the center of each table in the writing center. |
01:55 – [A ceiling tile painted with a map of green islands on a blue background. There are also two red flowers painted at the bottom of the tile. Text on screen: “SCALE”]
| 01:55 – CLAIRE: “ Ecology is an issue of scale. Taking cues from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, we argue that the small things (our daily practices, interactions, and movements) have larger material consequences on our lives and societal structures (issues of power, politics, and relationships). We see this in nature with fractals–ferns, broccoli, snowflakes–all are self-similar across different scales and form never-ending patterns. To quote brown, ‘The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.’” | Zooming in on new growth on a plant that otherwise looks dead, footage of snow falling.
Quote on screen as it is spoken: ‘The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.’ – adrienne maree brown (2017) p. 52 |
| 02:45 – CLAIRE: “I remember my mom telling me a story from when she was in college as an art major, flying home for the summer and seeing… art–patterns in the landscape, a perspective zoomed out on the largest scale, and how similar this phenomenon is to looking at things at the smallest scale, like under a microscope. The shapes of a huge plateau looked like the shapes of a cut off tree stump. The swirls of a huge storm looked like the swirls of a tiny snail. The big things are like the small things. My mother, now a full-time artist, specializes in painting maps of people’s hometowns–how the landscape zoomed out forms art–shapes, lines, colors. I’ve always been so inspired by her artwork, and how it has influenced my own research–the way maps and issues of place are imbued with cultural values and stories repeated at scale. How can this idea shape how we make sense of the world around us?–the patterns of the universe, as brown states. How do we consider how our smallest actions have reverberative effects on the larger systems we are a part of?” |
Clips from out the window of a plane, a close up of a tree stump that zooms out, a woman painting a map, driving across a bridge, a path in the woods. |
| 03:53 – CLAIRE: “The scale of our writing center ecology spans from the local to the global, from the daily consultations and relationships between clients, consultants, and administrators in the center to the worldwide network of and collaboration between writing centers in countries like South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Canada, and Germany. Therefore, when considering scale, we ask ourselves: How do our consultation practices and experiences reflect our values as a writing center on a larger scale? What are our values and how do those values manifest at the small to reflect our larger global initiatives and projects? What patterns do we see emerge? Scale, then, requires us to critically reflect on our values and how these values can be more responsibly enacted in a writing center ecosystem.” | A board outside the writing center titled, “our homes and communities” with a map of the world that shows where people are from. |
04:43 – [A ceiling tile painted with tall evergreen trees against a green and yellow gradient background. Blackbirds are flying in the sky above the trees. Text on screen: “Relationality”]
| 04:44 – JEANETTA: “Ecology is the study of relationships— how living and nonliving things interact in a system. Ecologist, Suzanne Pierre in the Ologies podcast, defines critical ecology as the study of the way human behavior, decision-making, and power dynamics shape these relationships to see what patterns emerge to create a more sustainable, equitable, and transformative world. Relationships, according to Shawn Wilson in Research is Ceremony, ‘do not merely shape reality, they are reality.’ Our environmental reality is not a universal or neutral object– it is both a product of our relationships with nature and cultural values. While the environment exists on its own, it takes meaning when we engage with and name it.” |
Clips of two women’s feet walking over fall leaves, two shadows across the ground, a woman holding flowers
Quote on screen as it is spoken: “Relationships ‘do not merely shape reality, they are reality.’ – Shawn Wilson (2008) p. 7” |
| 05:33 – JEANETTA: “I can vividly remember in my graduate seminar, Gender, Justice and the Environment, when I was first introduced to queer ecologies, which is a frame for examining the way humans impose their hetero- and cis-normative conceptions onto environmental systems. This results in assigning some elements as ‘natural’ while labeling others as ‘unnatural’, ‘unnatural’ being the elements that exist outside of dominant cultural norms. One student from the forestry graduate program highlighted the queerness of trees, specifically the way trees subvert dominant norms by exhibiting non-binary sexual reproduction and fluid gender expression. Ever since this class, I realized I had to reorient my relationship with the environment by reimagining nature outside of binary classifications, especially as a queer woman studying the relationship between environmental systems and discourse.” | Clips of a bird flying in the sky, a baby cow drinking milk from its mother, a caterpillar moving across a log, a close up of buds on an apple tree in the winter, the sun shining through leaves on a tree, a woman walking through the woods. |
| 06:31 – JEANETTA: “At their core, both writing and writing centers are about relationships: relationships between writers, readers, minds, bodies, surrounding environments, texts, discourse, and languages. These relationships are ecological, not binary, because they are interconnected, fluid, and ever evolving–and, importantly, exist within matrices of power. At the small scale, we can consider the way we engage with our clients and their writing, specifically the complexity that arises when we face issues with standardization of writing. Standardization compels writers to assimilate texts into dominant writing paradigms which reduce and erase the multiplicity of identities, experiences, and emotions. At the big scale, this reduction and erasure propel violence and punishment for marginalized bodies. Thus, it is important to consider our relationships with writing–the way writing is a reflection of our values and identity and requires careful navigation in our writing center policies and consultation practices.” | A close up view of a door in the writing center with magnetic word tiles–pans over various poetry and sentences made by people in the writing center. |
07:38 – [A ceiling tile with poptarts holding hands, one painted in purple and the other in brown. Above them is a small red heart. Text on screen: “Care & Wellbeing”]
| 07:39 – ROFIAT: “Ecology is about care and well-being—how to foster a healthy ecosystem by attending to the diversity of minds, bodies, and things that occupy a space so they can thrive and grow. This requires us to facilitate an accessible environment for different types of mental, physical, emotional, social, and cultural needs, and offer multiple points of access. We root our definitions of care and well-being in environmental disability activism which rejects the dominant cultural image that disabled people have no place in nature. Instead, disability scholars and activists argue that we have already built environmental systems that exclude people with different mobility needs when it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s based on ableist and limited imaginations of what is possible.” |
Clips of a county trail sign, the entrance to the Neighborhood student success collaborative office at MSU, trails through the woods, pictures of stairs, sidewalks, and a deck on a pond. |
| 08:32 – ROFIAT: “In my experience as the locations coordinator at the writing center, I came to appreciate how care is not just about oneself but communal. The writing center at MSU has different locations across campus to make it easier for students to access the services and I was in charge of coordinating the day-to-day activities of several locations. I remembered my feeling of inadequacy when I noticed one of the desk workers constantly leaving the location before the expected clock-out time without saying a word. Once I had a conversation with them, they told me that they had to leave earlier because their dining hall closed before their shift ended and they would miss dinner if they had to wait for the clock-out time. This experience was a critical reflection for me because I realized that I had been more concerned with how the situation was affecting me or reflecting poorly on me as the coordinator, instead of thinking about the needs of the desk worker and overall communal care. The desk worker and I came up with a solution where I was able to close the space for them and they were able to leave in time to eat and take care of themselves.” | Screen recording of logging into the writing center website, followed by clips of different locations of the writing center on campus and food in a dining hall. Clips of a woman cooking plantains in a kitchen. |
| 09:45 – ROFIAT: “We acknowledge the limitations of institutional systems and policies that prevent us from fully embracing what Leah Lakshmi Peipzna-Samarasinha in Care Work: Dreaming of Disability Justice calls ‘collective care’. She writes, ‘It’s not about self-care—it’s about collective care. Collective care means shifting our organizations to be ones where people feel fine if they get sick, cry, have needs, start late because the bus broke down, move slower, ones where there’s food at meetings, people work from home—and these aren’t things we apologize for.’ Since writing centers are about relationships, we must attune to the ethical implications around care and well-being— we want to encourage clients, consultants, and administrators to imagine the possibilities of creating a community of care where all actors in our ecosystem can thrive and grow.” | Footage of riding up an elevator to the floor of the main writing center.
Quote on screen as it is spoken: “‘It’s not about self-care—it’s about collective care. Collective care means shifting our organizations to be ones where people feel fine if they get sick, cry, have needs, start late because the bus broke down, move slower, ones where there’s food at meetings, people work from home—and these aren’t things we apologize for.’ -Leah Lakshmi Peipzna-Samarasinha (2018) p. 108” |
F10:49 – [A ceiling tile decorated with a circular floral design, featuring various colorful flowers and plants. In the center of the design, there are words in English and surrounding the design are words written in Arabic. Text on screen: “Belonging”]
| 10:50 – JEANETTA: “Ecology is a network of belonging— it’s a frame to understand where and how living actors exist and move in different spaces. Specifically, how they are placed and displaced by different social and political factors. We see this in nature with the history of plants— how certain plants are regarded as belonging due to their aesthetic appeal or desired properties, while others are regarded as not belonging in particular spaces and, thus, labeled as weeds. Weeds like milkweed, chickweed, clover, dandelion, stinging nettles, and thistle don’t necessarily cause harm or are invasive— some even are nutritious and have healing properties; however, they have been cast as not belonging due to our complex history of colonization, capitalism, and patriarchy.” | Various nature clips of butterflies and bees on flowers, a close up of stinging nettle. |
| 11:41 – JEANETTA: “I first learned this history of plants from my mom, while foraging for plants with her in the backyard. At the time, I was experiencing early symptoms of chronic illness that are linked to sensitivities and intolerances to specific foods, and we were collecting different herbs and medicinal weeds to promote my health and wellbeing. My mom, a clinical dietician and public health professional, also wanted me to understand how the history of agriculture and the dissemination of food are products of larger social issues and politics— specifically who has access to affordable and nutritious foods based on their geographic location and various intersecting factors of marginalization. Thus, food, plants, and green spaces are not politically neutral and, in fact, directly relate to the interdependence of place,c ulture, and power, determining who and what belongs and where they are placed and displaced.” | Clips of a woman cutting branches of motherwort and placing it in jars, and thinning buds on an apple tree. |
| 12:36 – JEANETTA “We acknowledge that both writing and writing centers are also not politically neutral sites, and the perception of neutrality can perpetuate and sustain oppressive systems of power. To dismantle neutrality, we must explicitly recognize and communicate dynamic ways power and oppression circulate in writing and higher education at large in order to transform our writing ecologies to be more just and equitable. Thus, belonging as a principle does not naively assume all people are inherently welcome, at home, or safe in all places at all times in the ecosystem of the writing center, nor assert that representation is enough to make these issues go away. But rather, belonging is a critical reflection on the relationship between place, culture, and power— a self-reflexive practice that recognizes power imbalances, fosters accountability, and reorients space for a plurality of experiences, perspectives, and people.” | Clips of the various plants in the writing center space. |
13:37 – [A ceiling tile painted with a colorful fish in shades of green, blue, yellow, and red. Text on screen: “Sustainability”]
| 13:38 – CLAIRE: “Ecology is a call for sustainability— creating worlds in which knowledges, values, and relationships are generative sites for sustaining a healthy ecosystem. Sustainability is a critical reflection on time, life cycles, and futurity so that our actions and practices are intentional in considering the effects they have on our relationships with each other and the world. We can see this with something as simple as the water cycle. The water cycle already exists but human behavior determines how the water cycle functions. It determines the Earth’s climate, but if pollutants get in the water cycle, it has a domino effect– it can destroy biodiversity, contaminate the food chain, make water undrinkable, and spread disease. So, we ask, how do we mindfully engage with the environment to make intentional choices that promote the well-being of people and other living things over time?” | Footage of feet walking through puddles on a rainy sidewalk and clips of Niagara Falls. |
| 14:30 – CLAIRE “When I moved to Michigan in the summer of 2020 from the dry heat of West Texas, I was obsessed with the idea of visiting all of the Great Lakes. It took me a year or two but I eventually made it into Canada to visit Lake Ontario and with that, I had officially been to all five. I was fascinated by how each lake had a story – a history, a connection with the environments, cities, and people that surrounded it. The lakes affect the weather, the geographical landscape, the agricultural industries, the locations of cities, tourism, and these things in turn affect the lakes – pollution levels, overfishing, the effects of climate change, etc. These issues are ongoing, and began decades, even centuries ago with the colonization of indigenous lands, and at every instance where local and larger governmental policies failed to consider the long-term repercussions of each decision that would affect the lakes, directly or indirectly.” | Footage and pictures from all five Great Lakes. |
| 15:29 – CLAIRE: “Our writing center is an ecosystem connected to the larger institutional context of Michigan State University, a land-grant institution, with its complex and unique histories and ecological composition. Failed and harmful policies, histories of colonization and seizure of indigenous lands, and the relationship between capitalism and environmental issues are not separate from the daily work we do in writing centers. The question becomes an issue of what values and histories we are sustaining as we consider our writing center’s ever-evolving policies and practices at the small scale, especially considering that staff are constantly cycling in and out due to high turnover in higher educational spaces. Which begs large scale questions like: How do we consider the futurity of these spaces as situated within complex ecosystems and histories in a way that centers care and justice over time? Or, as bell hooks asks in Belonging: A Culture of Place, ‘Can we embrace an ethos of sustainability that is not solely about the appropriate care of the world’s resources, but is also about the creation of meaning — the making of lives that we feel are worth living?’” | Clips of the river on MSU’s campus with the MSU stadium in the background, a woman pouring water into a class, clips of various clocks in the writing center, followed by another shot of the river.
Quote on screen as it is spoken: “‘Can we embrace an ethos of sustainability that is not solely about the appropriate care of the world’s resources, but is also about the creation of meaning — the making of lives that we feel are worth living?’ -bell hooks (2009) p. 1” |
16:39 – [A ceiling tile painted with a figure of a person with dark curly hair, a brown face, and a green shirt. The person is raising a red fist. The background is yellow. Text on screen: “Justice”]
| 16:40 – ROFIAT: “Ecology is justice-oriented— it necessitates action on issues of scale, relationality, care and well-being, belonging, and sustainability, and recognizes their interconnections and interdependence. Thus, ecology is not simply a metaphor, but also acknowledges the real material consequences of human decision-making on the surrounding environments that can result in ecological well-being or inflict further harm. Environmental issues are social justice issues, and vice versa— the destruction of the environment both causes and is produced by discrimination, violence, and social inequities.” | Clips of a poster in the writing center of a language diversity speaker series, books on a shelf, a construction zone on campus with a sign that says “do not enter.” |
| 17:29 – ROFIAT: “For example, Robert Verchick, in ‘Feminist Theory and Environmental Justice’ explains that ‘the critical lens of environmental justice focuses […] on all the intersections of bias (including racism, classism, and ageism) that surround and permeate environmental issues.’ In our local ecology here in Michigan, the Flint Water Crisis exemplifies this in the way that it was a product of environmental racism. Race and poverty were a factor in how the Flint Water Crisis was handled (or, not handled) and responded to. It was ultimately a systemic issue– a result of neglect and indifference by people in power who make decisions about public health and safety.” | Quote on screen as it is spoken: “‘the critical lens of environmental justice focuses […] on all the intersections of bias (including racism, classism, and ageism) that surround and permeate environmental issues.’ -Robert Verchick (2004) p. 65”
Clips of a woman using a water filter, pouring water in a glass, and a shot of several plastic water bottles in a row. |
| 18:25 – ROFIAT “When I transferred to MSU in 2022 as an international student and mother, I came in with a cultural background that prioritizes communal participation which shapes the ways I experience the world. Little actions of neglect and indifference, such as complex bureaucratic systems for international students and policy issues in family housing, create bigger systemic barriers that unjustly exclude people like myself from fully participating in the community. For example, I was shocked to receive an email during the cold winter in Michigan that the community room where kids gather to play is closed for renovation during the busiest time of the semester. This decision was made without warning or regard for how this action affects student-parents without family support who rely on this space for their kids to enjoy a form of community. I, for one, who depended on this space, had to delay working into the night after my kids had finally gone to bed, just to be able to turn in assignments. Little actions like these have larger material consequences that affect real people’s lives and wellbeing.” | Pictures of a woman with the MSU mascot and in fall leaves, clips of a globe sculpture in the international center on MSU campus, the entrance the university village community center, a screenshot of the lounge closure notice, followed by footage of an empty playground in the winter and a woman working on a laptop indoors with various children’s items around her. |
| 19:48 – CLAIRE: “Earth’s continued existence is dependent on diversity, connection, and health, and writing centers can directly impact the well-being of the environment and social justice issues by attending to these elements. Writing centers, then, can learn from ecology and environmental justice to make our work more ecological and by enacting our ecological principles through everyday actions and practices.” | Clips of bee hives and a woman scraping honey off a honeycomb into a bucket. |
| 20:14 – JEANETTA: “For example, our writing center began a tradition of painting ceiling tiles to represent the diverse population and lived experiences of communities within the writing center space and beyond. Although these ceiling tiles do not solve larger systemic problems in and of themselves, they are just one little action that allow staff and clients from campus and the community to feel seen, represented, and remembered in academic spaces that typically lack inclusivity.” | Footage and pictures of colorful ceiling tiles in the writing center (examples: a turtle, the character ‘Tina’ from the show Bob’s Burgers, a rainbow with the text “You’re all Write”) |
| 20:46 – ROFIAT: “Scale, relationality, care and wellbeing, belonging, sustainability, and justice— principles that prompt critical reflection on and nurture awareness of the intricate relationships between writing center staff, clients, and the larger community. Adopting an ecological approach to writing center work affords us the opportunity to highlight systemic issues that arise within our writing center ecosystem— allowing us to work towards a sustainable and healthy writing center ecology that prioritizes the alignment of our daily actions and practices with our core values, from the small scale to the large scale.” | Back to the footage from the beginning of three people working on laptops at a table in a colorful writing center with text on the screen appearing on screen as the words are spoken: “scale, relationality, sustainability, care & well-being, belonging, justice.” A clip of a “people map” on the wall in the writing center that shows connections between people in the writing center.
The video ends with a clip of a decorated window in MSU’s main library. The window was decorated with various messages of hope after the school shooting in February 2023. |
21:33 – [Text on screen:
brown, a.m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press.
hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A culture of place. Routledge.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L.L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming of disability justice. Arsensal Pulp Press.
Verchick, R. (2004). Feminist Theory and Environmental Justice. In R. Stein (Ed.), New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (pp. 63-77). Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813542539-006
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.”]
Written Transcript
Jeanetta: In the spring of 2023, the three of us, Rofiat, Claire and I – three PhD students at Michigan State University – got together to talk about ecology and writing. Each of us approached this subject from different positionalities, disciplines, and experiences within environmental systems. After taking a position at our Writing Center as the Professional Development Coordinator, I invited Claire and Rofiat to craft a curriculum about our writing center ecology.
Claire: Drawing on insights from ecocomposition, critical ecology, and environmental justice, we took inspiration from environmental systems and cross-disciplinary knowledge about ecology to enhance our writing center practices, actions, and policies. For this Professional Development series, we defined ecology as a metaphor illustrating the interdependence of living and nonliving actors within writing center spaces, as well as a tool for understanding the way power circulates within these spaces.
Rofiat: This video essay narrates how we came to make sense of this series– how each of our individual stories and relationships led us to the creation of the professional development curriculum. To facilitate curriculum development, we worked together to outline some principles of ecology that we saw highlighted in the literature and our lived experiences: scale, relationality, sustainability, care & well-being, belonging, and justice. We wanted to reveal the dynamic ways in which social and political factors shape the environment, a phenomenon extending to educational spaces like our writing center and the words on the page.
Scale
Claire: Ecology is an issue of scale. Taking cues from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, we argue that the small things (our daily practices, interactions, and movements) have larger material consequences on our lives and societal structures (issues of power, politics, and relationships). We see this in nature with fractals – ferns, broccoli, snowflakes– all are self-similar across different scales and form never-ending patterns. To quote brown, [quote] “The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.” (p. 52) [end quote]
I remember my mom telling me a story from when she was in college as an art major, flying home for the summer and seeing… art – patterns in the landscape, a perspective zoomed out on the largest scale, and how similar this phenomenon is to looking at things at the smallest scale, like under a microscope. The shapes of a huge plateau looked like the shapes of a cut off tree stump. The swirls of a huge storm looked like the swirls of a tiny snail. The big things are like the small things. My mother, now a full-time artist, specializes in painting maps of people’s hometowns – how the landscape zoomed out forms art – shapes, lines, colors. I’ve always been so inspired by her artwork, and how it has influenced my own research – the way maps and issues of place are imbued with cultural values and stories repeated at scale. How can this idea shape how we make sense of the world around us? — the patterns of the universe, as brown states. How do we consider how our smallest actions have reverberative effects on the larger systems we are a part of?
The scale of our writing center ecology spans from the local to the global, from the daily consultations and relationships between clients, consultants, and administrators in the center to the worldwide network of and collaboration between writing centers in countries like South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Canada, and Germany. Therefore, when considering scale, we ask ourselves: How do our consultation practices and experiences reflect our values as a writing center on a larger scale? What are our values and how do those values manifest at the small to reflect our larger global initiatives and projects? What patterns do we see emerge? Scale, then, requires us to critically reflect on our values and how these values can be more responsibly enacted in a writing center ecosystem.
Relationality
Jeanetta: Ecology is the study of relationships— how living and nonliving things interact in a system. Ecologist, Suzanne Pierre in the Ologies podcast, defines critical ecology as the study of the way human behavior, decision-making, and power dynamics shape these relationships to see what patterns emerge to create a more sustainable, equitable, and transformative world. Relationships, according to Shawn Wilson in Research is Ceremony, [quote] “do not merely shape reality, they are reality” [end quote] (7). Our environmental reality is not a universal or neutral object– it is both a product of our relationships with nature and cultural values. While the environment exists on its own, it takes meaning when we engage with and name it.
I can vividly remember in my graduate seminar, Gender, Justice and the Environment, when I was first introduced to queer ecologies, which is a frame for examining the way humans impose their hetero- and cis-normative conceptions onto environmental systems. This results in assigning some elements as ‘natural’ while labeling others as ‘unnatural’, ‘unnatural’ being the elements that exist outside of dominant cultural norms. One student from the forestry graduate program highlighted the queerness of trees, specifically the way trees subvert dominant norms by exhibiting non-binary sexual reproduction and fluid gender expression. Ever since this class, I realized I had to reorient my relationship with the environment by reimagining nature outside of binary classifications, especially as a queer woman studying the relationship between environmental systems and discourse.
At their core, both writing and writing centers are about relationships: relationships between writers, readers, minds, bodies, surrounding environments, texts, discourse, and languages. These relationships are ecological, not binary, because they are interconnected, fluid, and ever evolving — and, importantly, exist within matrices of power. At the small scale, we can consider the way we engage with our clients and their writing, specifically the complexity that arises when we face issues with standardization of writing. Standardization compels writers to assimilate texts into dominant writing paradigms which reduce and erase the multiplicity of identities, experiences, and emotions. At the big scale, this reduction and erasure propel violence and punishment for marginalized bodies. Thus, it is important to consider our relationships with writing– the way writing is a reflection of our values and identity and requires careful navigation in our writing center policies and consultation practices.
Care and Well-being
Rofiat: Ecology is about care and well-being— how to foster a healthy ecosystem by attending to the diversity of minds, bodies, and things that occupy a space so they can thrive and grow. This requires us to facilitate an accessible environment for different types of mental, physical, emotional, social, and cultural needs, and offer multiple points of access. We root our definitions of care and well-being in environmental disability activism which rejects the dominant cultural image that disabled people have no place in nature. Instead, disability scholars and activists argue that we have already built environmental systems that exclude people with different mobility needs when it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s based on ableist and limited imaginations of what is possible.
In my experience as the locations coordinator at the writing center, I came to appreciate how care is not just about oneself but communal. The writing center at MSU has different locations across campus to make it easier for students to access the services and I was in charge of coordinating the day-to-day activities of several locations. I remembered my feeling of inadequacy when I noticed one of the desk workers constantly leaving the location before the expected clock-out time without saying a word. Once I had a conversation with them, they told me that they had to leave earlier because their dining hall closed before their shift ended and they would miss dinner if they had to wait for the clock-out time. This experience was a critical reflection for me because I realized that I had been more concerned with how the situation was affecting me or reflecting poorly on me as the coordinator, instead of thinking about the needs of the desk worker and overall communal care. The desk worker and I came up with a solution where I was able to close the space for them and they were able to leave in time to eat and take care of themselves.
We acknowledge the limitations of institutional systems and policies that prevent us from fully embracing what Leah Lakshmi Peipzna-Samarasinha in Care Work: Dreaming of Disability Justice calls ‘collective care’. She writes, [quote] “It’s not about self-care—it’s about collective care. Collective care means shifting our organizations to be ones where people feel fine if they get sick, cry, have needs, start late because the bus broke down, move slower, ones where there’s food at meetings, people work from home—and these aren’t things we apologize for” [end quote] (p. 108). Since writing centers are about relationships, we must attune to the ethical implications around care and well-being— we want to encourage clients, consultants, and administrators to imagine the possibilities of creating a community of care where all actors in our ecosystem can thrive and grow.
Belonging
Jeanetta: Ecology is a network of belonging— it’s a frame to understand where and how living actors exist and move in different spaces. Specifically, how they are placed and displaced by different social and political factors. We see this in nature with the history of plants— how certain plants are regarded as belonging due to their aesthetic appeal or desired properties, while others are regarded as not belonging in particular spaces and, thus, labeled as weeds. Weeds like milkweed, chickweed, clover, dandelion, stinging nettles, and thistle don’t necessarily cause harm or are invasive— some even are nutritious and have healing properties; however, they have been cast as not belonging due to our complex history of colonization, capitalism, and patriarchy.
I first learned this history of plants from my mom, while foraging for plants with her in the backyard. At the time, I was experiencing early symptoms of chronic illness that are linked to sensitivities and intolerances to specific foods, and we were collecting different herbs and medicinal weeds to promote my health and wellbeing. My mom, a clinical dietician and public health professional, also wanted me to understand how the history of agriculture and the dissemination of food are products of larger social issues and politics— specifically who has access to affordable and nutritious foods based on their geographic location and various intersecting factors of marginalization. Thus, food, plants, and green spaces are not politically neutral and, in fact, directly relate to the interdependence of place, culture, and power, determining who and what belongs and where they are placed and displaced.
We acknowledge that both writing and writing centers are also not politically neutral sites, and the perception of neutrality can perpetuate and sustain oppressive systems of power. To dismantle neutrality, we must explicitly recognize and communicate dynamic ways power and oppression circulate in writing and higher education at large in order to transform our writing ecologies to be more just and equitable. Thus, belonging as a principle does not naively assume all people are inherently welcome, at home, or safe in all places at all times in the ecosystem of the writing center, nor assert that representation is enough to make these issues go away. But rather, belonging is a critical reflection on the relationship between place, culture, and power— a self-reflexive practice that recognizes power imbalances, fosters accountability, and reorients space for a plurality of experiences, perspectives, and people.
Sustainability
Claire: Ecology is a call for sustainability— creating worlds in which knowledges, values, and relationships are generative sites for sustaining a healthy ecosystem. Sustainability is a critical reflection on time, life cycles, and futurity so that our actions and practices are intentional in considering the effects they have on our relationships with each other and the world. We can see this with something as simple as the water cycle. The water cycle already exists but human behavior determines how the water cycle functions. It determines the Earth’s climate, but if pollutants get in the water cycle, it has a domino effect– it can destroy biodiversity, contaminate the food chain, make water undrinkable, and spread disease. So, we ask, how do we mindfully engage with the environment to make intentional choices that promote the well-being of people and other living things over time?
When I moved to Michigan in the summer of 2020 from the dry heat of West Texas, I was obsessed with the idea of visiting all of the Great Lakes. It took me a year or two but I eventually made it into Canada to visit Lake Ontario and with that, I had officially been to all five. I was fascinated by how each lake had a story – a history, a connection with the environments, cities, and people that surrounded it. The lakes affect the weather, the geographical landscape, the agricultural industries, the locations of cities, tourism, and these things in turn affect the lakes – pollution levels, overfishing, the effects of climate change, etc. These issues are ongoing, and began decades, even centuries ago with the colonization of indigenous lands, and at every instance where local and larger governmental policies failed to consider the long-term repercussions of each decision that would affect the lakes, directly or indirectly.
Our writing center is an ecosystem connected to the larger institutional context of Michigan State University, a land-grant institution, with its complex and unique histories and ecological composition. Failed and harmful policies, histories of colonization and seizure of indigenous lands, and the relationship between capitalism and environmental issues are not separate from the daily work we do in writing centers. The question becomes an issue of what values and histories we are sustaining as we consider our writing center’s ever-evolving policies and practices at the small scale, especially considering that staff are constantly cycling in and out due to high turnover in higher educational spaces. Which begs large scale questions like: How do we consider the futurity of these spaces as situated within complex ecosystems and histories in a way that centers care and justice over time? Or, as bell hooks asks in Belonging: A Culture of Place, [quote] “Can we embrace an ethos of sustainability that is not solely about the appropriate care of the world’s resources, but is also about the creation of meaning — the making of lives that we feel are worth living?” (p. 1) [end quote]
Justice
Rofiat: Ecology is justice-oriented— it necessitates action on issues of scale, relationality, care and well-being, belonging, and sustainability, and recognizes their interconnections and interdependence. Thus, ecology is not simply a metaphor, but also acknowledges the real material consequences of human decision-making on the surrounding environments that can result in ecological well-being or inflict further harm. Environmental issues are social justice issues, and vice versa— the destruction of the environment both causes and is produced by discrimination, violence, and social inequities.
For example, Robert Verchick, in “Feminist Theory and Environmental Justice” explains that [quote] “the critical lens of environmental justice focuses […] on all the intersections of bias (including racism, classism, and ageism) that surround and permeate environmental issues” (65). [end quote] In our local ecology here in Michigan, the Flint Water Crisis exemplifies this in the way that it was a product of environmental racism. Race and poverty were a factor in how the Flint Water Crisis was handled (or, not handled) and responded to. It was ultimately a systemic issue– a result of neglect and indifference by people in power who make decisions about public health and safety.
When I transferred to MSU in 2022 as an international student and mother, I came in with a cultural background that prioritizes communal participation which shapes the ways I experience the world. Little actions of neglect and indifference, such as complex bureaucratic systems for international students and policy issues in family housing, create bigger systemic barriers that unjustly exclude people like myself from fully participating in the community. For example, I was shocked to receive an email during the cold winter in Michigan that the community room where kids gather to play is closed for renovation during the busiest time of the semester. This decision was made without warning or regard for how this action affects student-parents without family support who rely on this space for their kids to enjoy a form of community. I, for one, who depended on this space, had to delay working into the night after my kids had finally gone to bed, just to be able to turn in assignments. Little actions like these have larger material consequences that affect real people’s lives and wellbeing.
Conclusion
Claire: Earth’s continued existence is dependent on diversity, connection, and health, and writing centers can directly impact the well-being of the environment and social justice issues by attending to these elements. Writing centers, then, can learn from ecology and environmental justice to make our work more ecological and by enacting our ecological principles through everyday actions and practices.
Jeanetta: For example, our writing center began a tradition of painting ceiling tiles to represent the diverse population and lived experiences of communities within the writing center space and beyond. Although these ceiling tiles do not solve larger systemic problems in and of themselves, they are just one little action that allow staff and clients from campus and the community to feel seen, represented, and remembered in academic spaces that typically lack inclusivity.
Rofiat: Scale, relationality, care and wellbeing, belonging, sustainability, and justice— principles that prompt critical reflection on and nurture awareness of the intricate relationships between writing center staff, clients, and the larger community. Adopting an ecological approach to writing center work affords us the opportunity to highlight systemic issues that arise within our writing center ecosystem— allowing us to work towards a sustainable and healthy writing center ecology that prioritizes the alignment of our daily actions and practices with our core values, from the small scale to the large scale.
References
brown, a.m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press.
hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A culture of place. Routledge.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L.L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming of disability justice. Arsensal Pulp Press.
Verchick, R. (2004). Feminist Theory and Environmental Justice. In R. Stein (Ed.), New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (pp. 63-77). Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813542539-006
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.