You may know Maša Torbica from her work as an undergraduate writing advisor, former peer tutor, or as an instructor for one or more of your writing courses. But did you know that she is a PhD candidate in the department of English language and literature or that she has given presentations at several conferences this past year? Learn more about Masa in an interview with the WCC.
Question 1: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
For better or worse, a lot of my life revolves around writing! I devote some time to my writing projects (critical and creative) nearly every day, I’ve been teaching academic writing in various roles since 2010, and I’ve served as a Fiction Editor with the literary magazine The New Quarterly since 2017. I’m also tremendously fond of my miniature pinchers, Maks and Gracie, and never pass up an opportunity to talk about their shenanigans.
Question 2: You were a peer tutor and grad fellow with the WCC for a few years, and now you're a writing advisor. How has that transition been for you and what differences are you finding between peer tutoring and advising?
As a Graduate Peer Tutor, I mostly worked with students during individual drop-in appointments. As a Graduate Fellow, I supported the development and facilitation of graduate programming like the Dissertation Boot Camp, Speak Like a Scholar, and the Grad Writing Café. I loved both of my previous roles with the WCC and am thrilled that my current role allows for a combination of individual student consultations and WCC programming/project support.
Question 3: You've been very busy with presentations this conference season. Can you tell us about some of the presentations you have given at different conferences recently?
Yes, I’ve had a very busy conference season! To briefly summarize:
In late April, I was part of a panel presentation titled “Partnering with Students: Fostering student agency through antiracist writing pedagogy” (with WCC colleagues Clare Bermingham, Christine Edet, Natalie Alhadidi, Elise Vist, and Nadine Fladd) at the UW Teaching and Learning Conference.
In early May, I had the honour of participating (with co-speakers Emilie Brancato, Vidya Natarajan, Marci Prescott-Brown, and Effie Sapuridis) in a special session on “Advocating for Antiracist Writing Instruction in Canadian Postsecondary Contexts,” organized by CWCA/ACCR.
Later in May, I was part of a CWCA/ACCR conference panel titled “How and Why Writing Centre Tutors Can Set Healthy Boundaries During the Pandemic and Beyond” with WCC colleagues Stephanie White, Roniksha Kumar, and Olivia Davitt.
Most recently, I gave a presentation titled “Round Dance Revolution: The rhetorical impacts of Idle No More-affiliated round dances” at the RhetCanada conference.
Question 4: I understand that you are a PHD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Can you tell us a little bit more about your work as a PHD student and what it means to be working at the intersection of rhetoric, poetics and social justice?
Broadly speaking, “working at the intersection of rhetoric, poetics and social justice” entails investigating how and why people create and leverage different narratives to (re)negotiate power relations/systems/structures.
My PhD dissertation, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, examines decolonizing communication within Idle No More, which is an Indigenous-led grassroots movement focused on environmental advocacy, global Indigenous resurgence, and civil resistance against neocolonial power structures. More specifically, I analyze various forms of embodied and emplaced rhetorical (or, persuasive) activity, including round dances, Twitter hashtags, and youth-led long marches.
I am also deeply interested in poetry as a mode of critical inquiry and ethical intervention. I recently received support from the Canada Council for the Arts to complete a research-creation project titled Fault Lines. In this project, I am exploring how the semantic and symbolic valences of language and the materiality of poetic form can be leveraged to interrogate the complex interactions between displacement, migration, and (de)colonization in the era of global climate crisis.
Question 5: What has been your favorite course to teach at the University of Waterloo and why?
Wow, it's difficult to select just one course!
I was particularly excited to teach ENGL 210C Genres of Creative Writing during the Spring 2021 term. I had delivered guest lectures for various ENGL 210C classes in previous years and found it fascinating to compare/ponder the different instructional approaches. When designing my own ENGL 210C course, I had two main goals: to address specific pedagogical challenges and to maximize individual student agency. The main pedagogical challenges were the barriers to learning posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the course format (asynchronous delivery). To support student learning and create a sense of community, I hosted weekly two-hour-long optional synchronous sessions and arranged virtual visits with several authors, editors, and literary organizers. To maximize individual student agency, I sought to encourage and support each student to identify and pursue their own writing goals. As such, I navigated away from required course texts. Instead, I guided students through finding and discussing their own reading material based on the type of writing they wanted to produce. Students loved selecting their own literary role models and I got to read a lot of new-to-me texts and authors.
Overall, I was so impressed and delighted by the range and quality of creative work my students produced throughout the class! It has also been amazing to see some of the creative writing from ENGL 210C receiving recognition beyond the class. For example, one student received the 2021-22 UW English Society Creative Writing Award for Prose, and another student was longlisted for the 2021 Dorothy Shoemaker Poetry Contest
Question 6: What is a writing or communication tip that you find yourself sharing regularly with students?
My writing process transformed when I participated in WCC’s Dissertation Boot Camp (DBC) program a few years ago. As a graduate student and instructor, I understood the value of low-stakes first drafts, but I realized that I had been approaching that goal with a limited range of tools and strategies. During DBC, Nadine Fladd introduced us to innovative tools and strategies to navigate a wide range of challenges standing in the way of that low-stakes first draft goal. Ever since, I encourage all writers/students I work with to enrich their writing process by trying a variety of creative approaches to drafting.
For example, if a student is struggling with writers’ block or perfectionism, I suggest starting writing sessions with Freewriting. If someone is struggling with focus and momentum, I recommend the Pomodoro Technique, distraction blocking software, and apps like Forest to gamify the writing process. If a writer is struggling to sit in front of the screen and type, I suggest going outside and using a voice-to-text app, or talking through their ideas with another person. If someone is struggling to organize and structure research content, I encourage them to find more tactile ways to engage with the different pieces: brainstorm on paper or a whiteboard using colour-coded markers, make a mind map with sticky notes on your desk or your wall, print out and cut up research notes into slips you can arrange on a pinboard, and so on. Finding the most personally useful approaches to the drafting process leads to more enjoyable and more effective writing results!