Current Projects

From May of 2021 to January 2022 in preparation for my spring 2022 PhD Seminar in WPA, I interviewed 31 WPAs about their post-COVID workload, the roles of care work, and what WPA instruction and practice they would have benefited from as graduate students. In addition to informing my course, data derived from the 16 early-career WPAs illustrate significant differences in the ways these WPAs frame their WPA identities compared to the cohort of mid- and later-career WPAs. I am concurrently working on three projects related to this research: 1) an article titled “The Quiet Revolution: How Early-Career WPAs Are Shifting the Profession” ; 2) a 2023 CCCC presentation with Jessie Blackburn, Jacob Babb, and Ashanka Kumari; and 3) a monograph that will detail findings from the larger study (all 31 interviews).

Recent Projects and Information for Bio

Kristi Costello is a co-editor of the collection, The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration, alongside Courtney Adams Wooten, Jacob Babb, and Kate Navickas. The book extends conversations about what WPA emotional labor involves and offers concrete and practical strategies for administrators working both within a large range of traumatic events as well as daily situations that require tactical work to preserve their sense of self and balance. Chapters written by a diverse range of authors in different institutional and WPA contexts examine the roles of WPAs in traumatic events, such as mass shootings and natural disasters, as well as the emotional labor WPAs perform on a daily basis, such as working with students who have been sexually assaulted and enduring racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise disenfranchising interactions with others on campus. The central thread in this collection focuses on “preserving” by acknowledging that emotions are neither good nor bad and that they must be continually reflected upon as WPAs consider what to do with emotional labor and how to respond. Ultimately, this book argues for more visibility of the emotional labor WPAs perform and for WPAs to care for themselves even as they care for others.

Kristi’s recent chapter, “Naming and Negotiating the Emotional Labors of Writing Center Tutoring,” defines emotional labor and describes some of the emotional labors rooted within the writing center tutor experience. She refers to the emotional labors—not labor—of writing center work to emphasize their plurality. Though writing center work is fulfilling and often exhilarating, she illustrates how the emotional labors can also make writing center work difficult, exhausting, and frustrating. In addition to generating additional emotional labors, existing emotional labors are compounded by race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, class, and other factors, meaning that tutors who are part of traditionally marginalized cultural locations experience more emotional labors more intensely. Kristi illustrates how when not recognized, named, and supported, such emotional labors can lead to confusion, tension, frustration, and resentment. The chapter concludes by sharing strategies for WCDs to support tutors’ emotional needs, encourage their self-care, and recognize and mitigate their emotional labors.