This volume deals with a number of related issues that are becoming increasingly crucial for English studies during this time when most faculty in the field are assistant professors approaching tenure review or associate professors seeking promotion. These critical issues focus on: * The diversity of research and scholarly publication in composition studies; * The fact that composition studies faculty are often evaluated by personnel committee members, department chairs, and deans unfamiliar with the nature and demands of the field; * The way that American higher education is rethinking "scholarship" and the role it plays in the work and evaluation of faculty members; and * The role composition studies faculty can play in this review of scholarship and professional advancement. This book seeks to address the entire spectrum of "composition studies" -- expository and argumentative writing, personal essay, literary nonfiction, technical and business writing, historical rhetoric, empirical research, and more -- by understanding the nature of and evaluating the work of faculty members in this broad field. Scholarship and advancement issues are discussed in a variety of situations including basic and regular first-year composition classes at four-year and two-year institutions or writing centers, advanced writing courses, ESL and skills-development programs, and writing classes and programs for teachers, administrators, and researchers. The chapters focus on a variety of subjects, including the importance of mentoring and faculty development in all departments and institutions; and how young scholar-teachers and assistant professors can prepare for a successful personnel or tenure review.

A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators (2nd Edition) presents the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration. The collection provides aspiring, new, and seasoned WPAs with the theoretical lenses, terminologies, historical contexts, and research they need to understand the nature, history, and complexities of their intellectual and administrative work.

Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies collects original scholarship that takes up and extends the practices of inventive theorizing that characterize Sharon Crowley’s body of work. Including sixteen chapters by established and emerging scholars and an interview with Crowley, the book shows that doing theory is a contingent and continual rhetorical process that is indispensable for understanding situations and their potential significance—and for discovering the available means of persuasion. For Crowley, theory is a basic building block of rhetoric “produced by and within specific times and locations as a means of opening other ways of believing or acting.” Doing theory, in this sense, is the practice of surveying the common sense of the community (doxa) and discovering the available means of persuasion (invention). The ultimate goal of doing theory is not to prescribe certain actions but to ascertain what options exist for rhetors to see the world differently, to discover new possibilities for thought and action, and thereby to effect change in the world. The scholarship collected in Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies takes Crowley’s notion of theory as an invitation to develop new avenues for believing and acting. By reinventing the understanding of theory and its role in the field, this collection makes an important contribution to scholarship in rhetorical studies and writing studies. It will be valuable to scholars, teachers, and students interested in diverse theoretical directions in rhetoric and writing studies as well as in race, gender, and disability theories, religious rhetorics, digital rhetoric, and the history of rhetoric. Publication supported in part by the Texas Tech University Humanities Center. Contributors: Jason Barrett-Fox, Geoffrey Clegg, Kirsti Cole, Joshua Daniel-Wariya, Diane Davis, Rebecca Disrud, Bre Garrett, Catherine C. Gouge, Debra Hawhee, Matthew Heard, Joshua C. Hilst, David G. Holmes, Bruce Horner, William B. Lalicker, Jennifer Lin LeMesurier, James C. McDonald, Timothy Oleksiak, Dawn Penich-Thacker, J. Blake Scott, Victor J. Vitanza, Susan Wyche

Contributors examine the politics of untenured writing program administrator appointments given the demands of writing program administration, and reconciles the tension between WPA position statements and current institutional practice.

Combining formal quantitative research with narrative-based scholarship, THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION represents multiple voices from faculty balancing between the demands of teaching, writing, and administering writing programs in professional, ethical ways-often under circumstances that can be defined, at best, as difficult. In these pages, junior faculty tell their stories of triumph and trauma, while more firmly established composition scholars reflect upon the changing and challenging profession we all share.

Bibliographic Research in Composition Studies is a student-friendly guide to how knowledge is constructed and disseminated in composition studies, as well as a thorough handbook on how to conduct bibliographic research in the discipline. Student readers are taught Stephen North's taxonomy of scholarship, empirical research, and practice so that they can better contextualize the sources they read, and they learn the unique ways that some genres of publication function in composition studies. The book also leads students through the entire process of completing a bibliographic assignment.

Describes mentoring of teachers and scholars in the field of composition and rhetoric.

The authors report research that considers writing in all levels of schooling, in science, in the public sphere, and in the workplace, as well as the relationship among these various places of writing. The authors also consider the cultures of writing—among them national cultures, gender cultures, schooling cultures, scientific cultures, and cultures of the workplace.

Responding to a growing pedagogical paralysis in debates over the nature and status of composition studies as an academic discipline, Lisa Ede offers a provocative inquiry into the politics of composition's place in the academy. The result is a timely and engaging reflection on the rhetoric, ideology, and ethics of scholarship and instruction in composition studies today. Situating Composition: Composition Studies and the Politics of Location delves into some of the most vexing issues presently facing the field: its status in relation to English studies, the nature and consequences of the writing process movement, the uneven professionalization of composition teachers, and the widening chasm between theory and practice. Ede interrogates key moments and texts in composition's evolution, from the writing process movement to Susan Miller's Textual Carnivals, through the interpretive lenses of historical analysis, theoretical critique, feminist and cultural theory, and Ede's own two decades of experiences as a teacher and writing program administrator. Questioning the narratives of progress and paradigm shifts that inform the field's highly regarded recent theoretical studies, Ede urges scholars to carefully reconsider these claims, to honor the roles of teachers and students as more than dupes of ideology, and to more fully acknowledge?and utilize?the differences between the practice of theory and the practice of teaching. As academic hierarchies of knowledge increasingly privilege scholarship over instruction, Ede warns researchers to be cognizant of the politics and power inherent in their own location in the academy, particularly when professing to speak for teachers and students. To that end, the volume's conclusion advocates pragmatic avenues for change and proffers topics for future discussion and debate.