Abstract

Writing centre scholars across the United States are increasingly involved in giving the gifts of prestigious U.S. higher education and American English for academic purposes across the Global South, where students and scholars are eager recipients. The exchange is mutually beneficial: American scholars earn grant funding and prestige for their international research and impact whilst students and scholars across the Global South gain enhanced access to academic and professional opportunities. 

It’s a feel-good story that is often told by American scholars using the rhetoric of help and succor. 

There is another layer to the story, however, that often goes unacknowledged. This layer involves a U.S.-led manufacture of a global demand and desire for Americanization and anglicization under neocolonial soft power. The reality is that academics in the Global South ask for support establishing EAP writing centres from American writing centre scholars, often in spite of the coloniality involved in this dynamic. American scholars respond to the urgency of these requests and the international need for Americanization and anglicization to rationalize their participation in neocolonial systems.

In this workshop, we will unearth this narrative layer in the stories that are told about writing centre internationalization and learn to see these projects through a colonial lens imbued with white savourism.