Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition

Series Editors: Charles Bazerman, University of California Santa Barbara; Mary Jo Reiff, University of Kansas; and Anis Bawarshi, University of Washington

Associate Editor: Mary Lourdes Silva, Ithaca College

The Series provides compact, comprehensive and convenient surveys of what has been learned through research and practice as composition has emerged as an academic discipline over the last half century. Each volume is devoted to a single topic that has been of interest in rhetoric and composition in recent years, to synthesize and make available the sum and parts of what has been learned on that topic. These reference guides are designed to help deepen classroom practice by making available the collective wisdom of the field and will provide the basis for new research. The Series is intended to be of use to teachers at all levels of education, researchers and scholars of writing, graduate students learning about the field, and all who have interest in or responsibility for writing programs and the teaching of writing.

The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the Series editor are teachers and researchers of writing, committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate. We see the opportunities that new technologies have for further democratizing knowledge. And we see that to share the power of writing is to share the means for all to articulate their needs, interest, and learning into the great experiment of literacy.

Submission and Contact Information

Queries should be directed via electronic mail to the series editors. 

To learn more about submitting to the series, please see our Submission Guidelines, our Invitation to Contribute and Diversity Statement, and our Guide for Authors and Editors.

Books in the Series

Writing Knowledge Transfer: Theory, Research, Pedagogy

by Rebecca S. Nowacek, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, and Angela Rounsaville

Writing Knowledge Transfer: Theory, Research, Pedagogy develops a capacious understanding of transfer in writing studies, tracing the distinct ways transfer has been engaged in various disciplinary fields and drawing connections among similar threads of inquiry. Working from a large-scale, collaborative analysis of some of the most salient long-term debates around transfer, this book guides scholars to link long and broad transfer conversations, attend to troublesome transfer problems in their teaching or research, and support both amplitude (more capacious understandings of writing transfer) and specificity (more detailed and relevant treatments of the term) in research on the transfer of writing knowledge. ... More

Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy

by Brian Ray

Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy conducts an in-depth investigation into the long and complex evolution of style in the study of rhetoric and writing. The theories, research methods, and pedagogies covered here offer a conception of style as more than decoration or correctness—views that are still prevalent in many college settings as well as in public discourse. The book begins by .... More

Reconnecting Reading and Writing

Edited by Alice S. Horning and Elizabeth W. Kraemer

Reconnecting Reading and Writing explores the ways in which reading can and should have a strong role in the teaching of writing in college. This edited collection draws on broad perspectives from history and international work to help readers understand how and why reading should be re-united with writing in college and high school classrooms.... More

Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy

By Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff

Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy provides a critical overview of the rich body of scholarship that has informed a "genre turn" in Rhetoric and Composition, including a range of interdisciplinary perspectives from rhetorical theory, applied linguistics, sociology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and literary theory.... More

Basic Writing

By George Otte and Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk

Framed by historic developments—from the Open Admissions movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the attacks on remediation that intensified in the 1990s and beyond, Basic Writing traces the arc of these large social and cultural forces as they have shaped and reshaped the field.... More

Argument in Composition

By John Ramage, Micheal Callaway, Jennifer Clary-Lemon, and Zachary Waggoner

Argument in Composition provides access to a wide range of resources that bear on the teaching of writing and argument. The ideas of major theorists of classical and contemporary rhetoric and argument—from Aristotle to Burke, Toulmin, and Perelman&mdashare explained and elaborated, especially as they inform pedagogies of argumentation and composition.... More

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics

By Elenore Long

Offering a comparative analysis of community-literacy studies, Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics traces common values in diverse accounts of "ordinary people going public." Elenore Long offers a rich theoretical framework for reviewing emergent community-literacy projects, examines pedagogies that educators can use to help students to go public in the course of their rhetorical education at college .... More

Writing Program Administration

By Susan H. McLeod

McLeod offers a comprehensive review of the literature on all the issues, responsibilities, and opportunities that writing program administrators need to understand, manage, and enact, including budgets, personnel, curriculum, assessment, teacher training and supervision, and more. Writing Program Administration also provides the first comprehensive history of writing program administration in U.S. higher education. Writing Program Administration includes a helpful glossary of terms and an annotated bibliography for further reading. Written by a WPA who .... More

Revision: History, Theory, and Practice

Edited by Alice Horning and Anne Becker

Reference Guide to Revision explores the wide range of scholarship on revision while bringing new light to bear on enduring questions. Starting with its overview of conventional definitons and misconceptions about revision, whether surface or deep, Revision then offers both theoretical and practical strategies designed to facilitate post-secondary writing instruction.... More

Reference Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum

By Charles Bazerman, Joseph Little, Lisa Bethel, Teri Chavkin, Danielle Fouquette, and Janet Garufis

Reference Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum traces the Writing Across the Curriculum movement from its origins in British secondary education through its flourishing in American higher education and extension to American primary and secondary education. The authors follow their historical review of the literature by a review of research into primary, secondary, and higher education WAC teaching and learning. Subsequent chapters examine the relations of WAC to Writing to Learn theory, research, and pedagogy, as well as its interactions with the Rhetoric of Science and Writing in the Disciplines movements.... More

Invention in Rhetoric and Composition

By Janice M. Lauer

Edited by Patricia Sullivan and Catherine Hobbs

Invention in Rhetoric and Composition examines issues that have surrounded historical and contemporary theories and pedagogies of rhetorical invention, citing a wide array of positions on these issues in both primary rhetorical texts and secondary interpretations. It presents theoretical disagreements over the nature, purpose, and epistemology of invention and pedagogical debates over such issues as the relative importance of art, talent, imitation, and practice in teaching discourse... More

About the Publishers

The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. The site receives support from Colorado State University and from its editorial staff and editorial review board and its hundreds of members who, through their collaborative efforts, add to and update information on the site. For more information about the Clearinghouse, please see our site information page. Parlor Press (http://www.parlorpress.com) is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and digital formats. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications visit the website, write to Parlor Press (3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, SC 29621), e-mail David Blakesley at editor@parlorpress.com, or call (765) 409-2649.

About Our Publication Process

The Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition series offers books in free digital editions and low-cost print editions. Books are offered through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. Copyright is held by the author(s) or editor(s) of the books. The publishers cover the costs of reviewing, designing, producing, and distributing the books. Any proceeds from sales of print books in the series are used to support the publication of subsequent books. Our goal is to make work available to the widest possible audience while maintaining the highest standards in scholarly publishing. We welcome contributions to the series and to the larger goal of supporting open-access scholarly publishing. If you have questions about the goals of the larger WAC Clearinghouse project, please contact Mike Palmquist at Mike.Palmquist@ColoState.edu.