Dr. Karen Moroski-Rigney
Bio:
I’m Karen-Elizabeth Moroski-Rigney, one of the Associate Directors of The Writing Center. I just joined Michigan State University in Fall 2019! Previously, I had been English & WGSS faculty at Penn State (University Park) where I also coordinated the Undergraduate Writing Center at Penn State Learning. Here at MSU, I’m also one of the inaugural Faculty Accessibility Fellows and a 2019-2020 CAL Leadership Fellow. I’m deeply interested in questions of accessibility and intersectionality — I want to know how the field of writing and writing center studies can continue to engage the digital and the accessible in a pedagogically and personally complex world.
I completed a master’s degree (2013) and doctorate (2017) in Critical Theory (specializing in affective neuroscience, trauma, and the writing process) at Binghamton University. After my PhD, I returned to my first love: Writing Center work. I’m very active in service work for the field of writing center studies! I am an Associate Editor for WAC Clearinghouse; I serve on the board of the International Writing Center Association (IWCA); I spent two years as the elected Secretary and an executive board member for the Mid-Atlantic Writing Center Association (MAWCA) and am the current secretary of the Michigan Writing Center Association (MiWCA); I chaired the scholarships and travel grants committee for IWCA in 2018. Further, I gave a keynote address entitled “Toward a Translingual Writing Center” at the Southeastern Writing Centre Symposium in Toronto in December 2018.
In 2019, I had several peer-reviewed articles published: a colloqium in the Spring 2019 edition of WPA Journal; an article in the Pre/Text special edition on queer rhetorics (Vol 24); a chapter included in a recent edited collection entitled the Pedagogical Potential of Story (Peter Lang, 2019). Still in the pipeline to publication is a chapter in Holly Jackson’s Sharing Spaces and Students: Employing Students in Collaborative Partnerships. My work has also been featured in WLN Blog and Slate.com.
Dr. Moroski-Rigney Introduces Writing Centers and Access: A Disability Justice Speaker Series
"Writing Centers and Access: A Disability Justice Speaker Series" brings together the fields of composition, writing center studies, and disability studies to ask (and begin the process of answering) the question: How do writing centers engage the process of disability justice? Featuring world-renown disability studies scholars, the series seeks to generate conversation and provide community to teachers of writing, to writers, to writing center professionals, and to communities both on our campuses and beyond about the ways in which disability affects writers, writing, and higher education. The series is hosted by The Writing Center at MSU through the hard work of their Accessibility Committee, under the supervision of Dr. Karen Moroski-Rigney.
