Perspectives on Writing

Books in the Series

If at First You Don't Succeed? Writing, Rhetoric, and the Question of Failure

Edited by Steven J. Corbett

What does it mean to fail at an important performance, to be a failure, or to fail someone at something? Failure is a universal concept widely applicable to every aspect of writing studies. Perhaps it is the most universal concept applicable to writing studies (or life, for that matter). But what it means to fail can mean vastly different things to vastly different people at vastly different times. In this edited collection, 25 writing studies scholars use failure as a conceptual lens to reflect on their experiences as scholars and teachers. Their contributions address historical and theoretical treatments of failure, offer case studies of failure in teaching and research, and share brief (but bitter/sweet) narratives drawn from personal experiences in the field. ...  More

Improvisations: Methods and Methodologies in Lifespan Writing Research

Edited by Ryan J. Dippre and Talinn Phillips

Improvisations provides readers with insights and options as they develop new lifespan writing research projects or seek to re-orient existing projects to incorporate a lifespan lens. In Part 1 of this edited collection, contributors consider research methodologies that have been adapted to the particular demands of lifespan writing research, with each methodology given two chapters: one that outlines the process of taking up the methodology, and another that provides a detailed example of the methodology in action. In Part 2, contributors suggest new methodologies for lifespan writing research and highlight challenges that this line of inquiry presents as an ethical and socially conscious research agenda. ...  More

Learning from the Mess: Method/ological Praxis in Rhetoric and Writing Studies

Edited by Ashley J. Holmes and Elise Verzosa Hurley

The contributors to Learning from the Mess: Method/ological Praxis in Rhetoric and Writing Studies argue that there’s much to be learned from the messiness of research contexts. In so doing, they highlight the value of revisiting and reflecting on research methods and methodologies with two primary goals in mind: to shed light on the processes commonly elided between research design and publication and to make explicit that the method/ologies we use in our research require praxis. ...  More

Considering Students, Teachers, and Writing Assessment: Volume 1, Technical and Political Contexts

Edited by Diane Kelly-Riley, Ti Macklin, and Carl Whithaus

The editors and authors in this edited collection, available in two volumes, consider the increasing importance of students’ and teachers’ lived experiences within the development and use of writing assessments. Presenting key work published in the Journal of Writing Assessment since its founding in 2003, this volume focuses on collection explores five major themes ...  More

Considering Students, Teachers, and Writing Assessment: Volume 2, Emerging Theoretical and Pedagogical Practices

Edited by Diane Kelly-Riley, Ti Macklin, and Carl Whithaus

The editors and authors in this edited collection, available in two volumes, consider the increasing importance of students’ and teachers’ lived experiences within the development and use of writing assessments. Presenting key work published in the Journal of Writing Assessment since its founding in 2003, the collection explores five major themes ... More

Better Practices: Exploring the Teaching of Writing in Online and Hybrid Spaces

Edited by Amy Cicchino and Troy Hicks

Featuring a range of better practices related to online writing instruction (OWI) and assessment, this edited collection offers instructors and writing program administrators theoretically grounded approaches from teacher-scholars of online writing. First, the contributors highlight what instructors have been doing in online and hybrid writing classrooms, pointing to innovative theoretical trends in the scholarship of online writing studies and related position statements. Second, they provide access to instructional materials that can be immediately adapted for local contexts, offering a starting point for enacting better practices in OWI. Third, ...  More

Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration

Edited by Genesea M. Carter and Aurora Matzke

This collection extends the discourse on systems within the field of rhetoric and composition by drawing connections among the administrative work we do, the values we hold, and the systems that shape our work and our selves. The contributors to this collection consider how rhetoric and composition administrators’ change-making efforts address, among other activities, equitable labor and working conditions, student and/or faculty retention, curriculum development and redesign, program assessment, professional development support, and mental and/or physical well-being. ...  More

A Writer Reforms (the Teaching of) Writing: Donald Murray and the Writing Process Movement, 1963–1987

By Michael J. Michaud

In this archival investigation, Michael J. Michaud examines the life and work of Donald M. Murray, an important disciplinary and educational reformer who has for too long been misunderstood, caricatured, and dismissed by many writing studies theorists and historians. Focusing on Murray’s work at the University of New Hampshire from the 1960s to the 1980s, Michaud offers a corrective intended to establish a new legacy for Murray. ...  More

Institutional Ethnography as Writing Studies Practice

Edited by Michelle LaFrance and Melissa Nicolas

The editors and contributors to this collection offer insights into the use of institutional ethnography for three primary purposes: to investigate and interrogate the cultures of work that are of interest to writing studies researchers, to understand more deeply what constitutes this work, and to consider how work takes shape within institutional contexts. Building on prior conversations about institutional ethnography, critical ethnography, and the complexities of writing programs, the editors and chapter authors consider their application to sites of writing and writing instruction. In doing so, they reveal the power of material conditions, institutional and field-based values, and the cultures of writing to shape how people carry out their everyday work in writing programs and other venues in which writing plays a central role. ...  More

Rethinking Peer Review: Critical Reflections on a Pedagogical Practice

Edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver

The contributors to this edited collection interrogate peer review, a foundational practice of writing instruction, from both practical and theoretical perspectives, provoking discussion and re-examination of this practice in light of changing demographics, new technologies, and changing goals and priorities among teachers and institutions. Though long considered an essential element in writing and writing-intensive courses, peer review continues to provoke questions and provide challenges for instructors and students. By questioning and clarifying the goals of peer review, Rethinking Peer Review demonstrates how peer review can inform and enhance student writing and learning. ...  More

Adapting the Past to Reimagine Possible Futures: Celebrating and Critiquing WAC at 50

Edited by Megan J. Kelly, Heather M. Falconer, Caleb L. González, and Jill Dahlman

Developed from presentations at the Fifteenth International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, this edited collection celebrates the 50th anniversary of the WAC movement while also identifying innovative directions for writing pedagogies, program building and impact, and program mobilization. Contributors reflect on the evolution of WAC as an educational movement as well as the challenges and possibilities facing WAC programs as they respond to the shifting contexts of higher education. ...  More

Writing as a Human Activity: Implications and Applications of the Work of Charles Bazerman

Edited by Paul M. Rogers, David R. Russell, Paula Carlino, and Jonathan M. Marine

Writing As a Human Activity offers a collection of original essays that attempt to account for Charles Bazerman’s shaping influence on the field of writing studies. Through scholarly engagement with his ideas, the 16 chapters—written by authors from Asia, Europe, North America, and South America—address Bazerman’s foundational scholarship on academic and scientific writing, genre theory, activity theory, writing research, writing across the curriculum, writing pedagogy, the sociology of knowledge, new media and technology, and international aspects of writing. ...  More

Threshold Conscripts: Rhetoric and Composition Teaching Assistantships

Edited by William J. Macauley, Jr., Leslie R. Anglesey, Brady Edwards, Kathryn M. Lambrecht, and Phillip K. Lovas

This richly textured edited collection explores the ways in which graduate teaching assistants are prepared to enter the field of rhetoric and composition. By viewing teaching and learning from the perspective of the TAs themselves, the chapters, personal narratives, and program profiles that make up this collection speak to the diversity and complexity found within and beyond university walls and deepen our understanding of how these preparation programs shape TA identities and practices. ...  More

Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom, 2nd Edition

By Asao B. Inoue

In the second edition of Labor-Based Grading Contracts, Asao B. Inoue refines his exploration of labor-based grading contracts in the writing classroom. Drawing on antiracist teaching practices, he argues that labor-based grading contracts offer a compassionate approach that is strongly grounded in social justice work. Updated with a new foreword and revised chapters, the book offers a meditation on how Inoue’s use of Freirean problem-posing led him to experiment with grading contracts. ...  More

Adapting VALUEs: Tracing the Life of a Rubric through Institutional Ethnography

By Jennifer Grouling

Adapting VALUEs traces the use of the American Association of Colleges and Universities' VALUE rubric for written communication at two small universities. Through the lens of institutional ethnography, Jennifer Grouling examines how faculty and administrators adapted the rubric for their own purposes and writing programs. Throughout the book, Grouling explores the ways in which faculty members' interactions on committees, views of the classroom, disciplinary affiliation, and racial privilege impacted their views of this national rubric. ... More

Writing-Enriched Curricula: Models of Faculty-Driven and Departmental Transformation

Edited by Chris M. Anson and Pamela Flash

This edited collection explores theoretical and practical applications of the Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) approach, an innovative and sustainable alternative to writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines. The collection’s purpose is to inform writing program administrators, teachers, scholars, and university officials about the model’s potential to transform the way writing is used and supported across courses and curricula in higher education. ... More

Above The Well: An Antiracist Argument From a Boy of Color

By Asao B. Inoue

In Above The Well, Asao Inoue explores race, language and literacy education through a combination of scholarship, personal history, and even a bit of fiction. Inoue comes to terms with his own languaging practices in his upbring and schooling, while also arguing that there are racist aspects to English language standards promoted in schools and civic life. His discussion includes the ways students and everyone in society are judged by and through tacit racialized languaging, which he labels White language supremacy and which be argues contributes to racialized violence in the world today. ... More

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

By Alexandria L. Lockett, Iris D. Ruiz, James Chase Sanchez, and Christopher Carter

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that are relevant to 21^st-century knowledge production about language, communication, technology, and culture. The book presents a rare collaboration among scholars representing different racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, and ranks within the field of Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies. In each chapter, the authors examine the significance of their individual experiences with race and racism across contexts. Their research engages the politics of embodiment, institutional critique, multimodal rhetoric, materiality, and public digital literacies. ... More

Postprocess Postmortem

By Kristopher M. Lotier

In Postprocess Postmortem, Kristopher M. Lotier surveys the postprocess era-that-never-was, its end, and its after-lives. Employing cutting-edge digital research tools to track the circulation of texts and shifting scales from the global to the local and back again, he offers a revisionist history of a largely unchronicled past. From one perspective, the history of postprocess might seem to be a history of failure: what could have become The Next Big Thing in composition and writing studies during the 1990s and early 2000s never quite ascended. Today, few writing studies scholars apply the term postprocess to their own research or self-identify with a postprocess movement. And yet, ... More

Approaches to Lifespan Writing Research: Generating an Actionable Coherence

Edited by Ryan J. Dippre and Talinn Phillips

This edited collection builds on the three themes that emerged from the 2018 inaugural lifespan writing conference—identity, society, and theory—to further the study of writing through the lifespan. The contributors to this collection provide a framework within which the reader can develop a dynamic, interdisciplinary, multifaceted understanding of the limits and possibilities of studying lifespan writing. Recognizing that such research requires methodological rigor and flexibility as well as theoretical precision and adaptability, Approaches to Lifespan Writing Research draws on a range of methodological and theoretical approaches, ... More

Diverse Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and Writing Across the Curriculum: IWAC at 25

Edited by Lesley Erin Bartlett, Sandra L. Tarabochia, Andrea R. Olinger, and Margaret J. Marshall

Developed from presentations at the 2018 International Writing Across the Curriculum conference, this collection documents a key moment in the history of WAC, foregrounding connection and diversity as keys to the sustainability of the WAC movement in the face of new and long-standing challenges. Contributors reflect on the history and ongoing evolution of WAC, honoring grassroots efforts while establishing a more unified structure of collaborative leadership and mentorship. ... More

Situating Writing Processes

By Hannah J. Rule

What should it mean today to "teach writing as a process"? In Situating Writing Processes, Hannah J. Rule takes stock of this familiar commonplace in composition studies, arguing for a renewed understanding of process that emphasizes situatedness. To situate processes is to physically locate them: to observe the infinite ways they are shaped by particular bodies and affects, environments and spaces, others near and distant, and various tools or objects. When we call attention to the physical, material, and located dimensions of processes, we foreground the differences, contingencies, and lived experiences of composing. ... More

The Writing Studio Sampler: Stories About Change

Edited by Mark Sutton and Sally Chandler

The Writing Studio Sampler presents interrelated, cross-referenced essays illustrating writing studio methodologies. Drawing on foundational work by Rhonda Grego and Nancy Thompson, writing studios engage mentored student workshop groups in collaborative reflection and inquiry into the writing done by student participants, their past experiences learning to write, and the pedagogical practices for teaching writing at their institution. These extended, recursive reflections lead not only to improved writing but also to the chance for institutional critique. ... More

Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis

Edited by Kristine L. Blair and Lee Nickoson

This edited collection offers self-reflexive, critical accounts of how feminist writing studies scholars variously situated within rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies plan, implement, examine, and represent community-based inquiry and pedagogy. Readers will gain insight into the hows and whys involved with this important disciplinary work. Sharing a commitment to social change, the twenty-one chapter discussions and five course designs complicate and continue to evolve possibilities for how we conceptualize writing research and teaching as deeply collaborative, inclusive, and reciprocal practices. ... More

Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity

Edited by Mya Poe, Asao B. Inoue, and Norbert Elliot

This edited collection provides the first principled examination of social justice and the advancement of opportunity as the aim and consequence of writing assessment. Contributors to the volume offer interventions in historiographic studies, justice-focused applications in admission and placement assessment, innovative frameworks for outcomes design, and new directions for teacher research and professional development. Drawing from contributors' research, the collection constructs a social justice canvas—an innovative technique that suggests ways that principles of social justice can be integrated into teaching and assessing writing. The volume concludes with 18 assertions on writing assessment designed to guide future research in the field. ... More

Contemporary Perspectives on Cognition and Writing

Edited by Patricia Portanova, J. Michael Rifenburg, and Duane Roen

Since the 1980s, even as international writing scholars have embraced cognitive science, the number of studies building on research in writing and cognition has decreased in the United States. Despite this decline, significant interest and ongoing research in this critical area continues. This collection explores the historical context of cognitive studies, the importance to our field of studies in neuroscience, the applicability of habits of mind, and the role of cognition in literate development and transfer. ... More

Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies

Edited by Douglas M. Walls and Stephanie Vie

Social media have been (for quite some time now) part of the fabric of our lives. But as with many new technologies, it often takes a while for us to be able to step back, assess the tool's impact, and consider what's next. This collection offers one of the first sets of scholarly work in our field that responds to social media's influence on both popular and extra-curricular writing as well as on scholarly communication. Too frequently, social media is dismissed as non-academic, unworthy of sustained attention by researchers. The authors featured here present compelling reasons why this oft-neglected form of writing deserves—and demands—continued academic response. ... More

Acknowledging Writing Partners

By Laura R. Micciche

Acknowledging Writing Partners treats the genre of written acknowledgements as a lens for viewing writing as a practice of indebted partnerships. Like new media scholars who have argued that studying ubiquitous technologies such as the pencil reveals the mundane and profound ways in which writing is always mediated by tools, Laura R. Micciche argues that writing activities are frequently mediated by human and non-human others, advancing a view of composing that accounts for partners who emerge in acknowledgements: feelings, animals, and random material phenomena. ... More

Two WPA Pioneers: Ednah Shepherd Thomas and Joyce Steward

Edited by Susan H. McLeod, David Stock, and Bradley T. Hughes

As Barbara L'Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo have demonstrated in Historical Studies on Writing Program Administration (2004), the work of administering a writing program began long before a title accompanied the work. Because little was published in the early years about WPA work as such, recovering information from unpublished sources becomes paramount to understanding the early period of the profession. The materials here—a memoir, an oral history, and an out-of-print pamphlet on assessing writing—give us important information about writing program administration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from just after World War II up until the early 1980s. During that long period, the writing program was overseen by just two women, first Ednah Shepherd Thomas and then Joyce Steward, allowing for remarkable continuity through some turbulent times. ... More

Contingency, Exploitation, and Solidarity: Labor and Action in English Composition

Edited by Seth Kahn, William B. Lalicker, and Amy Lynch-Biniek

Composition has been a microcosm of the corporatization of higher education for thirty years, with adjuncts often handling the hard work of writing instruction. We've learned enough to know that change is needed. Influenced by the efforts of organizations such as New Faculty Majority, Faculty Forward, PrecariCorps, and national faculty unions, this collection highlights action, describing efforts that have improved adjunct working conditions in English departments. The editors categorize these efforts into five threads: strategies for self-advocacy; organizing within and across ranks; professionalizing in complex contexts; working for local changes to workload, pay, and material conditions; and protecting gains. ... More

Information Literacy: Research and Collaboration across Disciplines

Edited by Barbara J. D'Angelo, Sandra Jamieson, Barry Maid, and Janice R. Walker

This collection brings together scholarship and pedagogy from multiple perspectives and disciplines, offering nuanced and complex perspectives on Information Literacy in the second decade of the 21st century. Taking as a starting point the concerns that prompted the Association of Research Libraries (ACRL) to review the Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education and develop the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015), the chapters in this collection consider six frameworks. ... More

A Minefield of Dreams: Triumphs and Travails of Independent Writing Programs

Edited by Justin Everett and Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

In A Minefield of Dreams: Triumphs and Travails of Independent Writing Programs, Justin Everett and Cristina Hanganu-Bresch highlight both cautionary tales and stories of resounding success that can inspire and provide paths toward addressing the challenges faced by faculty who lead independent writing programs. ... More

Writing and School Reform: Writing Instruction in the Age of Common Core and Standardized Testing

By Joanne Addison and Sharon James McGee

In Writing and School Reform, Joanne Addison and Sharon James McGee respond to a testing and accountability movement that has imposed increasingly stronger measures of control over our classrooms, shifted teaching away from best practices, and eroded teacher and student agency. Drawing on historical and empirical research, Writing and School Reform details the origins of the accountability movement, explores its emerging effects on the teaching of writing, and charts a path forward that reasserts the agency of teachers and researchers in the field. ... More

Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer

Edited by Chris M. Anson and Jessie L. Moore

In Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer, Chris Anson and Jessie Moore offer an important new collection about prior learning and transfer theories that asks what writing knowledge should transfer, how we might recognize that transfer, and what the significance is—from a global perspective—of understanding knowledge transformation related to writing. The contributors examine strategies for supporting writers' transfer at key critical transitions. ... More

The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as Writers

By Lisa Emerson

In The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as Writers, Lisa Emerson offers an important corrective to the view that scientists are "poor writers, unnecessarily opaque, not interested in writing, and in need of remediation." She argues that scientists are among "the most sophisticated and flexible writers in the academy, often writing for a wider range of audiences (their immediate disciplinary peers, peers in adjacent fields, a broad scientific audience, industry, and a range of public audiences including social media) than most other faculty." ... More

WAC Partnerships Between Secondary and Postsecondary Institutions

Edited by Jacob S. Blumner and Pamela B. Childers

Working with educators at all academic levels involved in WAC partnerships, the authors and editors of this collection demonstrate successful models of collaboration between schools and institutions so others can emulate and promote this type of collaboration. The chapters in this collection describe and reflect on collaborative partnerships among middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities that are designed to prepare students for the kinds of work and civic engagement required to succeed in and contribute to society. ... More

Placing the History of College Writing: Stories from the Incomplete Archive

By Nathan Shepley

In Placing the History of College Writing, Nathan Shepley argues that pre-1950s composition history, if analyzed with the right conceptual tools, can pluralize and clarify our understanding of the relationship between the writing of college students and the writing's physical, social, and discursive surroundings. Even if the immediate outcome of student writing is to generate academic credit, Shepley shows, the writing does more complex rhetorical work. ... More

Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future

By Asao B. Inoue

In Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies, Asao B. Inoue theorizes classroom writing assessment as a complex system that is "more than" its interconnected elements. To explain how and why antiracist work in the writing classroom is vital to literacy learning, Inoue incorporates ideas about the white racial habitus that informs dominant discourses in the academy and other contexts. Inoue helps teachers understand the unintended racism that often occurs when teachers do not have explicit antiracist agendas in their assessments. ... More

Working With Academic Literacies: Case Studies Towards Transformative Practice

Edited by Theresa Lillis, Kathy Harrington, Mary R. Lea, and Sally Mitchell

The editors and contributors to this collection explore what it means to adopt an "academic literacies" approach in policy and pedagogy. Transformative practice is illustrated through case studies and critical commentaries from teacher-researchers working in a range of higher education contexts—from undergraduate to postgraduate levels, across disciplines, and spanning geopolitical regions including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cataluña, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ... More

Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction

Edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew

Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. The contributors to this collection explain the foundations of the recently published (2013) "A Position Statement of Principles and Examples Effective Practices for OWI" and provide illustrative practical applications. ... More

Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy

By Christy I. Wenger

In Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies, Christy Wenger argues for the inclusion of Eastern-influenced contemplative education within writing studies. She observes that, although we have "embodied" writing education in general by discussing the rhetorics of racialized, gendered, and disabled bodies, we have done substantially less to address the particular bodies that occupy our classrooms. She proposes that we turn to contemplative education practices that engages student bodies through fusing a traditional curriculum with contemplative practices including yoga, meditation, and the martial arts. ... More

Beyond Argument: Essaying as a Practice of (Ex)Change

By Sarah Allen

Beyond Argument offers an in-depth examination of how current ways of thinking about the writer-page relation in personal essays can be reconceived according to practices in the care of the self — an ethic by which writers such as Seneca, Montaigne, and Nietzsche lived. This approach promises to reinvigorate the form and address many of the concerns expressed by essay scholars and writers regarding the lack of rigorous exploration we see in our students' personal essays — and sometimes, even, in our own. ... More

Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies

By Steven J. Corbett

Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities. ... More

Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom

Edited by Tara Roeder and Roseanne Gatto

Critical Expressivism is an ambitious attempt to re-appropriate intellectual territory that has more often been charted by its detractors than by its proponents. Indeed, as Peter Elbow observes in his contribution to this volume, "As far as I can tell, the term 'expressivist' was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit." ... More

WAC and Second-Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices

Edited by Terry Myers Zawacki and Michelle Cox

This edited collection pursues the ambitious goal of including within WAC theory, research, and practice the differing perspectives, educational experiences, and voices of second-language writers. The editors and authors not only report new research but also share a wealth of pedagogical, curricular, and programmatic practices relevant to second-language writers. ... More

A Rhetoric of Literate Action: Literate Action Volume 1

By Charles Bazerman

The first in a two-volume set, A Rhetoric of Literate Action is written for "the experienced writer with a substantial repertoire of skills, and now would find it useful to think in more fundamental strategic terms about what they want their texts to accomplish, what form the texts might take, how to develop specific contents, and how to arrange the work of writing." The reader is offered a framework for ... More

A Theory of Literate Action: Literate Action Volume 2

By Charles Bazerman

The second in a two-volume set, A Theory of Literate Action draws on work from the social sciences—and in particular sociocultural psychology, phenomenological sociology, and the pragmatic tradition of social science— to "reconceive rhetoric fundamentally around the problems of written communication rather than around rhetoric's founding concerns of high stakes, agonistic, oral public persuasion" (p. 3). ... More

ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios

Edited by Katherine V. Wills and Rich Rice

The contributors to this edited collection address theories and practices advanced by some of the most innovative and active proponents of ePortfolios. Editors Katherine V. Wills and Rich Rice interweave twelve essays that address the ways in which ePortfolios can facilitate sustainable and measureable writing-related student development, assessment and accountability, learning and knowledge transfer, and principles related to universal design for learning, just-in-time support, interaction design, and usability testing. ... More

The Centrality of Style

Edited by Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri

In this collection, editors Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri argue that style is a central concern of composition studies even as they demonstrate that some of the most compelling work in the area has emerged from the margins of the field. Calling attention to this paradox in his foreword to the collection, Paul Butler observes, "Many of the chapters work within the liminal space in which style serves as both a centralizing and decentralizing force in rhetoric and composition." ... More

International Advances in Writing Research: Cultures, Places, Measures

Edited by Charles Bazerman, Chris Dean, Jessica Early, Karen Lunsford, Suzie Null, Paul Rogers, and Amanda Stansell

The thirty chapters in this edited collection were selected from the more than 500 presentations at the Writing Research Across Borders II Conference in 2011. With representatives from more than forty countries, this conference gave rise to the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research. The chapters selected for this colelctikon represent cutting edge research on writing from all regions, organized around three themes—cultures, places, and measures. ... More

Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places

Edited by Chris Thaiss, Gerd Bräuer, Paula Carlino, Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, and Aparna Sinha

Emerging from the International WAC/WID Mapping Project, this collection of essays is meant to inform decision-making by teachers, program managers, and college/university administrators considering how writing can most appropriately be defined, managed, funded, and taught in the places where they work. Writing Programs Worldwide offers an important global perspective to the growing research literature in the shaping of writing programs. ... More

Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers

By Andy Kirkpatrick and Zhichang Xu

The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world." ... More

Writing in Knowledge Societies

Edited by Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Anthony Paré, Natasha Artemeva, Miriam Horne, and Larissa Yousoubova

The editors of Writing in Knowledge Societies provide a thoughtful, carefully constructed collection that addresses the vital roles rhetoric and writing play as knowledge-making practices in diverse knowledge-intensive settings. The essays in this book examine the multiple, subtle, yet consequential ways in which writing is epistemic, articulating the central role of writing in creating, shaping, sharing, and contesting knowledge in a range of human activities in workplaces, civic settings, and higher education. ... More

Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom

Edited by Martine Courant Rife, Shaun Slattery, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss

The editors of Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom bring together stories, theories, and research that can further inform the ways in which we situate and address intellectual property issues in our writing classrooms. The essays in the collection identify and describe a wide range of pedagogical strategies, consider theories, present research, explore approaches, and offer both cautionary tales and local and contextual successes that can further inform the ways in which we situate and address intellectual property issues in our teaching. ... More

Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing

Edited by David Franke, Alex Reid, and Anthony Di Renzo

Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures – what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing" – often by addressing explicitly the tensions between them. Design Discourse offers insights into the high-stakes decisions made by program designers as they seek to "function at the intersection of the practical and the abstract, the human and the technical." ... More

The English Language: From Sound to Sense

By Gerald P. Delahunty and James J. Garvey

Grounded in linguistic research and argumentation, The English Language: From Sound to Sense is written to help readers become independent language analysts capable of critically evaluating claims about the language and the people who use it. Written in a clear style, it guides its readers on topics including basic assumptions about language and discourse, pronunciation, word-formation strategies, parts of speech, clause elements and patterns, how clauses may be combined into sentences, and how clauses and sentences are modified to suit speakers' and writers' discourse purposes. ... More

Genre in a Changing World

Edited by Charles Bazerman, Adair Bonini, and Débora Figueiredo

The twenty-four chapters in Genre in a Changing World, reflecting the work of scholars in Europe, Australasia, and North and South America, were selected from the more than 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies) held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil in August 2007—the largest gathering on genre to that date. ... More

Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives

Edited by Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell

The chapters in this edited collection consider human activity and writing from three different perspectives: the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves and communities; and the role of writing formal education. ... More

Queries and Contact Information

Queries should be directed via email to series editors Rich Rice (rich.rice@ttu.edu) and J. Michael Rifenburg (Michael.Rifenburg@ung.edu). To learn about submitting to the series, please see our Submission Guidelines, our Invitation to Contribute and Diversity Statement, and our Guide for Authors and Editors.

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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. University Press of Colorado is a nonprofit cooperative publishing enterprise supported by several Western universities. For more information, visit upcolorado.com. Parlor Press is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. For more information, visit www.parlorpress.com.

About Our Publication Process

The Perspectives on Writing 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.