Landmark Publications in Writing Studies

Books in the Series

ARTiculating: Teaching Writing in a Visual World

Edited by Pamela B. Childers, Eric H. Hobson, and Joan A. Mullin

This collection explores the central role that the visual plays in a multimediated, computerized culture. The contributors to this collection and the editors, through their responses to each chapter, ask how we can exploit the intersections between the visual and the verbal to improve learning. ... More

As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education

By Richard E. Miller

Published in 1998, when the culture wars had reached the end of their second decade, Richard E. Miller’s As If Learning Mattered explored why higher education has been particularly resistant to reform. Unraveling stereotypes about conservative, liberal, and radical reform efforts, Miller looked at what actually happened when theories about education were put into practice. ... More

Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum

Edited by Donna Reiss, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young

This edited collection offers 24 essays that explore "electronic communication across the curriculum," an area of increasing importance in WAC and CAC research, practice, and program design. The contributors to this volume consider the implications of ECAC for academic programs, initiatives, and individual courses. ... More

Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life

By Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki

Thoroughly researched and incisively written, Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines draws on the results of a landmark, four-year, cross-disciplinary study of faculty and students from a wide range of majors. Their results show faculty and student writers taking risks with form and ideas as they weigh the demands of writing in the academy with their own passions for learning and self-expression. Thaiss and Zawacki demonstrate that academic disciplines are dynamic spaces that accommodate a variety of alternative styles and visions, even as they respect careful, systematic research. ... More

The High School Writing Center: Establishing and Maintaining One

Edited by Pamela B. Farrell (Childers)

This collection of twenty-two articles provides practical information on establishing a writing center and monitoring its daily operation. Born of the practical experiences and theoretical insights of editor Pam (Farrell) Childers, it addresses "problems and frustrations, shares successes and failures, and offers suggestions. In general, it addresses the issue of establishing and maintaining a successful high school writing lab/center. ... More

How Writing Shapes Thinking: A Study of Teaching and Learning

By Judith A. Langer and Arthur N. Applebee

In this groundbreaking study, Langer and Applebee analyzed writing assignments and their teaching across the curriculum in U.S. secondary schools to see how they support learning. "To improve the teaching of writing, particularly in the context of academic tasks," they argue, "is also to improve the quality of thinking required of school children."... More

Language Across the Curriculum in the Elementary Grades

By Christopher Thaiss

In Language Across the Curriculum in the Elementary Grades, Christopher Thaiss explores the use of writing in classrooms from grades one through six. Drawing on first-hand observations of classrooms, interviews with teachers, and analysis of student work, he argues that "language across the curriculum is something that happens continuously in classrooms and in homes and on playgrounds, whether we wish it to or not. ... More

Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum

Edited by Toby Fulwiler and Art Young

Language Connections, originally published by NCTE in 1982, focuses on general language skills teachers in all disciplines can use "to enhance student learning and, at the same time, reinforce the more specific language skills taught by reading, writing and speech teachers" (ix). ... More

The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century

By Harvey J. Graff

This pioneering study presents an insightful and impactful interpretation of the place of literacy in 19^th-century society and culture. Based on an intensive comparative historical analysis, employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques and a wide range of sources, The Literacy Myth reevaluates the role typically assigned to literacy in historical scholarship, cultural understanding, economic development schemes, and social doctrines and ideologies—leading ultimately to a redefined understanding of literacy in the 19^th century. ... More

Literacy Myths, Legacies, and Lessons: New Studies on Literacy

By Harvey J. Graff

Literacy Myths, Legacies, and Lessons continues Harvey J. Graff’s critical revisions of many commonly held ideas about literacy. The book speaks to central concerns about the place of literacy in modern and late-modern culture and society, and its complicated historical foundations. Drawing on other aspects of his research, Graff explores early 21^st-century thinking and major concerns about literacy as well as the development of both historical and interdisciplinary studies. ... More

James Moffett: Selected Works

Curated by Jonathan M. Marine and Paul Rogers

This curated collection of works by James Porter Moffett offer access to works by a ground-breaking teacher, author, and theorist of language learning who had a profound impact on the fields of English education, Composition, and Educational Psychology in the mid-to-late 20th century. In addition to the books, Jarine and Rogers provide commentary on Moffett's work and bibliographies of his work and scholarly work about that work. ... More

Programs and Practices: Writing Across the Secondary School Curriculum

Edited by Pamela B. Farrell-Childers, Anne Ruggles Gere, and Art Young

This edited collection addresses how writing across the curriculum has been incorporated into schoolwide, districtwide, and statewide programs. The editors and contributors show how WAC efforts, and particularly those that begin with small groups of teachers working in a limited number of classrooms, can serve as the catalyst for systemic change. ... More

Roots in the Sawdust: Writing to Learn Across the Disciplines

By Anne Ruggles Gere

In this collection, editor Anne Ruggles Gere offers a response to Arthur N. Applebee's call for "more situations in which writing can serve as a tool for learning rather than as a means to display acquired knowledge" (1982). ... More

Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science

By Charles Bazerman

In Shaping Written Knowledge, Charles Bazerman traces the history and character of the experimental article in science, calling attention to the social and rhetorical forces that shaped its development. ... More

Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Curriculum

Edited by Susan H. McLeod

This collection of thoughtful, thoroughly grounded essays explores the design of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in new and maturing programs. The collection also contains an appendix listing the results of the first comprehensive survey of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. ... More

Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference

By Muriel Harris

This groundbreaking book offers advice for teachers new to conferencing, experienced teachers seeking to refine or expand their approaches to conferencing, and tutors working in writing centers. Since it was published in 1986, it has become one of the most widely cited books on conferencing. Harris offers a theoretical framework for conference teaching, descriptions of activities typical of and central to writing conferences, advice on diagnostic strategies for individualized instruction, and instructional strategies. ... More

Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities

Edited by Charles Bazerman and James Paradis

In Textual Dynamics of the Profession, 15 essays examine the effects of texts on professional practices in academic, scientific, and business settings. Editors Charles Bazerman and James Paradis characterize "textual dynamics" as an interaction in which professional texts and discourses are constructed by, and in turn construct, social practices. ... More

Thinking and Writing in College: A Naturalistic Study of Students in Four Disciplines

By Barbara E. Walvoord and Lucille Parkinson McCarthy, in collaboration with Virginia Johnson Anderson, John R. Breihan, Susan Miller Robison, and A. Kimbrough Sherman

This groundbreaking book reports the results of a seven-year study in which six teacher-researchers worked together to inquire into the thinking and writing of college students. The study offers a model of collaborative, naturalistic classroom research that not only allowed the investigators to investigate how students thought and wrote, but also to reflect on teacher growth and change over the course of the study. ... More

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum 4/e

By Art Young

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum, presented here in its fourth edition, provides a comprehensive, accessible discussion of teaching writing across the curriculum. Written by one of the leaders in the field of writing across the curriculum (WAC), it offers a brief introduction to WAC and then discusses how writing can be used to help students learn and communicate. ... More

WAC for the New Millennium: Strategies for Continuing Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Programs

Edited by Susan H. McLeod, Eric Miraglia, Margot Soven, and Christopher Thaiss

In this edited collection, the editors and contributors consider strategies for continuing WAC programs in an atmosphere of change; explore new avenues of collaboration, such as service learning and the linked-course curricula of learning communities; predict areas into which WAC programs need to move; and suggest new directions for research on writing across the curriculum. ... More

Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs

Edited by Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven

Addressing the design, funding, operation, and underlying pedagogical principles of WAC programs, this comprehensive collection of essays offers important advice to WAC program designers and teachers. In 12 chapters, the contributors to this important collection discuss issues including program design, writing in the disciplines, writing to learn, writing-intensive courses, and the relationships among WAC programs, first-year writing programs, general education, and writing centers. ... More

Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge

By Greg Myers

In Writing Biology, Greg Myers shares his exploration of discourse in the biological sciences. His goal, as he notes in the preface to this landmark book, is to "provide some interpretations of scientific texts in their social context that will help us understand how texts produce scientific knowledge and reproduce the cultural authority of that knowledge" (p. ix). Arguably the first major work in writing studies that explores the rhetoric of science, Writing Biology offers a detailed analysis of texts, with a strong focus on social construction of knowledge and the rhetorical contexts in which scientists construct their texts. ... More

Writing in the Arts and Sciences

By Elaine P. Maimon, Gerald L. Belcher, Gail W. Hearn, Barbara F. Nodine, and Finbarr W. O'Connor

Published by Winthrop Publishers in 1981, Writing in the Arts and Sciences is one of the first and certainly the most successful early textbooks emerging from a WAC movement that was, when the book was first conceived, still in its first decade. Drawing from work at Beaver College (now Arcadia University) as well as a series of national seminars on WAC, the authors address both writing to learn and learning to write, with chapters devoted to writing in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. ... More

About the Publisher

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.

A Note of Thanks

The Clearinghouse is grateful to Mark Shelstad, Tom Moothart, Ann Schwalm, and Trista Barker of the Colorado State University Library and to Vince Darcangelo of CSU's University Testing Center for their assistance in making some of these books available in digital format.