Vol. 6 No. 5 (Spring 2025)
Christin Wright-Taylor
Manager, Writing Services, Wilfrid Laurier University
Vice-President, CWCA/ACCR
Today, the Ephesian agora doesn’t look like much—just an open field with slabs of exposed stone lining the grass. A row of headless columns tacks down the remains of an ancient mosaiced walkway, varied marble tiles wink back colour and light. Beyond those, stoas arch over shaded stalls where merchants sold their goods. To the left, the open market shakes out into a cluster of Junipers, and then the scrubby, rolling Turkish hills. For all its unassuming rocks and grass and marble, there is something striking about the simplicity of the ancient agora.
While Greek principles are by no means the only influences for writing centre theory and practice, Ancient Greek culture is, for better or worse, foundational to Western education. This Ephesian agora is a prototype for the Athenian marketplace where Aristotle first taught principles of rhetoric, the branch of Western classic philosophy that seeded our field of writing centre studies. I visited both the Ephesian and Athenian agoras last year, both places that promoted the kinds of thinking, sharing, and learning that laid a foundation for writing centre theory. All this got me thinking of the agora as a possible metaphor for our work in modern writing centres—both as a gathering place and a learning space, a space where minds meet, share ideas, test those ideas, and arrive at new knowledge.
Agoras were proximate
The first way in which we might consider agoras as a metaphor for the modern writing centre is in their strategic placement in relationship to civic life, both physically and figuratively. It may be difficult for us to imagine a physical space in which so many varied and disparate parts of society found their locus. Boehm (2012) writes: “[agoras] evolved into the public center of the city, serving as a political, administrative, and religious center, market, and meeting place.” In other words, the agora’s location facilitated a vibrant cross-section of society.
For example, in Ephesus, the agora was positioned adjacent to the magnificent 24,000-seat amphitheatre, which overlooked the bustling harbour. Situated at the end of the Silk Road, the Ephesian harbour (and subsequently the agora) hosted the world. It would appear that this type of proximity created the space for varied and rich interactions from all parts of the city and the world, which in turn cultivated innovation, creativity, and new thought.
If we apply this metaphor to our Canadian writing centres, we might ask: In what ways is the writing centre proximate to the figurative centre of college and university life? Or how might we place ourselves as close as possible to the centre of college and university life?
Of course, this question assumes that there is a centre. Some organizational leadership scholars beg to differ. Cohen et al (1972) famously call higher education “organized anarchy.” Their model, also given the unsavoury moniker, “the garbage can model,” defines universities as “organizations characterized by problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation” (Cohen et al, 2016, 1). If colleges and universities are organized anarchies, with many competing agendas and priorities, then where is the nucleus of the institution by which writing centres can position themselves?
This question takes on new dimensions when we consider the already disjointed location of writing centres across Canadian higher education. Jennifer Clary-Lemon (2009) and Janet Giltrow (2016) have both written about the structural and organizational vulnerabilities of writing centres in Canada, which are often subject to “intervention[s] and interruption[s]” (Giltrow, 2016, 18). In its Statement on Writing Centres in Canada, CWCA/ACCR advocates that no matter where writing centres may be located (in a learning commons, teaching and learning centre, or academic department), they should at least have some sort of academic reporting structure. Alas, our writing centres can and have been found in various spots around the institution (academic or not) such as Library Services, the Department of Education, or, as in the case of our writing centre here at Wilfrid Laurier University, Student Affairs.
The scatter-shot nature of writing centres’ locations inside Canadian higher education could be lamented as a fault, a deficit, maladaptive to university life. But what if the flexible nature of writing centres in Canada is what keeps us nimble and relevant in an “organized anarchy?” Perhaps in our “decentralized locations” we are perfectly “centered” to the hustle and bustle of so many postsecondary players, intersecting multiple interests and stakeholders across the institution. In this way, our figurative location replicates the proximity that agoras had to multiple stakeholders across civic life, all toppled together in .
Of course, intersecting so many academic and non-academic partners can lead to a chaotic blend of activity and resourcing within the writing centre. But chaos is another defining characteristic of the ancient agoras that can enlighten the modern writing centre.
Agoras were Chaotic
To demonstrate the chaos of the ancient Greek agora, Gottesman (2014) recounts a story of Socrates on his way to jury duty with a group of friends, moving through the many twists and turns of the marketplace. One slight directional misstep and Socrates ended up at the courthouse while his friends ended up in the pig stall next to the courthouse. This sort of mix match of civic and commercial life led Aristotle to argue for two separate agoras: “one for citizens and one for commerce and non-citizens” (Gottesman, 2014, pg. 28). And perhaps this type of separation would have created a cleaner, simpler agora, but what would have been lost in the divorce? Perhaps there was and is a secret ingredient created by this chaos that catalyzes the kind of learning and thought that formed the foundation of modern Western society.
If we were to apply this part of the agora metaphor, we might ask, “In what ways are our writing centres chaotic? And how might that chaos create kairos, a moment in which the tendrils of space, time, interaction, community meld together to create transformative learning?”
Back to Aristotle’s complaint that there should be two separate agoras: one for citizens and one for commerce. Similarly, the modern university divides itself along the dichotomy of academic and non-academic divisions. For the most part, these two halves imagine that they operate exclusively from one another. The idea goes that faculty tend to the curriculum, Student Affairs the student’s wellbeing. These are false separations, but nonetheless they serve a basic organizational and financial function that allow colleges and universities to carry on.
Much like Aristotle believed the agoras would be simpler if split in two, the perceived separation between academic and non-academic can feel clean, easy, and problem-free— except that writing centres exist in the messy middle of both. We are at once too student-focused to be purely academic and too curriculum-focused to be purely student affairs. Neither side of the institution seems to know quite what to do with us. If we are on the faculty side of things, they want to know why we are giving so many expensive resources to spending one-on-one time with students. Wouldn’t our Ph.D.’s and extensive academic training be better used on broader swaths of students? But when we are on the Student Affairs side of things, they want to know why we spend so much time with faculty. Don’t the students’ unions pay two-thirds of our salary to provide individual writing support to students directly?
By providing writing instruction and support that toggles between both sides of the institution, writing centres can, from the outside, look like chaotic spaces where learning and meeting and sharing and writing jumble in a swirling mix of activity. We provide one-on-one writing appointments. We train and utilize a corral of peer tutors. We deliver course-integrated support. We deliver campus workshops. We facilitate writing groups. We host speaker series’. We put on pizza parties and fun programs aimed at getting students through our. We may even provide writing resources and programming for the community beyond the institution.
In her book, Noise from the Center, Boquet (2003) recounts getting a memo from a faculty member complaining about the noisiness and seeming chaos of her writing centre. This memo catalyzed Boquet’s thinking about the nature of writing centre work. She writes, the “memo made me think that maybe I had been asking the wrong questions, that maybe I needed to come up with a different set of questions, a different way of imagining the work of writing centers and the relationship of the work that goes on in them to students, to faculty, to . . . me” (3). In her experience the messy boundaries of the writing centre, while hard to measure and quantify for those outside, become the secret sauce that allows students to thrive in their writing process and practice. In the end, while chaos may deliver you next to the pig pen rather than the courthouse, in the case of the agora and the modern writing centre, perhaps a touch of chaos might actually be a sign of health and robust learning.
Pause for Thought: The Agora Wasn’t Accessible to All
While the agora may be an apt metaphor for the modern writing centre, it would be an oversight not to address the less ideal features of the ancient Greek marketplace. Just as the agora’s admirable traits can be instructive, its less noble characteristics remain a warning for modern writing centres.
Here is perhaps the most glaring shortcoming: agoras weren’t accessible to women. Nearly every other segment of society could be found in the agora: beggars, merchants, soldiers, politicians, teachers, students, doctors, but not women.
While on a tour of the Acropolis, our tour guide tried to explain away the exclusion of women from public life as he pointed out the hubs of activity in the Athenian agora stretched at our feet. The Greeks, he reassured us, honoured women and held them in high esteem. Proof of this was the way they revered Athena, and wasn’t she a warrior, after all? But, he explained, voting on matters of public life was only open to those who risked their lives for Greece, the soldiers. He offered this logic as if it was only reasonable.
For all its bustling, vibrant, glory, the agoras excluded nearly half the population from conversations that would go on to establish the Western world as we know it. One wonders what a woman’s perspective might have added to these conversations.
Looking at our writing centres according to what the agora lacked, we might ask ourselves: “Who is not allowed in our writing centres? And what arbitrary reasoning have we created to support our exclusions? Who do we envision as being able to contribute and build knowledge in the centre and who do we not?”
In his work on the myth of linguistic homogeneity, Matsuda (2006) asks writing faculty to examine the “images” they carry of the type of writer they have in their classrooms (639). He argues that these images are necessary in as much as they allow us to talk about writing pedagogy across institutions, but they become problematic when they don’t actually represent the writers in the room, writers who are often far more linguistically and culturally diverse than the stock “image.”
Similarly, writing centre administrators and professionals should examine our assumptions about the types of students who use our services, the types of students who make good tutors, and the types of professionals who can work in a writing centre. The Agora tour guide is a good starting point—are we excusing ourselves for not inviting everyone into the centre? The composite pictures we build in our minds of the types of people who comprise writing centre life can reveal our biases and blind spots.
For this reason, the metaphor of the agora stands as a reminder and a warning. A gentle nudge to guard the vitality and life of our work by consistently reflecting on and troubling our images and imaginings of writing centre life.
Conclusion
Borrowing insight from one of the most consequential and foundational institutions, the ancient Greek marketplace, provides an possible metaphor for writing centre work. In those crammed stoas, between the stalls, in the clatter and chaos of public, civic, commercial, and cultural life something significant happened. I see the same significance happening in our writing centres, as we embrace the kind of disjointed location that ironically allows us to draw near the nucleus of the institution. Throw in a little dab of productive chaos while troubling our assumptions about who and what makes up writing centre life, and perhaps we can channel some of the vitality that Odysseus celebrated when surveying King Alcinous’s kingdom: “As he passed through the town … He was amazed to see the ships and harbors/ and [agora]/ and high walls set with stakes on top – a wonder!” (Homerus, 2018, p. 209).
References
Boehm, R. (2012). Agora. In R. S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, A. Erskine, & S. R. Huebner (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (1st ed.). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah06010
Boquet, E. H. (2003). Noise From The Writing Center. Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nwjt
Clary-Lemon, J. (2009). Shifting tradition: Writing research in Canada. American Review of Canadian Studies, 39(2), 94–111.
Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392088
Giltrow, J. (2016). Writing at the centre: A sketch of the Canadian history. Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Redactologie, 26, 11–24.
Gottesman, A. (2014). A tour of the Agora. In Politics and the street in democratic Athens (pp. 26–44). Cambridge University Press.
Homerus. (2018). The Odyssey (E. R. Wilson, Trans.; First edition). W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Matsuda, P. K. (2006). The myth of linguistic homogeneity in U.S. college composition. College English, 68(6), 637–651.