Multimembership and Identity in Writing Centers and in Industry: Examining the Work of Reconciliation in the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center and at Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Writing center scholarship and practice have approached how issues of identity influence communication but have not fully considered ways of making identity a key feature of writing center research or practice. This dissertation suggests a new way to view identity -- through an experience of "multimembership" or the consideration that each identity is constructed based on the numerous community memberships that make up that identity. Etienne Wenger (1998) proposes that a fully formed identity is ultimately impossible, but it is through the work of reconciling memberships that important individual and community transformations can occur. Since Wenger also argues that reconciliation "is the most significant challenge" for those moving into new communities of practice (or, "engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor" (4)), yet this challenge often remains tacit, this dissertation examines and makes explicit how this important work is done at two different research sites - a university writing center (the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center) and at a multinational corporation (Kimberly-Clark Corporation). Drawing extensively on qualitative ethnographic methods including interview transcriptions, observations, and case studies, as well as work from scholars in writing center studies (Grimm, Denney, Severino), literacy studies (New London Group, Street, Gee), composition (Horner and Trimbur, Canagarajah, Lu), rhetoric (Crowley), and identity studies (Anzaldua, Pratt), I argue that, based on evidence from the two sites, writing centers need to educate tutors to not only take identity into consideration, but to also make individuals' reconciliation work more visible, as it will continue once students and tutors leave the university. Further, as my research at the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center and Kimberly-Clark will show, communities can (and should) change their practices in ways that account for reconciliation work as identity, communication, and learning are inextricably bound up with one another.

Identity, Philosophy, and the Problem of Armenian History in the Sixth Century

History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East gathers together the work of distinguished historians and early career scholars with a broad range of expertise to investigate the significance of newly emerged, or recently resurrected, ethnic identities on the borders of the eastern Mediterranean world. It focuses on the "long late antiquity" from the eve of the Arab conquest of the Roman East to the formation of the Abbasid caliphate. The first half of the book offers papers on the Christian Orient on the cusp of the Islamic invasions. These papers discuss how Christians negotiated the end of Roman power, whether in the selective use of the patristic past to create confessional divisions or the emphasis of the shared philosophical legacy of the Greco-Roman world. The second half of the book considers Muslim attempts to negotiate the pasts of the conquered lands of the Near East, where the Christian histories of Hira or Egypt were used to create distinctive regional identities for Arab settlers. Like the first half, this section investigates the redeployment of a shared history, this time the historical imagination of the Qu'ran and the era of the first caliphs. All the papers in the volume bring together studies of the invention of the past across traditional divides between disciplines, placing the re-assessment of the past as a central feature of the long late antiquity. As a whole, History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East represents a distinctive contribution to recent writing on late antiquity, due to its cultural breadth, its interdisciplinary focus, and its novel definition of late antiquity itself.

The Pocket companion; or, Every man his own lawyer. Laid down in so plain a manner, that the farmer, mechanic, apprentice, or school boy, can draw any instrument of writing, without the assistance of an attorney. Prefaced with several pages of scrip, showing a correct form in which an instrument of writing should be drawn, and to instruct those who wish to improve their hand writing at leisure hours, at home, without the instruction of a teacher.

Mode of access: Internet.

A grammar of the Hindūstānī language, in the Oriental and roman character, with numerous copper-plate illustrations of the Persian and Devanāgarī systems of alphabetic writing. To which is added, a copious selection of easy extracts for reading, in the Persi-Arabic & Devanāgarī characters, forming a complete introduction to the Bagh-o-bahar; together with a vocabulary, and explanatory notes.

Mode of access: Internet.

A grammar of the Hindūstānī language, in the Oriental and roman character, with numerous copper-plate illustrations of the Persian and Devanāgarī systems of alphabetic writing. To which is added, a copious selection of easy extracts for reading, in the Persi-Arabic & Devanāgarī characters, forming a complete introduction to the Bagh-o-bahar; together with a vocabulary, and explanatory notes /

Mode of access: Internet.

Syllabus for reading, writing, and criticism B : syllabus for the second year of a three-year course given in the first, second, and third years of the four-year curriculum in the College The University of Chicago. /

Mimeographed.

Lessons in the speaking and writing of English...

Mode of access: Internet.

Primary word lessons containing carefully graded exercises in the elements of phonetics, diacritical marks, spelling, word-building and writing,

Mode of access: Internet.

A new royal French grammar : containing, I. Easy and plain rules to attain to the thorough understanding, pronouncing, speaking and writing of the French tongue ; II. Familiar phrases and dialogues, fables by Mr. de Fenelon, maxims and various reflections, [etc] ; III. Three vocabularies, the first of words plainly shewing teh nearness, or affinity betwixt the English and French, the second of nouns substantives shewing their genders ; the third of words the same, or nearly alike in sound, but spelt differently and of a different signication.

Mode of access: Internet.

The Arabic writing in five lessons with practical exercises and a key,

Reproduced from type-written copy.

Chambers's cyclopaedia of English literature : a history critical and biographical of authors in the English tongue from the earliest times till the present day, with specimens of their writing.

Includes bibliographies and index.

The history of historical writing in America.

Mode of access: Internet.

The pocket lawyer, or self-conveyancer : containing all the most useful forms, rendered so plain, that every man can draw any instrument of writing, wihout the assistance of an attorney ; in a method entirely new.

Text, except t.-p. and index, runs parallel with back of cover.