Dinaw Mengestu Spoke with WAMC’s The Best of Our Knowledge about the Center for Ethics and Writing

“The idea of writing remains quite poignant to students, but we often think of it as this very private, creative act,” said Dinaw Mengestu, director of the Center for Ethics and Writing, director of the Written Arts Program, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities, on WAMC’s The Best of Our Knowledge. “In doing so, we fail to make the argument for writing as more than just a personal, creative act, but as something that can be responsive to the world around us.” By engaging students with challenging texts and tasking them with considering the role language plays in shaping the world, Mengestu says the Center is already attracting students who might not have taken a writing course previously. “It becomes less about an elite, privileged discourse, and more about something that students from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds find that they can actually engage with,” Mengestu said.

Post Date: 09-05-2023