Welcome to Babylon: Junior Writing Program Administrators and Writing Across Communities at the University of New Mexico

Oct 15, 2026

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Writing program administrators must sustain the cultural ecologies of their communities as carefully as the material economies of their institutions, prioritizing diverse linguistic and rhetorical ecologies where twenty-first-century student writers enact agency. To meet the ethical demands of increasingly diverse college literacy practices, the profile examines a program that reshapes Composition Studies’ intellectual spaces by training junior administrators to promote rhetorical action through composition pedagogy and praxis, while advocating for ethno-linguistically diverse communities inside and beyond the university.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Cultural and linguistic ecologies in writing programs

Discursive diversity and literacy education

Public engagement versus classroom-only pedagogy

Writing Across Communities (WAC) model and outcomes

CF 25: “Welcome to Babylon” by Michelle Hall Kells Page 1 of 15 Composition Forum 25, Spring 2012 [http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/](http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/) Welcome to Babylon: Junior Writing Program Administrators and Writing Across Communities at the University of New Mexico [[http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=compforum](http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=compforum)] Michelle Hall Kells Abstract: Writing program administrators need to be as concerned about sustaining the cultural ecologies of our communities as we are about the material economies of our institutions—we need to attend to the diverse linguistic and rhetorical ecologies within which twenty-first century student writers are exercising agency. In order to respond productively, ethically, and appropriately to the increasingly diverse language and literacy practices of 21st century college writers, this profile will focus on a program that reconfigures the intellectual operating spaces of Composition Studies by training junior writing program administrators in how to promote rhetorical action alongside the study of composition pedagogy and praxis and by advocating on behalf of ethno-linguistically diverse communities within and beyond the university. What would a college writing program look like if we situated discursive diversity at the center of our pedagogical enterprise? What if the literacy lives of our students were as important as the cultural, linguistic, and rhetorical ecologies that inform them? What if ethnolinguistic pluralism and social justice were the first concerns of literacy education? For over nearly forty years since the release of the 1974 CCCC statement of“Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” the field of Composition Studies has been calling for culturally and linguistically-sensitive approaches to teaching writing (Committee on CCCC Language Statement). Largely, however, we have been talking to ourselves and, unfortunately, replicating the dominant discourses ofthe prevailing power structures that condition our colleges and universities (Smitherman and Villanueva) . As compositionists debate the pedagogical value of inviting students to write in their “home languages,” the rhetorics ofthe public sphere have become anything but inviting (Bean et al) .“For years, I was as baffled, bewildered, confounded, puzzled, and perplexed as any other writing teacher as to how to handle the numerous non-standardisms in the writing of too many African American students,” confesses Arthur Palacas in “Write about Ebonics.” The prescriptivist project of Composition Studies and the preoccupation with error have contributed to a kind of disciplinary tunnel vision obscuring focus on the bigger picture. Steve Parks’s argument that “composition studies too quickly appropriated African American struggles for social and economic justice into educational paradigms that reinforced hegemonic understandings of how race and class work in the United States”rings all too true (5) . While we have been gazing inward toward our classrooms, democratized spaces outside our classrooms productive to inclusive and vigorous public engagement have been shrinking. As many ofus have come to discover, simply recognizing diverse discourses in our composition classrooms is insufficient in confronting social disparities and linguistic racism (Trimbur) . Whereas the so-called multi-cultural composition classroom offers a safe haven within the college writing program, classroom pedagogies alone fail to confront structural discrimination and the insidious means by which educational and social contexts replicate linguistic racism (Kells “Tex [http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/new-mexico-wpas-communities.php](http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/new-mexico-wpas-communities.php) CF 25: “Welcome to Babylon” by Michelle Hall Kells Page 2 of 15 Mex”). In his recent article,“WAC/WID in the Next America: Redefining Pro

FAQs

What central concern does the profile describe for writing program administrators?

Administrators should sustain the cultural ecologies of communities alongside attention to institutional material economies, focusing on diverse linguistic and rhetorical ecologies where student writers act with agency.

How does the article respond to calls for culturally and linguistically sensitive writing instruction?

It critiques tendencies toward talking only within the field and replicating dominant power structures, arguing that inviting “home languages” is insufficient when structural discrimination and linguistic racism persist.

What is the Writing Across Communities model intended to achieve?

It advocates on behalf of ethnolinguistically diverse communities within and beyond the university and mentors junior writing program administrators in leadership, scholarship, and civic engagement, functioning as an experimental space for public rhetoric and democratic practice.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by jayni