BiblioVault - Books about Academic writing

Before Shaughnessy

Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960

Kelly Ritter

Southern Illinois University Press, 2009

In Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920–1960, Kelly Ritter uses materials from the archives at Harvard and Yale and contemporary theories of writing instruction to reconsider the definition of basic writing and basic writers within a socio-historical context. Ritter challenges the association of basic writing with only poorly funded institutions and poorly prepared students.

Using Yale and Harvard as two sample case studies, Ritter shows that basic writing courses were alive and well, even in the Ivy League, in the early twentieth century. She argues not only that basic writers exist across institutional types and diverse student populations, but that the prevalence of these writers has existed far more historically than we generally acknowledge.

Uncovering this forgotten history of basic writing at elite institutions, Ritter contends that the politics and problems of the identification and the definition of basic writers and basic writing began long before the work of Mina Shaughnessy in Errors and Expectations and the rise of open admissions. Indeed, she illustrates how the problems and politics have been with us since the advent of English A at Harvard and the heightened consumer-based policies that resulted in the new admissions criteria of the early twentieth-century American university. In order to recognize this long-standing reality of basic writing, we must now reconsider whether the nearly standardized, nationalized definition of “basic” is any longer a beneficial one for the positive growth and democratic development of our first-year writing programs and students.

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Beyond Convention

Genre Innovation in Academic Writing

Christine M. Tardy

University of Michigan Press, 2016

“Reading this book did more than just make me more aware of something I already, somewhat subconsciously, was doing, however. It pushed my thinking about if, when, and how writing teachers should encourage students to push genre boundaries and to innovate.”
---Foreword by Dana R. Ferris, author of Treatment of Error and Teaching College Writing to Diverse Student Populations

This book attempts to engage directly with the complexities and tensions in genre from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. While struggling with questions of why, when, and how different writers can manipulate conventions, Tardy became interested in related research into voice and identity in academic writing and then began to consider the ways that genre can be a valuable tool that allows writing students and teachers to explore expected conventions and transformative innovations. For Tardy, genres aren’t “fixed,” and she argues also that neither genre constraints nor innovations are objective—that they can be accepted or rejected depending on the context.

Beyond Convention considers a range of learning and teaching settings, including first-year undergraduate writing, undergraduate writing in the disciplines, and the advanced academic writing of graduate students and professionals. It is intended for those interested in the complexities of written communication, whether their interests are grounded in genre theory, academic discourse, discourse analysis, or writing instruction. With its attentiveness to context, discipline, and community, it offers a resource for those interested in English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, and Writing in the Disciplines. At its heart, this is a book for teachers and teacher educators.

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Beyond Productivity

Embodied, Situated, and (Un)Balanced Faculty Writing Processes

Kim Hensley Owens

Utah State University Press, 2023

In Beyond Productivity, a wide range of contributors share honest narratives of the sometimes-impossible conditions that scholars face when completing writing projects. The essays provide backstage views of the authors' varying approaches to moving forward when the desire to produce wanes, when deciding a project is not working, when working within and around and redefining academic productivity expectations, and when writing with ever-changing bodies that do not always function as expected.

This collection positions scholarly writers' ways of writing as a form of flexible, evolving knowledge. By exhibiting what is lost and gained through successive rounds of transformation and adaptation over time, the contributors offer a sustainable understanding and practice of process—one that looks beyond productivity as the primary measure of success. Each presents a fluid understanding of the writing process, illustrating its deeply personal nature and revealing how fragmented and disjointed methods and experiences can highlight what is precious about writing.

Beyond Productivity determines anew the use and value of scholarly writing and the processes that produce it, both within and beyond the context of the losses, constraints, and adaptations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Bodies of Knowledge

Embodied Rhetorics in Theory and Practice

A. Abby Knoblauch

Utah State University Press, 2021

Bodies of Knowledge challenges homogenizing (mis)understandings of knowledge construction and provides a complex discussion of what happens when we do not attend to embodied rhetorical theories and practices. Because language is always a reflection of culture, to attempt to erase language and knowledge practices that reflect minoritized and historically excluded cultural experiences obscures the legitimacy of such experiences both within and outside the academy.

The pieces in Bodies of Knowledge draw explicit attention to the impact of the body on text, the impact of the body in text, the impact of the body as text, and the impact of the body upon textual production. The contributors investigate embodied rhetorics through the lenses of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability and pain, technologies and ecologies, clothing and performance, and scent, silence, and touch. In doing so, they challenge the (false) notion that academic knowledge—that is, “real” knowledge—is disembodied and therefore presumed white, middle class, cis-het, able-bodied, and male. This collection lays bare how myriad bodies invent, construct, deliver, and experience the processes of knowledge building.

Experts in the field of writing studies provide the necessary theoretical frameworks to better understand productive (and unproductive) uses of embodied rhetorics within the academy and in the larger social realm. To help meet the theoretical and pedagogical needs of the discipline, Bodies of Knowledge addresses embodied rhetorics and embodied writing more broadly though a rich, varied, and intersectional approach. These authors address larger questions around embodiment while considering the various impacts of the body on theories and practices of rhetoric and composition.

Contributors: Scot Barnett, Margaret Booker, Katherine Bridgman, Sara DiCaglio, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Vyshali Manivannan, Temptaous Mckoy, Julie Myatt, Julie Nelson, Ruth Osorio, Kate Pantelides, Caleb Pendygraft, Nadya Pittendrigh, Kellie Sharp-Hoskins, Anthony Stagliano, Megan Strom

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