“To understand the ways students learn to write, we must go beyond the small and all too often marginalized component of the curriculum that treats writing explicitly and look at the broader, though largely tacit traditions students encounter in the whole curriculum,” explains David R. Russell, in the introduction to this singular study. The updated edition provides a comprehensive history of writing instruction outside general composition courses in American secondary and higher education, from the founding public secondary schools and research universities in the 1870s, through the spread of the writing-across-the-curriculum movement in the 1980s, through the WAC efforts in contemporary curriculums.

“Writing in the Academic Disciplines is fascinating reading. The research is thorough and detailed. Along with contemporary and historical articles and books about writing instruction, Russell reviews and quotes from articles and books written by educators at the time, from college catalogs, and from personal reports of instruction. The personal accounts add human interest to the historical analysis, and the discussion of the cross-curricular writing programs as reflective of educational movements broadens the focus beyond English studies. In the depth and variety of its coverage, Writing in the Academic Disciplines adds dimension to other historical accounts of twentieth-century writing instruction.”

—Journal of Technical Writing and Communication