How can theory improve our knowledge of writing? Raúl Sánchez answers this question by examining dominant theoretical trends in composition studies over the last fifteen years, citing their common origins in a narrow, representational metatheory of writing. He argues that this adherence actually leads the field away from its objects of study: writing and the writing subject. Through this extended critique, he elaborates an alternative metatheory, one that restores writing to the conceptual center of composition studies by emphasizing its generative—rather than its representational—characteristics, particularly in increasingly networked and textualized cultures.

An essential reference for students and scholars exploring the methods and methodologies of writing research. What does it mean to research writing today? What are the practical and theoretical issues researchers face when approaching writing as they do? What are the gains or limitations of applying particular methods, and what might researchers be overlooking? These questions and more are answered by the writing research field’s leading scholars in Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Editors Nickoson and Sheridan gather twenty chapters from leaders in writing research, spanning topics from ethical considerations for researchers, quantitative methods, and activity analysis to interviewing and communitybased and Internet research. While each chapter addresses a different subject, the volume as a whole covers the range of methodologies, technologies, and approaches—both old and new—that writing researchers use, and examines the ways in which contemporary writing research is understood, practiced, and represented. An essential reference for experienced researchers and an invaluable tool to help novices understand research methods and methodologies, Writing Studies Research in Practice includes established methods and knowledge while addressing the contemporary issues, interests, and concerns faced by writing researchers today.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Search Strategies for Writing Studies -- or, Planning for a Future That / Sidney I. Dobrin and Kyle Jensen -- PART I / SPACE -- Abductive Historiography: This Is a (Feminist) Test / Jessica Enoch -- A Method for Getting Carried Away: Kentucky's Calling / Jenny Rice -- PART II / TIME -- The Writing Wager: Gambling, Risk, and the Future of Writing / Brooke Rollins -- Writing(,) Hypothetically / Kevin J. Porter -- PART III / ARCHIVE -- Archival Subjects and the Violence of Writing / Michael Bernard-Donals -- Writing, Textual Forgery, and the Discourse of Possibilities / Ron Fortune -- PART IV / NETWORKS -- Abduction, Writing, Digital Humanities / Collin Brooke -- Craft Technology: Social Networked Delivery / Jeff Rice -- PART V / INSCRIPTION -- Metaphors for the Future: How to Train the Riparian Subjects of "Writing" Studies / Jodie Nicotra -- Intoning Writing / Matthew Heard -- PART VI / LIFE -- Writing the Virus / John Muckelbauer -- Abducted by Nada: Ego Death, Open Source, and the Importance of Doing Nothing in the Infoquake / Richard M. Doyle -- Contributors -- Index -- Back Cover

Keywords in Writing Studies is an exploration of the principal ideas and ideals of an emerging academic field as they are constituted by its specialized vocabulary. A sequel to the 1996 work Keywords in Composition Studies, this new volume traces the evolution of the field’s lexicon, taking into account the wide variety of theoretical, educational, professional, and institutional developments that have redefined it over the past two decades. Contributors address the development, transformation, and interconnections among thirty-six of the most critical terms that make up writing studies. Looking beyond basic definitions or explanations, they explore the multiple layers of meaning within the terms that writing scholars currently use, exchange, and question. Each term featured is a part of the general disciplinary parlance, and each is a highly contested focal point of significant debates about matters of power, identity, and values. Each essay begins with the assumption that its central term is important precisely because its meaning is open and multiplex. Keywords in Writing Studies reveals how the key concepts in the field are used and even challenged, rather than advocating particular usages and the particular vision of the field that they imply. The volume will be of great interest to both graduate students and established scholars.

Eminent scholars discuss the politics and practices of generating scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies. Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition is a collection of essays about the politics and practices of generating scholarship in rhetoric and composition. The contributors to this book, many of whom are current or past editors of the discipline's most prestigious scholarly journals, undoubtedly have their finger on the pulse of composition's most current scholarship and offer invaluable insight into the production and publication of original research. They discuss publishing articles and reviews, as well as book-length projects, including scholarly monographs, edited collections, and textbooks. They also address such topics as how composition research is valued in English departments, recent developments in electronic publishing, the work habits of successful academic writers, and the complications of mentoring graduate students in a publish-or-perish profession. An inviting and helpful tone makes this an ideal textbook for research methodology and professional writing courses.

A textbook for composition pedagogy courses. It focuses on scholarship in rhetoric and composition that has influenced classroom teaching, in order to foster reflection on how theory impacts practice.

Leading a burgeoning self-critical moment in composition studies and writing program administration, Postcomposition is a fundamental reconsideration of the field that attempts to shift the focus away from pedagogy and writing subjects and toward writing itself. In this forceful and reasoned critique of many of the primary tenets and widely accepted institutional structures of composition studies, Sidney I. Dobrin delivers a series of shocks to the system meant to disrupt the pedagogical imperative and move beyond the existing limits of the discipline. Dobrin evaluates the current state of composition studies, underscoring the difference between composition and writing and arguing that the field's focus on the administration of writing students and its historically imposed prohibition on theory greatly limit what can be understood about writing. Instead he envisions a more significant approach to writing, one that questions the field's conservative allegiance to subject and administration and reconsiders writing as spatial and ecological. Using concepts from ecocomposition, spatial theory, network theory, complexity theory, and systems theory, Postcomposition lays the groundwork for a networked theory of writing, and advocates the abandonment of administration as a useful part of the field. He also challenges the usefulness of rhetoric in writing studies, showing how writing exceeds rhetoric. Postcomposition is a detailed consideration of how posthumanism affects the field's understanding of subjectivity. It also tears at the seams of the "contingent labor problem." As he articulates his own frustrations with the conservatism of composition studies and builds on previous critiques of the discipline, Dobrin stages a courageous-and inevitably polemical-intellectual challenge to the entrenched ideas and assumptions that have defined composition studies.

In original essays, fourteen nationally known scholars examine the practical, philosophical, and epistemological implications of a variety of research traditions. Included are discussions of historical, theoretical, and feminist scholarship; case-study and ethnographic research; text and conversation analysis; and cognitive, experimental, and descriptive research. Issues that cross methodological boundaries, such as the nature of collaborative research and writing, methodological pluralism, the classification and coding of research data, and the politics of composition research, are also examined. Contributors reflect on their own research practices, and so reflect the current state of composition research itself.

Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom is a collection of the most outstanding articles published in the Journal of Advanced Composition over the last decade. Together these essays represent the breadth and strength of composition scholarship that has fruitfully engaged with critical theory in its many manifestations. In drawing on the critical discourses of philosophers, feminists, literary theorists, African Americanists, cultural theorists, and others, these compositionists have enriched discourse in the field, broadened intellectual conceptions of the multiple roles and functions of discourse, and opened up an infinite number of questions and new possibilities for composition theory and pedagogy.

Concepts in Composition is designed to foster reflection on how theory impacts practice, allowing prospective teachers to assume the dual role of both teacher and student as they enter the discipline of Writing Studies and become familiar with some of its critical conversations. Now in its third edition, the volume offers up-to-date scholarship and a deeper focus on diversity, both in the classroom and in relation to Writing Studies and literacy more broadly. This text continues to offer a wealth of practical assignments, classroom activities, and readings in each chapter. It is the ideal resource for the undergraduate or graduate student looking to pursue a career in writing instruction.