Activist Orientations: Wayfinding, Writing, and How Alumni Effect Change in the World

Abstract

This article examines what activism looks like in an age of “deep writing.” As alumni find their ways through multiple domains of life after graduation, what role does writing play in helping them orient themselves toward engagement with the world around them? This article reviews relevant literature, including some of the difficulties of defining activism, and then analyzes focus group data in which participants describe different kinds of activism and the roles that writing plays in them. Wayfinding provides a framework for understanding how alumni writers orient their understanding of their own writing practices.