Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives
- community, Society, WAC, Pedagogy, identity
Edited by Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell
Copy edited by Cissy Ross. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
The chapters in this edited collection, published solely in electronic format, 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. The editors observe, "The activity approaches to understanding writing presented in this volume give us ways to examine more closely how people do the work of the world and form the relations that give rise to the sense of selves and societies through writing, reading, and circulating texts. These essays provide major contributions to both writing research and activity theory as well as to the recently emerged but now robust research tradition that brings the two together."
Table of Contents
Open the entire book: In PDF Format 
Introduction, Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.1.3
Producing Work and the Economy
A Central Bank's "Communications Strategy": The Interplay of Activity, Discourse Genres, and Technology in a Time of Organizational Change, Graham Smart
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.01
Structure and Agency in Medical Case Presentations, Catherine F. Schryer, Lorelei Lingard, Marlee Spafford, and Kim Garwood
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.02
Compound Mediation in Software Development: Using Genre Ecologies to Study Textual Artifacts, Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.03
When Management Becomes Personal: An Activity-Theoretic Analysis of Palm Technologies, Cheryl Geisler
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.04
Writing and the Management of Power: Producing Public Policy in New Zealand, Derek Wallace
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.05
Producing Selves in Community
Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity, Paul Prior and Jody Shipka
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.06
Intercultural Knowledge Building: The Literate Action of a Community Think Tank, Linda Flower
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.07
Participant and Institutional Identity: Self-representation Across Multiple Genres at a Catholic College, Katrina M. Powell
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.08
Creating a Writer's Identity on the Boundaries of Two Communities of Practice, Jean Ketter and Judy Hunter
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.09
Producing Education
'Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians': Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education, David R. Russell and Arturo Yañez
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.10
Legends of the Centre: System, Self, and Linguistic Consciousness, Janet Giltrow
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.11
Accounting for Conflicting Mental Models of Communication in Student-Teacher Interaction: An Activity Theory Analysis, Kathryn Evans
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.12
What is Not Institutionally Visible Does Not Count: The Problem of Making Activity Assessable, Accountable, and Plannable, Charles Bazerman
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.13
Dissertation Writers' Negotiations with Competing Activity Systems, Dana Britt Lundell and Richard Beach
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317.2.14
About the Editors
Charles Bazerman, professor and chair of the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is interested in the social dynamics of writing, rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of knowledge production and use. He has been active in developing graduate degree objectives in rhetoric, literacy, and communication at UCSB and previously at Georgia Tech. His most recent book, The Languages of Edison's of Edison's Light, won the American Association of Publisher's award for the best scholarly book of 1999 in the History of Science and Technology. Previous books include Constructing Experience, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines, and Involved: Writing For College, Writing for Your Self.
David R. Russell is professor of English at Iowa State University, where he teaches in the Ph.D. program in Rhetoric and Professional Communication. His research interests are in writing across the curriculum, international writing instruction, the history of rhetoric in education, and cultural-historical Activity Theory. His book Writing in the Academic Disciplines: A Curricular History examines the history of American writing instruction outside of composition courses. He has published many articles on writing across the curriculum and co-edited Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum, a special issue of Mind, Culture, and Activity on "The Activity of Writing, The Writing of Activity," and Writing and Learning in Cross-National Perspective: Transitions from Secondary to Higher Education. He has given workshops and lectures on WAC, nationally and internationally, and he was the first Knight Visiting Scholar in Writing at Cornell University.
Publication Information: Bazerman, Charles, & David R. Russell (Eds.). (2003). Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. The WAC Clearinghouse; Mind, Culture, and Activity. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317
Publication Date: February 1, 2003
ISBN 978-0-97270-231-7 (pdf)
DOI 10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317
Contact Information:
Charles Bazerman's Email: bazerman@education.ucsb.edu
David R. Russell's Email: drrussel@iastate.edu
Reviews
Review by Aimee L. Whiteside in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, March, 2006.
Perspectives on Writing
Series Editor: Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
Copyright © 2003 by the Editors and Authors of this book. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. Published by the WAC Clearinghouse and Mind, Culture, and Society. 532 pages, with notes, illustrations, and bibliography. Available in digital format for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.