The negotiation of writer identity in engineering faculty - writing consultant collaborations

Abstract

Negotiating faculty-writing consultant collaborations in engineering contexts can be challenging when the writing consultant originates in the humanities. The author found that one of the sites of negotiation in the formation of working relationships is that of writer identity, and disciplinary writer identity in particular. In order to confirm her experiential knowledge, the author interviewed her faculty collaborators to further investigate their attitudes and experiences about writing. Analysis of two excerpts of these interviews makes visible "clashes" between the faculty engineers' and the writing consultant's autobiographical and disciplinary writer identities. Implications of the role of writer identity in faculty-writing consultant collaborations include considering the value of extending this negotiation explicitly to students and the question of how writing curriculum can explicitly engage students in the formation of positive disciplinary writer identities.