4030 books match the query 'Language Arts & Disciplines' and 189 start with w
Tomasz Kamusella
Central European University Press, 2022
With forty-two extensively annotated maps, this atlas offers novel insights into the history and mechanics of how Central Europe’s languages have been made, unmade, and deployed for political action. The innovative combination of linguistics, history, and cartography makes a wealth of hard-to-reach knowledge readily available to both specialist and general readers. It combines information on languages, dialects, alphabets, religions, mass violence, or migrations over an extended period of time.
The story first focuses on Central Europe’s dialect continua, the emergence of states, and the spread of writing technology from the tenth century onward. Most maps concentrate on the last two centuries. The main storyline opens with the emergence of the Western European concept of the nation, in accord with which the ethnolinguistic nation-states of Italy and Germany were founded. In the Central European view, a “proper” nation is none other than the speech community of a single language. The Atlas aspires to help users make the intellectual leap of perceiving languages as products of human history and part of culture. Like states, nations, universities, towns, associations, art, beauty, religions, injustice, or atheism—languages are artefacts invented and shaped by individuals and their groups.

Edited by David Crystal and Hilary Crystal
University of Chicago Press, 2000
George Wilbur Meyer
University of Michigan Press, 1934
Joseph Harris
Utah State University Press, 2020
Janine Carlock, Maeve Eberhardt, Jaime Horst, and Lionel Menasche
University of Michigan Press, 2018
Helena Dettmer and Marcia Lindgren
University of Arizona Press, 2005
Nicole I. Caswell
Utah State University Press, 2016
The first book-length empirical investigation of writing center directors’ labor, The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors presents a longitudinal qualitative study of the individual professional lives of nine new directors. Inspired by Kinkead and Harris’s Writing Centers in Context (1993), the authors adopt a case study approach to examine the labor these directors performed and the varied motivations for their labor, as well as the labor they ignored, deferred, or sidelined temporarily, whether or not they wanted to.
The study shows directors engaged in various types of labor—everyday, disciplinary, and emotional—and reveals that labor is never restricted to a list of job responsibilities, although those play a role. Instead, labor is motivated and shaped by complex and unique combinations of requirements, expectations, values, perceived strengths, interests and desires, identities, and knowledge. The cases collectively distill how different institutions define writing and appropriate resources to writing instruction and support, informing the ongoing wider cultural debates about skills (writing and otherwise), the preparation of educators, the renewal/tenuring of educators, and administrative “bloat” in academe.
The nine new directors discuss more than just their labor; they address their motivations, their sense of self, and their own thoughts about the work they do, facets of writing center director labor that other types of research or scholarship have up to now left invisible. The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors strikes a new path in scholarship on writing center administration and is essential reading for present and future writing center administrators and those who mentor them.
Sue Livingston
Gallaudet University Press, 2010
Working Test: X-Word Grammar and Writing Activities for Students features 86 X-Word Grammar reading and writing exercises divided into five parts of increasing complexity. Deaf, second-language, and other students experiencing difficulty with English composition can perform these exercises as homework or as in-class activities. Through these exercises, they can master English grammar, improve their facility with language constructions, and meet the challenges of becoming better writers.
Sue Livingston
Gallaudet University Press, 2010
After teaching developmental writing to deaf students for may years, Sue Livingston found that students who can read and analyze written texts become better writers. They achieve their improvement by reading, then writing about what they have read. Livingston has embodied her successful approach in Working Text: Teaching Deaf and Second-Language Students to Be Better Writers.
In this straightforward instructional book, Livingston first explains what is involved and why her methods work with deaf students, second-language students, and other students who need to improve their writing ability. Upon this foundation, Working Text delineates how to teach students to write through reading and writing exercises. These exercises have been carefully crafted using the X-Word Grammar approach to help students discover common language constructions that they can apply to their own writing. As the students progress, their understanding of the elements of good writing will grow.
Working Text also includes all of the exercises and appendices featured in the Working Test: X-Word Grammar and Writing Activities for Students workbook, both in print and on on a special CD. The answers for the exercises are included as well, as are sample quizzes, and the CD can be used in the classroom for interactive lessons in conjunction with the student workbook. Working Text: Teaching Deaf and Second-Language Students to Be Better Writers, in concert with its companion student workbook, will help deaf, second-language, and other students develop into markedly better, more confident writers.

Mary M. Somerville
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2011

Mary M. Somerville
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2011
Edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L'Eplattenier, Lisa S. Mastrangelo
Southern Illinois University Press, 2010
Archival research of any magnitude can be daunting. With this in mind, Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo have developed an indispensable volume for the first-time researcher as well as the seasoned scholar. Working in the Archives is a guide to the world of rhetoric and composition archives, from locating an archival source and its materials to establishing one’s own collection of archival materials. This practical volume provides insightful information on a variety of helpful topics, such as basic archival theory, processes, and principles; the use of hidden or digital archives; the intricacies of searching for and using letters and photographs; strategies for addressing the dilemmas of archival organization without damaging the provenance of materials; the benefits of seeking sources outside academia; and the difficult (yet often rewarding) aspects of research on the Internet.
Working in the Archives moves beyond the basics to discuss the more personal and emotional aspects of archival work through the inclusion of interviews with experienced researchers such as Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Peter Mortensen, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Kenneth Lindblom, and David Gold. Each shares his or her personal stories of the joys and challenges that face today’s researchers.
Packed with useful recommendations, this volume draws on the knowledge and experiences of experts to present a well-rounded guidebook to the often winding paths of academic archival investigation. These in-depth yet user-friendly essays provide crucial answers to the myriad questions facing both fledgling and practiced researchers, making Working in the Archives an essential resource.

Laura Townsend Kane
American Library Association, 2011
Anne Ellen Geller and Michele Eodice
Utah State University Press, 2013

Paul Signorelli
American Library Association, 2011
The best kind of learning is that which never ends—and a culture of training means that staff will be more flexible and responsive to new ideas and strategies, imperative in today's libraries. In this practical resource, leading workplace trainers Reed and Signorelli offer guidance on improving the effectiveness of training programs. Their book takes readers through the entire process of developing, implementing, and sustaining training programs and communities of learning, in order to
Martin J. Medhurst
Michigan State University Press, 2018
James M. Lang
University of Chicago Press, 2025
Joli Jensen
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Rachel Toor
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Mike Rose
Southern Illinois University Press, 1984
Writer’s block is more than a mere matter of discomfort and missed deadlines; sustained experiences of writer’s block may influence academic success and career choices. Writers in the business world, professional writers, and students all have known this most common and least studied problem with the composing process. Mike Rose, however, sees it as a limitable problem that can be precisely analyzed and remedied through instruction and tutorial programs.
Rose defines writer’s block as “an inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than a lack of skill or commitment,” which is measured by “passage of time with limited productive involvement in the writing task.” He applies insights of cognitive psychology to reveal dimensions of the problem never before examined.
In his three-faceted approach, Rose develops and administers a questionnaire to identify writers experiencing both high and low degrees of blocking; through stimulated recall he examines the composing processes of these writers; and he proposes a cognitive conceptualization of writer’s block and of the composing process.
In drawing up his model, Rose delineates many cognitive errors that cause blocking, such as inflexible rules or conflicting planning strategies. He also discusses the practices and strategies that promote effective composition.
The reissue of this classic study of writer’s block includes a new preface by the author that advocates more mixed-methods research in rhetoric and composition, details how he conducted his writer’s block study, and discusses how his approach to a study like this would be different if conducted today.
Paul Butler
Utah State University Press, 2018
Peter Chilson and Joanne B. Mulcahy
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Robert Eddy
Utah State University Press, 2019
James Rushing Daniel
Utah State University Press, 2021
Mya Poe
University Press of Colorado, 2018
Willliam Least Heat-Moon
University of Missouri Press, 2023
Winner, Distinguished Literary Achievement, Missouri Humanities Council, 2015
The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than thirty years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper—the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book. Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happenedis an adventure story of its own, a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil but from a letterpress in Tennessee.”
Readers will not find a collection of abstract formulations and rules for writing; rather, this book gracefully incorporates examples from Heat-Moon’s own experience. As he explains, “This story might be termed an inadvertent autobiography written not by the traveler who took Ghost Dancing in 1978 over the byroads of America but by a man only listening to him. That blue-roadman hasn’t been seen in more than a third of a century, and over the last many weeks as I sketched in these pages, I’ve regretted his inevitable departure.” Filtered as the struggles of the “blue-roadman” are through the awareness of someone more than thirty years older with a half dozen subsequent books to his credit, the story of how his first book “happened” is all the more resonant for readers who may not themselves be writers but who are interested in the tricky balance of intuitive creation and self-discipline required for any artistic endeavor.
Candis Bond
Utah State University Press, 2026
Writing Center Administrators as Campus Leaders challenges the current erasure of the WCA role within discourse on campus leadership by highlighting the various ways these leaders have had transformative impacts on their institutions, emphasizing the wide range of knowledge, skills, and added value that WCAs bring to the university ecosystem.
Contributors from diverse institutions, institutional contexts, identity formations, and career paths theorize different forms of leadership from within and beyond writing centers. The first section brings together perspectives on leadership theory and practice, focusing on the practical gains offered and challenges afforded via writing center professional pathways. The second section emphasizes partnerships and networks forged through intentional and creative leadership models. In the final section, contributors consider the emotional and affective dimensions of WCA labor, offering multiple roadmaps for WCAs to transition their experiences into more recognition, resources, and broader administrative roles while underscoring the potential of inclusive, community-focused leadership for current and aspiring WCAs.
Providing key insights and practical examples, Writing Center Administrators as Campus Leaders validates and inspires current and future WCAs and informs university administrators on the ways that WCAs can and do impact higher education as true campus leaders.
Steven J. Corbett
Utah State University Press, 2022
Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison
Utah State University Press, 2023
Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan
Utah State University Press, 2011
Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan have created a rich resource for writing center tutors, administrators, and scholars. Motivated by a scholarly interest in race, literacy, and pedagogy, and by an ethical commitment to antiracism work, contributors address a series of related questions: How does institutionalized racism in American education shape the culture of literacy and language education in the writing center? How does racism operate in the discourses of writing center scholarship and lore, and in what ways are writing centers unwittingly complicit in racist practices? How can they meaningfully operationalize antiracist work? How do they persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in their daily practice?
The conscientious, nuanced attention to race in Writing Centers and the New Racism is meant to model what it means to be bold in engagement with these hard questions and to spur the kind of sustained, productive, multivocal, and challenging dialogue that, with a few important exceptions, has been absent from the field.
Kim Hensley Owens
Southern Illinois University Press, 2015
Women seeking to express concerns about childbirth or to challenge institutionalized medicine by writing online birth plans or birth stories exercise rhetorical agency in undeniably feminist ways. In Writing Childbirth: Women’s Rhetorical Agency in Labor and Online, author Kim Hensley Owens explores how women create and use everyday rhetorics in planning for, experiencing, and writing about childbirth.
Drawing on medical texts, popular advice books, and online birth plans and birth stories, as well as the results of a childbirth writing survey, Owens considers how women’s agency in childbirth is sanctioned, and how it is not. She examines how women’s rhetorical choices in writing interact with institutionalized medicine and societal norms. Writing Childbirth reveals the contradictory messages women receive about childbirth, their conflicting expectations about it, and how writing and technology contribute to and reconcile these messages and expectations.
Demonstrating the value of extending rhetorical investigations of health and medicine beyond patient-physician interactions and the discourse of physicians, Writing Childbirth offers fresh insight into feminist rhetorical agency and technology and expands our understanding of the rhetorics of health and medicine.
Holly Hassel
Utah State University Press, 2026
Despite the adage “there are no writing emergencies,” at times situations invite or require immediate written response. In a modern era of social media and with the constancy of “crisis,” knowing when, how, and why to respond quickly is increasingly important. In Writing Emergencies, a diverse group of authors contribute scholarly, narrative-based discussions of writing emergencies, descriptions of more and less successful strategies, and a reflective conclusion that offers implications for writing studies praxis and theory.
In this collection, contributors demonstrate the reality of writing emergencies—in their own writing lives, classrooms, and programs—and they offer both self- and community-focused approaches for response. Chapters focus on discernment and prioritization, recognizing that all stressors are not necessarily emergencies. Instead, expanding our vocabulary for (and subsequent understanding) of the kinds of difficulties we come across can build our professional capacity and support greater career sustainability. The volume also illustrates the role of coalitions in navigating writing emergencies and how purposefully building and activating these coalitions subverts some challenges before they become emergencies, particularly those that are recurrent or manufactured.
Writing Emergencies both names and grapples with writing emergencies and offers insights for capacity-building in the acts of filtering and prioritizing competing urgent demands. The findings are meaningful for all leaders, students, and teachers who center care in their relationships with others.
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Linda Adler-Kassner
University Press of Colorado, 2023
In Writing Expertise, Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle address the question, “How can instructors across disciplines best help students write well?” Drawing on research about how disciplines use writing to engage in shared ways of thinking, practicing, and demonstrating knowledge, the authors offer an approach that helps faculty across the disciplines invite students to bring new ideas and identities to their work. Throughout the book, Adler-Kassner and Wardle help instructors explore what it means to write well in their courses, fields, or disciplines and offer strategies and activities that can help them improve their assignments by infusing research-based writing activities into their courses.
Writing Expertise provides an innovative, equity- and research-based approach to writing in the disciplines that will enrich instructor and student thinking. Thoughtful discussions and well-designed activities provide the support needed to help instructors put disciplinary thinking into written form, develop systematic aways of learning about the students who write in their courses, and ultimately develop more effective, inclusive courses.
Judy K. Morris
University of Illinois Press, 2001
Janet Burroway, with Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Amy J. Devitt
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008
In Writing Genres, Amy J. Devitt examines genre from rhetorical, social, linguistic, professional, and historical perspectives and explores genre's educational uses, making this volume the most comprehensive view of genre theory today.
Writing Genres does not limit itself to literary genres or to ideas of genres as formal conventions but additionally provides a theoretical definition of genre as rhetorical, dynamic, and flexible, which allows scholars to examine the role of genres in academic, professional, and social communities.
Writing Genres demonstrates how genres function within their communities rhetorically and socially, how they develop out of their contexts historically, how genres relate to other types of norms and standards in language, and how genres nonetheless enable creativity. Devitt also advocates a critical genre pedagogy based on these ideas and provides a rationale for first-year writing classes grounded in teaching antecedent genres.
Sara Wilder
Utah State University Press, 2025
Anne Ruggles Gere
Southern Illinois University Press, 1987
Drawing upon previously unpublished archival materials as well as historical accounts, Gere traces the history of writing groups in America, from their origins over a century ago to their recent reappearance in the works of Macrorie, Elbow, Murray, and others.
From this historical perspective Gere examines the theoretical foundations of writing groups, challenging the traditional concept of writing as an individual performance. She offers instead a broader view of authorship that includes both individual and social dimensions, with implications not only for the teaching of composition but also for theories of rhetoric and literacy.
Edited by Victor J. Vitanza
Southern Illinois University Press, 1994
This collection of essays, edited by Victor J. Vitanza, is a historiography of rhetoric, summarizing what has recently been accomplished in the revision of traditional histories of rhetoric and discussing what might be accomplished in the future. Featuring a variety of approaches—classical, revisionary, and avant-garde—it includes articles by Janet M. Atwill, James A. Berlin, William A. Covino, Sharon Crowley, Hans Kellner, John Poulakos, Takis Poulakos, John Schilb, Jane Sutton, Kathleen Ethel Welch, Lynn Worsham, and Victor J. Vitanza.
In the first essay, Sharon Crowley identifies the major players and primary issues in a chronological narrative of the debate about the writing of the history of rhetoric that has arisen between traditionalists / essentialists and revisionists/constructionists. In recent years, traditionalists have demanded a more complete and accurate history, while revisionists have sought a critical understanding of the various epistemological-ideological grounds upon which a history of rhetoric had been and could be constructed. Revisionists, in their search for multiple, contestatory histories, have begun to critique one another, breaking into two general groups: one favoring a political-social program, the other resisting and disrupting such an approach.
Vitanza echoes Crowley’s review of this ongoing debate by asking a crucial question: What exactly does it mean to be a revisionist historian? By combining the disintegration of various revisionist and subversive positions into a communal "we," he asks an additional question: Who is the "we" writing histories of rhetoric?
The essays that follow give a rich answer to Vitanza’s questions. They bring the writing of histories of rhetoric into the larger area of postmodern theory, raising neglected issues of race, gender, and class. Written with a variety of intentions, some of the essays are expository and highly argumentative while others are manifestos, innovative and far-reaching in tone. Still others are summaries and background studies, providing useful information to both the novice student and the experienced scholar.
This book, situated at a juncture between two disciplines, composition studies and speech, will be a landmark collection for many years.
Eli Goldblatt
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012
James A. Berlin. Foreword by Donald C. Stuart
Southern Illinois University Press, 1984
Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that “no rhetoric—not Plato’s or Aristotle’s or Quintilian’s or Perelman’s—is permanent.” At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing various views of reality expressed through a rhetoric.
Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: “reality, writer or speaker, audience, and language.” As emphasis shifts from one element to another, or as the interaction between elements changes, or as the definitions of the elements change, rhetoric changes. This alters prevailing views on such important questions as what is appearance, what is reality.
In this interpretive study Berlin classifies the three 19th-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic, a uniquely American development growing out of the transcendental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insight into society and the beliefs of the people.
Greg Giberson
Utah State University Press, 2015
The writing major is among the most exciting scenes in the evolving American university. Writing Majors is a collection of firsthand descriptions of the origins, growth, and transformations of eighteen different programs. The chapters provide useful administrative insight, benchmark information, and even inspiration for new curricular configurations from a range of institutions.
A practical sourcebook for those who are building, revising, or administering their own writing majors , this volume also serves as a historical archive of a particular instance of growth and transformation in American higher education. Revealing bureaucratic, practical, and institutional matters as well as academic ideals and ideologies, each profile includes sections providing a detailed program review and rationale, an implementation narrative, and reflection and prospection about the program.
Documenting eighteen stories of writing major programs in various stages of formation, preservation, and reform and exposing the contingencies of their local and material constitution, Writing Majors speaks as much to the “how to” of building writing major programs as to the larger “what,” “why,” and “how” of institutional growth and change.
Dara Rossman Regaignon
The Ohio State University Press, 2021
Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, & Geoffrey Sirc
Utah State University Press, 2004
As new media mature, the changes they bring to writing in college are many and suggest implications not only for the tools of writing, but also for the contexts, personae, and conventions of writing. An especially visible change has been the increase of visual elements-from typographic flexibility to the easy use and manipulation of color and images. Another would be in the scenes of writing-web sites, presentation "slides," email, online conferencing and coursework, even help files, all reflect non-traditional venues that new media have brought to writing. By one logic, we must reconsider traditional views even of what counts as writing; a database, for example, could be a new form of written work.
The authors of Writing New Media bring these ideas and the changes they imply for writing instruction to the audience of rhetoric/composition scholars. Their aim is to expand the college writing teacher's understanding of new media and to help teachers prepare students to write effectively with new media beyond the classroom. Each chapter in the volume includes a lengthy discussion of rhetorical and technological background, and then follows with classroom-tested assignments from the authors' own teaching.
Brad Jacobson
Utah State University Press, 2026
Writing Opportunities presents in-depth text histories illustrating the interrelationship of writing, identities, and belonging in college writing transitions. Drawing on more than two years of research with three Latinx/a/o students transitioning from the same high school class to the local university, Brad Jacobson brings together analyses of interview transcripts, student writing, classroom genres, and institutional policies to foreground a sense of belonging as central to writing development and learning.
Including interviews with students and their instructors, Jacobson traces writing opportunities that Hercules, Jain, and Lucy were afforded as they transitioned from high school to college writing, particularly in general education courses. Chapters attend to multiple levels of interaction to show how policies, practices, and social histories can impact opportunities for learning. With attention to dominant discourses of writing that narrow what counts as good writing as well as positive opportunity structures that extend possibilities for identification, engagement, and deep learning, Jacobson also posits writing as an opportunity for writers to explore possibilities for who we are and who we may become.
Jacobson’s humanizing research invites readers to consider opportunity from multiple perspectives and shows how subtle shifts in relationships among students, instructors, and institutions can increase meaningful learning and provide a sense of belonging in educational contexts.
Lillian Craton
University Press of Colorado, 2017
Teachers of first-year composition courses do essential work. Teaching argumentation and conventions of university-level writing; demystifying citation and punctuation; promoting reading comprehension and analysis. Yet such skills, as important as they are, do not reflect the full scope of our discipline. Some of the best learning in composition coursework relates to students' growth as successful individuals able to live and write in a complex world. Composition instructors demand civil discourse and respect for diversity. They coach students in time management and the creative process. They build up confidence, break down learning obstacles, and promote self-examination. The essays found in Writing Pathways for Student Success, written by and for instructors of college writing, examine life lessons that both students and instructors learn from first-year composition courses.
Contributors: Lori Brown, Kathryn Crowther, Casie Fedukovich, Rachel Anya Fomalhaut, Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Christopher Garland, Ruth A. Goldfine, Pamela Henney, Rachel McCoppin, Deborah Mixson-Brookshire, Karen Bishop Morris, Sarah O’Connor, Abigail G. Scheg, Lisa Whalen
Ronald J. Pelias
Southern Illinois University Press, 1999
Ronald J. Pelias is concerned with writing about performance, from the everyday performative routines to the texts on stage. He seeks to write performatively, to offer poetic or aesthetic renderings of performance events in order to capture some sense of their nature. In his quest for the spirit of theatrical performances, Pelias asks more of the written word than the word can deliver. Yet the attempt is both desirable—and necessary. To discuss performance without some accounting for its essence as art, he asserts, is at best misleading, at worst, fraud.
Pelias divides his efforts to present performance events into three general categories: "Performing Every Day," "On Writing and Performing," and "Being a Witness." "Performing Every Day" focuses on performances ranging from the daily business of enacting roles to the telling of tales that make life meaningful. It incorporates essays about the ongoing process of presenting oneself in everyday life; the gender script that insists that men enact manly performances; the classroom performances of teachers and students; stories of gender, class, and race that mark identity; and a performance installation entitled "A Day’s Talk."
"On Writing and Performing" examines the written script and performance practices. It includes a description of a struggle between a writer and a performer as they protect their own interests; an intimate look at an apprehensive performer; a short play entitled "The Audition"; and a chronicle of performance process from the perspective of an actor.
"Being a Witness" examines performance from the perspective of the audience and the director: being an audience member; viewing theatre in the context of New York City; directing and being directed by actors’ bodies; and watching The DEF Comedy Jam.
Richard A. Watson
Southern Illinois University Press, 1992
Richard A. ("Red") Watson has published fiction, general nonfiction, and scholarly books. His essay "On the Zeedijk," about Descartes in Holland and first published in The Georgia Review, was the lead essay in The Pushcart Prize XV, 1990–1991: Best of the Small Presses. Red knows writing.
He also knows academe and has written Writing Philosophy as a kind of survival manual for undergraduates, graduate students, and junior faculty members in philosophy. Also helpful to those in the humanities and the social sciences, the book is a guide to the professional writing and publishing that are essential to an active participation in the conversation and discussion that constitute these professional fields. To the extent that publication is the crucial factor in tenure decisions, it will help the beginning scholar meet tenure criteria.
Despite the importance of the oral tradition in philosophy and the influence of the dialogue, many philosophical points are so intricate and complex that they can be advanced, followed, and criticized only if they are written as stepwise arguments for study and contemplation at length and at leisure. Watson provides a set of basic principles and a plan for writing argumentative papers of 1,500 to 15,000 words (3 to 30 printed pages) and books containing a sequence of sustained arguments of 70,000 to 150,000 words (200 to 300 printed pages).
Because the first book of most professional philosophers is a revised dissertation, Watson presents a plan for writing that dissertation in such a way that its chapters will serve as publishable articles and the dissertation itself will need very little rewriting as a book. His discussion of the principles of reason, clarity, and argument ranges from such topics as dangling participles and the proper usage of ellipses to matters of categorization and univocity.
Jessica Nastal
University Press of Colorado, 2023