Considers the role of "traveling rhetoricians" and the fate of the rhetorical theory and research they carry into the workplace and offer to practitioners. Finds teachers of academic, cross-curricular, and workplace writing are being informed by the discipline's deepening understanding of how genres work in particular settings. Considers…

Explains that in the study of law, postmodernism's interpretive turn has given rise to a wealth of scholarship analyzing the relationship of law's rhetoric to its social, cultural, and political contexts. Argues that legal writing professors must learn to grow beyond their narrow conception of rhetoric to help students become adept at the…

This paper aims to locate multiculturalisms rhetorically, using contemporary rhetorical theorists with which to do so, and using this theorized location to then discuss the implications of a critical multiculturalist pedagogy within the writing classroom in shaping new discursive space in the Academy. First, the paper presents, as a useful…

For Peter Elbow, a writing classroom should be an opportunity for students to tell their stories to a community in which everyone is safe to take risks, and all support each other in the development of their expressive skills. To be "other," however, is always a scary thing. The lesbian, gay, or bisexual writing student is usually seen as having a…

To help students meet the demands of society, the University of Houston is using the framework of learning communities and constructivism to create a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching to provide media-rich thematically linked courses to engage a diverse student population. A case study investigated three semesters of thematically linked…

Projects that require students to perform ethnographic research can be a form of empowerment. Lester Faigley argues that while ethnographic research still requires invention and other writing skills required of more traditional assignments, it has the added value of giving students the opportunity to explore their own locations within the culture.…

Reflecting on Jean-Francois Lyotard's work "The Postmodern Condition" may provide those who work in the writing center with additional ideas about how to make writing centers the next best thing in composition instruction. Lyotard offers a way to argue against the affirmation of traditional values and characteristics in writing (i.e.,…

A study examined conversations of 10 "avid" female quilters from around the United States who communicate via e-mail. Results indicated that their conversations reveal ways in which they are using this modern technology in the construction of their feminine quilt artist identities. While most of the e-mail was devoted to the business of…

Intertextuality is a term that is defined variously and, in a sense, cannot be defined categorically and should not be. The term serves as a point of departure for engaging in an academic discourse grounded in differing theoretical and institutional frames. In the wake of poststructuralism, the classical notion of a "definition," a…

All styles of genre research share an attention to particular features of texts in use. The question is, however, how to teach genre. This paper first reviews what seem to be two opposed theories of teaching genre. After arguing that to differing extents both theories rely upon a transmission model of teaching, the paper then discusses attempts to…

Shows how microethnography can be an effective tool for analyzing the possibilities and constraints of electronic discourse by overviewing two electronic mail ethnography projects. Suggests that such approaches can help students better understand electronic rhetoric as well as electronic ideology (the power relationships and cultural values that…

Group strategies--group discussion, feedback, collaboration--seem so widely used in postsecondary writing as to have attained the status of lore. In seeking pedagogical community, writing teachers too often gloss over or deny the reality of competing voices. To understand the traditional appeal of the trope "community" for American…

A current trend in composition consider writing a social act where texts are produced because of and in response to social contexts. Classroom practices are just beginning to change and acknowledge the power that discourse communities assert on writers. Composition teachers must also acknowledge the importance of community-governed reading…

This collection of essays is intended to increase cultural awareness and provide new information about the nature of writing in a number of the discourse communities central to modern economic life. The book focuses on academe, journalism, industry, computers, finance, and law. Essays and their authors are: "Coming to Terms with Different…

Service learning discourses have often addressed questions of representation through reciprocity, asking what various participants receive from service learning community experiences. In the process of researching an article about reciprocity, a writing teacher found that reciprocity was often defined as an exchange of learning for some form of…