Little Worlds About Writing: An Interview with Laura Micciche

This episode features an interview with Laura Micciche. It was recorded during her visit to Tennessee for the 2019 Peck Research on Writing Symposium. Dr. Micciche was the keynote speaker at the symposium, an annual event hosted by the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. Each year, a rhetoric and writing scholar delivers a talk about their research and facilitates a workshop based on that research. This year’s symposium will take place on February 28, and will also host the annual meeting of MidSouth WPA, an affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.

Laura Micciche is a professor in the English Department at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on writing pedagogy, rhetorical theory, and writing program administration, and she’s the author of the books Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, Teaching and Acknowledging Writing Partners. The latter is available as an open-access book through WAC Clearinghouse. Dr. Micciche has also written copious articles, including a recent coauthored piece for College English entitled “Editing as Inclusion Activism,” a College Composition and Communication article entitled “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction,” and an article in the journal WPA entitled “For Slow Agency.” She recently completed a six-year tenure as editor of the journal Composition Studies. Her current research is on the mundane aspects of academic writing, which she focused on in her presentation at MTSU.

In this interview, Micciche discusses Acknowledging Writing Partners, the concept of slowness in relation to teaching and WPA work, the importance of methodological inclusiveness, and her interest in the mundane, including the nonhuman animals and objects that populate the places where academics write.

This episode features a clip of the song "Special Place" by Ketsa.