Perspectives on Writing Series

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. ... 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

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

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

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

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

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 contact information page. University Press of Colorado is a nonprofit cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University. 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.