In this dissertation, What Makes a Spaced Raced?: Exploring Writing Centers as Raced Spaces, I interrogate the spatial design and object affect of the Writing Center and analyze how that design and object affect might effect those entering the Writing Center space. Because Writing Centers often position themselves as home or homelike spaces, the purpose of this project was to better understand (1) how Writing Center design may exclude marginalized bodies through its physical design and the various objects placed in the Writing Center, (2) how those exclusions are read by “outsiders” (those not working in the Writing Center space they critiqued), and (3) how Writing Centers can begin to design spaces that are read as more inclusive/accepting of marginalized bodies. By using Black womanism as both method and methodology, I designed comparative analysis of three Writing Centers in which tutors working in one Writing Center would interrogate a different Writing Center space. Using three Writing Center Sites, nine separate tutors—divided into groups of three—analyzed two separate sets photos of these three Writing Center sites. Participants analyzed both the unoccupied Writing Center Space and the occupied Writing Center to discern if the effect of a Writing Center space may be altered depending on who operates in the space. My findings indicate that race is read through a perception of class, e.g., the furniture, technology, and pictures/paintings participants marked as expensive suggested marginalized and working-class bodies would not seek tutoring services from or desire to be employed by the Writing Center.
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