Research that has examined university assignment writing has varied from large-scale, inventorial surveys across disciplines to more specific, finer-grained analyses of the assignment requirements of specific disciplines. However, while such research has involved surveys of the views and expectations of faculty or the analysis of assignment tasks,…

This article argues that craft knowledge can provide a disciplinary rationale for writing studies. It draws from the ancient concepts of teche, phronesis, and the four causes of making and makes the case for a definition of disciplinary knowledge fitting for writing studies. The article concludes with a conceptual framework that can serve as a…

This dissertation examines theories of emotion in politically contentious discourse in order to better understand the implications for teachers and students in composition classrooms where critical pedagogical practices lead to contentious political work. I suggest that partly as a result of the social and political turn in composition studies,…

Against the limitations English monolingualism imposes on composition scholarship, as evident in journal submission requirements, frequency of references to non-English medium writing, bibliographical resources, and their own past work, the authors argue for adopting a translingual approach to languages, disciplines, localities, and research…

The concept of voice permeates perspectives on reading and writing and has helped guide both literacy research and teaching. However, what voice is for scholars, researchers, and teachers takes many guises, some in apparent contradiction to others. We offer a theoretical perspective on the concept of voice, situating it within sociocultural…

My dissertation examines the theory and praxis of taking an expanded concept of the human-computer interface (HCI) and working with the resulting concept to foster a more conversational approach for online tutoring sessions and the design of the writing center websites that facilitate online tutoring. For the purposes of my research, I describe…

In this article, the author offers cautionary advice to help avoid some tempting morasses to unwittingly fall into as well as some more solid ground to stroll along when composing institutional prose. Ultimately, drawing on concepts from the fields of business, linguistics, social psychology, and professional writing, the author wishes to…

As new ways of creating and interpreting texts complicate ideas of how and why writing happens, the field of rhetoric and composition needs to be more conscious of how our institutional responsibilities and scholarly attention to college writing has limited its vision of writing and literacy. It is time to move beyond consolidating our identity as…

The author calls for scholars of rhetoric and composition to become familiar with the cosmology, language, educational attitudes, speech genres, and intellectual debates of a specific culture other than their own. For a case study, she turns to Chinese history and focuses on exchanges between three models of rhetoric: Confucian, Daoist, and…

The New Rhetoric project featured an eleven-year collaboration between Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca and Chaim Perelman, which culminated with their 1958 magnum opus, "Traite de l'argumentation: la nouvelle rhetorique". Scholars have long speculated about Olbrechts-Tyteca's role in the New Rhetoric project and her relationship with Chaim Perelman.…

This essay builds upon prior attempts to foster linkages between the disciplines of Composition Studies and professional writing. I take up Jennifer Bay's suggestion that service learning is a site for connection and "hospitality" (in a Derridean sense) between these disciplines, advocating for and at the same time complicating Bay's proposal.…

Over the past two decades, critical discourse analysis has emerged as a major new multidisciplinary approach to the study of texts and contexts in the public sphere. Developed in Europe, CDA has lately become increasingly popular in North America, where it is proving especially congenial to new directions in rhetoric and composition. This essay…

Successful academic writing requires strong command of the rhetorical moves that orient the reader to the theme and substantive material of an academic essay. Effective control of the introduction leads to better overall writing. The goal of this study was to devise and evaluate a pedagogy for teaching the writing of academic essay introductions.…

This systematic review draws from and builds upon the results of a meta-analysis of the achievement effects of three types of interaction treatments in distance education: student-student, student-teacher, and student-content (Bernard et al., "Review of Educational Research," 79(3), 1243-1289, 2009). This follow-up study considers two forms of…

This article offers an initial analysis of the rhetorical devices used by mathematics undergraduates as they begin to write research articles in their discipline. The authors (a mathematician and three experts in composition and rhetoric) identify several such devices, including transitions and metacommentary, style and tone, use of sources, and…