Overview
Tracy Hamler Carrick teaches writing, preferably under a tree near a brook on a sunny autumn afternoon. But you can also find her in the many other places where writers tend to gather: classrooms, writing centers, community spaces, libraries, cafés, kitchen tables.
As director of the Writing Workshop and of the Graduate Writing Service, Dr. Carrick supports writers, teachers, and tutors in their efforts to compose strong and meaningful prose.
Dr. Carrick teaches First-Year Writing Seminars and facilitates teacher- and tutor-training courses and workshops for the Knight Institute. In these courses and workshops -- which typically explore the diverse circumstances in which people read, research, and write -- she challenges students, tutors, and teachers to critically examine the functions and uses of text, and to produce writing that is rhetorically effective and engaging in myriad personal, professional, and civic contexts. Like activist and poet Adrienne Rich, she believes that “You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
Her work in the field of Rhetoric and Composition explores relationships between language and power; literacy and access to social and political institutions; and critical/popular education and activism. More specifically, she writes with and about writers to explore the dynamic ways that people work together to learn, to understand diverse language and discourse practices, and to co-write as they imagine and work toward personal, social, and institutional change. She is the co-editor of Authorship in Composition Studies (2006), and has published scholarly essays on critical pedagogy, community-based learning, writing center/program administration, and institutional activism.
Before coming to Cornell, Dr. Carrick directed Colby College’s Farnham Writers’ Center, coordinated Writing Across the Curriculum programming, and taught writing courses and workshops at all levels of the curriculum. Prior to that, she taught writing at Syracuse University, where she also trained new teachers and was recognized with a teaching award; Ithaca College; and San Francisco State University, where she also co-directed the English Tutoring Center and piloted coursework for an award-winning basic writing curriculum.
Book Appointment with Dr. Carrick
Research Focus
- Writing Program Administration
- Writing Pedagogy
- Feminist/Critical Pedagogy
- Basic Writing Studies
- Writing Center Studies
- Teacher Training
Publications
With Michelle Cox, Tamar, Gutfeld, Leigh York, and Benedetta Carnaghi. “Graduate Students Write Together at Home: Structured Support amid Crisis.” Literacy and Learning in Times of Crisis: Emergent Teaching Through Emergencies. Eds. Carrie Hall, Yana Kuchirko, Mark McBeth, Meghmala Tarafdar, and Missy Watson. Peter Lang Publishing. 2022.
With Margaret Himley and Tobi Jacobi. “Ruptura: Acknowledging the Lost Subjects of the Service Learning Story.” Reprinted in: Writing and Community Engagement: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Thomas Deans, Barbara Roswell, and Adrian Wurr. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2010.
“Where There’s Smoke Is There Fire? Understanding Coauthorship in the Writing Center” Pluralizing Plagiarisms: Identities, Contexts, Pedagogies. Eds. Amy Robillard and Rebecca Moore Howard. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. 2008.
“Bootlegging Literacy Sponsorship, Brewing Up Institutional Change.” Community Literacy Journal. 2.1 (Fall 2007).
With Rebecca Moore Howard. “Activist Strategies for Textual Multiplicity: Writing Center Leadership on Plagiarism and Authorship.” The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. Eds. Christina Murphy and Byron L. Stay. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2006.
Authorship in Composition Studies. Eds. Tracy Hamler Carrick and Rebecca Moore Howard. Boston, MA: Watson/Thompson. 2004.
“Spot Keeps Turning Up: E/quality in Authorship(s) and Pedagogy.” Authorship in Composition Studies. Eds. Tracy Hamler Carrick and Rebecca Moore Howard. Boston, MA: Watson/Thompson. 2004.
With Margaret Himley and Tobi Jacobi. “Ruptura: Acknowledging the Lost Subjects of the Service Learning Story.” Language and Learning Across the Disciplines 4.3 (Oct 2000).