Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Six weeks in to my position as assistant director of the writing center and suddenly I was confronted by a cluster bombing of issues and concerns – microaggressions, depression, confusion, suspicion – each one separate but related, and threatening to tear a new hole in the already fragile foundation of community in my writing center. How do we feel, what do we do, how does a community survive when the story we’re experiencing isn’t the story we want or expected - when it is, in a word, terrible? After McKinney’s Peripheral Visions, we know our labor and our centers do not look, act, and feel cozy, iconoclastic, or focused on one-on-one tutoring all of the time. And yet, if we are going to continue to move beyond the grand narrative, a deep and meaningful understanding of community is essential. When we put our story in relation to our communities, then our story becomes just one thread in a much more complex tapestry. We cannot separate one person’s story from the story of the writing center. Each person, each story, is a stitch in the rhetorical fabric of community. Using critically reflexive stories to change and shape practice, this thesis highlights the grand narrative of community and shows how that narrative serves to stymie community growth. These stories resist boundaries. They are wayward. They are counter to the narratives around which we construct our lives. When we share stories and write together, we begin to understand the threads we’re all weaving into the tapestry – our community, stitched together through shared practice; a process that will never end, as each person comes and goes. The community will never be resolved, and in the ambiguity of boundlessness, comes a new way of seeing the world - through constellations and the dwelling in inbetween.

No description available.

This item contains the agenda, minutes, and attachments for the Faculty Senate meeting on this date. There may be additional materials from the meeting available at the Faculty Center.

No description available.

This study comparatively analyzes the narratives containing six international graduate student mothers’ lived experiences. Stories about intersectional identities and their transformation process through new experiences were reconstructed by the participants as storytellers. These student mothers are enrolled in international master’s programs in Sweden, who are underrepresented population in higher education research. Also, Sweden as a host country and learning setting is an under-researched location for this topic. The findings show that IGSMs (International graduate student mothers) learning and living abroad experiences include various challenges and diverse enablers. Their experiences are shaped by the host country, the institute, and the people around them. They experienced that social and cultural values embedded in the specific learning space affected their experiences, and the participants also felt it through social and cultural differences and transformation in themselves. All participants had a unique intersection of their multiple identities, and they made their strategies to deal with dilemmas and struggles. They learned new perspectives, attitudes, and lessons from interactions with other individuals, culture shock, observing differences, and through their studies and family. This study provides a chance to understand how female learners make sense of the ‘self’ and the world around them and how they transform their perspectives in international higher education settings while they face important phases in their family and academic life.