Interviews practicing scientist and essayist Stephen Jay Gould about his essay writing. (SR)

Argues that, as an elusive genre that defies marked definitions, autobiography offers literature and composition teachers various routes and roots for promoting multiculturalism in the classroom. (SR)

Addresses the argument that private writing is not really private. Explores the role of empirical evidence. Offers arguments that acknowledge private writing as different from public or social writing. Discusses methods of researching private writing. (CR)

Responds to an article by Ellen Barton against negative argumentation in a prior issue of this journal. Examines how the debate on empirical versus non-empirical research is a product of different, but not mutually exclusive, historical narratives of research in and around composition. Includes a reply from Barton. (SR)

Describes how to record what students learn during activities and demonstrations. Focuses on essential writing skills. (YDS)

Notes that teachers and writers across the country were called upon to share poems and prose that they had turned to in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Notes that the response was a testament to literature's ability to transform experience of events as well as its capacity to be transformed, to be rendered anew by tragedy.…

Argues against the use of negative arguments about methodological approaches in the field of composition. Suggests negative argumentation exacerbates the tension concerning the place and value of empirical studies in research; it potentially limits the field's ability to ask certain kinds of research questions; and it risks impoverishing the…

Explores the concept of disidentification. Defines the task of a third sophistic pedagogy as one which encourages students to de-negate the negations that have made their "stories" reproducible, to embrace their own ineffability, and so to affirm precisely what divides them as what they share: their radical non-figurability. (NH)

Presents an interview with Richard Peck. Notes that Peck was candid about his life and craft as a writer, offering glimpses into the creation of his work and the story behind his receipt of the Newbery Medal. Looks back at a life that led him to become a writer and provides insight into what his readers might expect from future projects. (SG)

Presents two letters to a young writer, modeled on the influential "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Notes the first letter situates itself when a young writer first turns toward poetry; and the second addresses the relationship between mentorship and the imagination, questioning the right of any writer to presume to guide the…

Teachers and students share a close bond of being mentors and lifelong friends. This kind of a bond does not end with the loss of a loved one but instead continues to grow amidst various circumstances in life.

Murals tell specific stories, but, because they are created from many specific stories, they also tell a common story, a story of the things that connect people to each other. In this way, muralism is an antidote for the hatred and disconnectedness in society. Moral education is participatory. It is a creative, critical and analytical process.…

Recognizing the enormous volume of letters that writers receive from children each year, this article takes a brief look at how authors have been impacting young readers and writers through personal correspondence and e-mail. The article provides suggestions for teacher librarians and teachers to use with their students when encouraging them to…

I argue that examining two collections of essays designed for the preparation of new writing teachers and published twenty years apart provides some important clues to what has occurred to composition studies in the interval. Building on the framework I established in two previous CCC articles, I argue that composition studies has become a less…

Business professionals and instructors often view writing skills as one of the most important qualifications that employees should possess. However, many business employees, including recent college graduates, have serious writing deficiencies, especially in their ability to use standard English. As a result, American businesses spend billions of…