College Composition and Communication

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September 2011

  1. Review Essay: Ethnic Rhetorics Reviewed
    Abstract

    Reviewed are: Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing Damián Baca Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114 BCE to 2012 CE Damián Baca and Victor Villanueva, editors Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric LuMing Mao and Morris Young, editors Writing in Multicultural Settings Carol Severino, Juan C. Guerra, and Johnnella E. Butler, editors American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic Ernest Stromberg, editor

    doi:10.58680/ccc201117252
  2. Ma ka Hana ka ‘Ike (In the Work Is the Knowledge): Kaona as Rhetorical Action
    Abstract

    Drawing on Malea Powell’s “rhetorics of survivance” and Scott Richard Lyons’s “rhetorical sovereignty” as a framework, we examine how kaona, a Hawaiian rhetorical device, is employed within Queen Lili‘uokalani’s autobiography and Haunani-Kay Trask’s poetry as a call for Hawaiian resistance against American colonialism through allusions to Pele-Hi'iaka stories.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201117250

June 2011

  1. Enacting and Transforming Local Language Policies
    Abstract

    Exploring language practices, beliefs, and management in a first-year writing program, this article considers the obstacles to and opportunities for transforming languagepolicy and enacting a new multilingual norm in U.S. postsecondary writing instruction. It argues that the articulation of statements regarding language diversity, co-developedby teachers and program administrators, is a valuable step in viewing and constructing the classroom as a multilingual space.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201115874
  2. Special Symposium Commemorating the NCTE/CCCC Relationship
    Abstract

    Review of A Long Way Together and Reading the Past, Writing the Future ,Barbara L’Eplattenier Seeking Connections, Articulating Commonalities: English Education, Composition Studies, and Writing Teacher Education, Janet Alsup, Elizabeth Brockman, Jonathan Bush, and Mark Letcher Preparing Writing Teachers: A Case Study in Constructing a More Connected Future for CCCC and NCTE., Shelley Reid Contesting the Space between High School and College in the Era of Dual-Enrollment, Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau

    doi:10.58680/ccc201115875
  3. Review Essay: Reflections on Style and the Love of Language
    Abstract

    Learning from Language: Symmetry, Asymmetry, and Literary Humanism, Walter H. Beale Out of Style: Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric, Paul Butler Performing Prose: The Study and Practice of Style in Composition, Chris Holcomb and M. Jimmie Killingsworth Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English, Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Curry A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies, James Ray Watkins Jr.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201115876

February 2011

  1. Review Essay: Beyond Typical Ideas of Writing: Developing a Diverse Understanding of Writers, Writing, and Writing Instruction
    Abstract

    Reviewed are: The Idea of a Writing Laboratory, Neal Lerner Generation 1.5 in College Composition: Teaching Academic Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESL, Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal, and Linda Harklau, editors The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations, Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Anne Beaufort

    doi:10.58680/ccc201113460

December 2010

  1. Review Essay: The Rhetoric of Social Movements Revisited
    Abstract

    Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action in the Composition Classroom Kristie S. Fleckenstein Rhetorics, Literacies, and Narratives of Sustainability Peter N. Goggin, ed. Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civic Discourse, and Education in Early America. Mark Garrett Longaker The Responsibilities of Rhetoric Michelle Smith and Barbara Warnick, eds. Active Voices: Composing a Rhetoric for Social Movements Sharon McKenzie Stevens and Patricia M. Malesh, eds.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201013214
  2. Negotiating Cultural Identities through Language: Academic English in Jordan
    Abstract

    This article discusses how a group of multilingual scholars in Jordan negotiate multiple linguistic and cultural affiliations. These writers’ experiences demonstrate the varied ways English’s global dominance affects individuals’ lives. The scholars find both empowerment and disempowerment in English, viewing English as linked to Western hegemony in some situations and as de-nationalized and de-territorialized in others.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201013210

September 2010

  1. Franchising the Future
    Abstract

    Central to the future of rhetoric and composition (or writing studies or whatever label we use) is the service mission of composition: to teach students to write. But that term service has not and will not serve us well. This essay examines the limitations and dangers of a service mission and explores a different model, that of a franchise, a public trust thatlicenses us to control the largest block of classes on most campuses but also makes us responsible for the nation’s ability to write. The franchise model carries its own limitations, but it may also point to possibilities of great new promise and familiar danger.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201011657
  2. Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework
    Abstract

    This article argues that tracing multimodal-multilingual literacy practices across official and unofficial spaces is key to moving composition into the twenty-first century. Key tothis remixing of the field is a situated framework that locates multimodal-multilingual activities in wider genre, cultural, national, and global ecologies.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201011661

June 2010

  1. Composing Knowledge: Writing, Rhetoric, and Reflection in Prior Learning Assessment
    Abstract

    In this article, we argue that prior learning assessment (PLA) essays manifest a series of issues central to composition research and practice: they foreground the “contact zone” between the unauthorized writer, institutional power, and the articulation of knowledge claims; they reinforce the central role of a multifaceted approach to writing expertise in negotiating that zone; and they call attention to new and alternative spaces in which learning is gained and call for new forms in which it may be articulated. Ultimately, we claim that PLA as an emergent discourse compels compositionists to re-imagine not only the students we all teach, but also ways we might better—more explicitly, more reflectively, and more tactically—teach such students about writing as a mechanism for claiming and legitimating learning.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201011335
  2. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: In Search of Excellence
    Abstract

    In this article, we undertake three critical tasks: First, we delineate major shifts in feminist rhetorical inquiry, thus describing a new and changed landscape of the field. Second, we argue that as feminist rhetorical practices have shifted, so have standards of excellence. To articulate excellence in feminist rhetorical studies, we draw attention to interconnections among three critical terms of engagement: critical imagination, strategic contemplation, and social circulation. Third, we propose an enhanced inquiry model for understanding, interpreting, and evaluating feminist rhetorical work in rhetoric and writing studies.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201011333

February 2010

  1. Composing Women’s Civic Identities during the Progressive Era: College Commencement Addresses as Overlooked Rhetorical Sites
    Abstract

    This essay examines women’s commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students’ rhetorical education and the “available means” upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement addresses also demonstrate the civic importance of epideictic rhetoric.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20109958
  2. The State of WAC/WID in 2010: Methods and Results of the U.S. Survey of the International WAC/WID Mapping Project
    Abstract

    As writing across the curriculum (WAC) has matured and diversified as a concept and as an organizational structure in U.S. higher education, there has arisen a need for accurate, up-to-date information on the presence and characteristics of WAC and writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) programs. Following on the only previous nationwide survey of WAC/WID in 1987, new data from the U.S./Canada survey of the International WAC/WID Mapping Project indicate that the presence of such programs has grown in U.S. institutions by roughly one-third. Moreover, clear patterns emerge regarding the formal components of these programs, their intra-institutional relationships, funding sources, reporting lines, and characteristics of leadership (e.g., faculty rank and length of service). Further, a comparison of data from all reporting institutions with those from well-established programs indicates some patterns of sustainability.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20109959

December 2009

  1. The Licensing of the Poetic in Nineteenth-Century Composition-Rhetoric Textbooks
    Abstract

    This historical exploration tracks changes in rules concerning figurative language in nineteenth-century composition-rhetoric textbooks. The century’s lessening of millennium-long restriction of the poetic allowed not only creative writing into academia but composition as well, as composition at its beginning was intertwined with creative writing. In order to advance as a discipline, creative writing needs to investigate its history in addition to developing its theory and practice. Understanding the initial but largely overlooked union of creative writing and composition can help reconfigure English studies.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099483
  2. Teaching Writing Teachers Writing: Difficulty, Exploration, and Critical Reflection
    Abstract

    As they prepare to teach writing, new teachers should respond to writing assignments that we deliberately design to be difficult, exploratory, or critically reflective, so that they may better develop flexibility and engagement as learners, teachers, and theorists in the field of writing instruction.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099485
  3. “You Fail”: Plagiarism, the Ownership of Writing, and Transnational Conflicts
    Abstract

    Responding to cultural concerns about the ownership of writing and the nature of plagiarism, this article examines discourses about plagiarism by ESL students and argues for a plurality of approaches to understanding the ownership of language and textual appropriation. First, it uses speech act theory to explain the dynamics of plagiarism; second, it examines transnational political contexts for writing pedagogy; and third, it offers a Daoist understanding of language.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099486
  4. Embracing Wicked Problems: The Turn to Design in Composition Studies
    Abstract

    Recent appeal to the concept of design in composition studies benefits teaching writing in digital media. Yet the concept of design has not been developed enough to fully benefit composition instruction. This article develops an understanding of design as a matter of resolving wicked problems and makes a case for the advantages of this understanding in composition studies.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099494
  5. “Internationalization” and Composition Studies: Reorienting the Discourse
    Abstract

    While internationalization has become a buzzword in composition scholarship and teaching, our discourses tend toward fuzzy uses and understandings of the term and its multiple implications. We tend to focus on how our U.S. experience is being internationalized: how English and its teaching are spreading; how other countries, different in their approaches or rhetorics, appear to lack what we have; and how we might avoid colonialist intervention or offer consultation. These import/export focal points create key blind spots in our awareness of deep and rich writing research and programming traditions internationally, of how we fit—or do not fit—into this broader world, and of missed opportunities for self-reflection and growth.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099470
  6. WPA as Rhetor: Scholarly Production and the Difference a Discipline Makes
    Abstract

    This article defines applied rhetorical work as integral to the intellectual work of writing program administration and asks our professional organizations to classify it as such within our position statements. With a specific case, it offers a generative framework for representing and assessing the work’s scholarly commons for professional review.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099478
  7. CCC Special Symposium: At the Intersections: Rhetoric and Cultural Studies as Situated Practice
    Abstract

    The following essays are adapted and extended from a CCCC roundtable session in New York in March 2007 entitled “At the Intersections: Rhetoric and Cultural Studies as Situated Practice,” with contributions by Lisa Ede (chair), Elizabeth A. Flynn, Anita Helle, Jay Jordan, and Elaine Richardson.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099497
  8. Second Language Users and Emerging English Designs
    Abstract

    As English spreads as an international language, it evolves through diverse users’ writing and speaking. However, traditional views of ESL users focus on their distance from fairly static notions of English-language competence. This research uses a grounded theory approach to describe a range of competencies that emerge in ESL users’ interactions with native-English-speaking peers and instructors.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099490
  9. Brains v. Brawn: Classed and Racialized Masculinity in Literacy Narratives
    Abstract

    A feminist reading of four prominent literacy narratives—Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary, Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory, Victor Villanueva’s Bootstraps, and Keith Gilyard’s Voices of the Self—shows that conflicts and anxieties about the consequences of schooling on working-class masculinity animate these texts. Each of these writers experiences, manages, and ultimately resolves, to greater or lesser degrees, his conflicts over masculinity, at least textually speaking, and does so, moreover, in ways that are linked to his views on literacy and education.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20099489

September 2009

  1. “Yes, a T-Shirt!”: Assessing Visual Composition in the “Writing” Class
    Abstract

    Computer technology is expanding our profession’s conception of composing, allowing visual information to play a substantial role in an increasing variety of composition assignments. This expansion, however, creates a major problem: How does one assess student work on these assignments? Current work in assessment provides only partial answers to this question. Consequently, this article will review current theory and practice in assessment, noting its limitations as well as its strengths. The article will then draw on work in both verbal and visual communication to explain an integrative approach to assessment, one that allows instructors to consider students’ work with visuals without losing sight of conventional goals of a “writing” course. The article concludes by illustrating this approach with an analysis of an unconventional student text “a T-shirt”that students submitted as the final assignment for a relatively conventional writing course.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098319
  2. Essjay’s Ethos: Rethinking Textual Origins and Intellectual Property
    Abstract

    Discussions of intellectual property are often the focus of rhetoric and composition research, and the question of textual origins grounds these discussions. Through an examination of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, this essay addresses disciplinary concerns about textual origins and intellectual property through a discussion of situated and constructed ethos.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098321
  3. The Writing Center Paradox: Talk about Legitimacy and the Problem of Institutional Change
    Abstract

    Scholarship on writing centers often relies on validation systems that reconcile tensions between equality and plurality by privileging one over the other. According to feminist political theorist Chantal Mouffe, neither absolute equality nor absolute plurality are possible in any democratic system, a conflict she calls “the democratic paradox” and insists is the essence of a “well-functioning democracy” that supports pluralistic goals. The following article argues that a similar logic shapes writing center work and, therefore, any attempt to promote change must likewise embrace the democratic paradox as it manifests itself in the writing center: “the writing center paradox.”

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098316
  4. The Politics of Literacy: Countering the Rhetoric of Accountability in the Spellings Report and Beyond
    Abstract

    This article briefly analyzes the Spellings Commission Report on Higher Education, places it in the context of other American education reforms, and suggests ways for literacy educators to respond to this latest call for accountability in ways that are cognizant of political realities without compromising the integrity of our profession.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098327
  5. Not Going It Alone: Public Writing, Independent Media, and the Circulation of Homeless Advocacy
    Abstract

    This article argues that the teaching of public writing should not neglect issues of circulation and local need. In a series of case studies involving small press papers and homeless advocacy, the authors seek to extend recent work begun by Susan Wells, John Trimbur, and Nancy Welch, which raises crucial questions about public rhetoric in the writing classroom.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098308
  6. Institutional Dimensions of Academic Computing
    Abstract

    Academic institutions mediate online literacy practices in meaningful and significant ways. This essay explores the nature of that mediational process, using a visual-spatial method to map out and conceptualize dynamics and structures that have a bearing on the work of composition. A key argument is that composition teachers are intellectually positioned to influence institutional approaches to academic computing.x

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098302
  7. Negotiating Rhetorical, Material, Methodological, and Technological Difference: Evaluating Multimodal Designs
    Abstract

    The assessment framework presented here draws on theories of reflective practice and mediated activity to update or “multimodalize” the reflective texts students are sometimes asked to compose after completing an essay. The article underscores the importance of having students assume greater responsibility for cataloging and assessing the potentials of the texts they compose both within and beyond the space of the classroom.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098326

June 2009

  1. Rhetoric, Literacy, and Social Change in Post-Mao China
    Abstract

    Chinese migrant narratives suggest a parodic reworking of China’s official market ideology, “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” as well as new rhetorics that bring worker solidarity and opportunities for positive change.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20097198
  2. Chaos Is the Poetry: From Outcomes to Inquiry in Service-Learning Pedagogy
    Abstract

    This article argues for approaching pedagogical outcomes as ends-in-view that guide, but do not determine or limit, pedagogical possibilities. Reflecting on moments from a service-learning literacy course, the writers argue that experiences of chaos in the classroom, while often uncomfortable, can open opportunities for reflection and inquiry.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20097192
  3. Perspectives: From Introspection to Action: Connecting Spirituality and Civic Engagement
    Abstract

    Kirsch explores “the connection between spirituality and civic engagement,” suggesting that “spirituality—broadly defined to include mindfulness, introspection, and reflection—can play an important role in enabling rhetorical agency.”

    doi:10.58680/ccc20097199
  4. Perspectives: Writing in the Post–“Man-of-Letters” Modern World
    Abstract

    Sirc’s essay also uses the writing course as touchstone “this time, to wrestle initially” with the issues Allen Tate pondered in his 1952 essay . . . “The Man of Letters in the Modern World.” Sirc challenges contemporary instructors of writing, claiming that “the vox pop criticism of iTunes writing represents a new Attic style, one well worth studying and teaching to.”

    doi:10.58680/ccc20097200
  5. Symposium: Comparitive Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: CHINESE RHETORIC REIMAGINED
    Abstract

    The essays in this special symposium on Chinese rhetoric join the work of other cross-cultural rhetorical scholars in proposing new contrastive as well as comparative approaches and exploring structures that are dialectical and literary as well as rhetorical. In this work can be observed the formation of a new contact zone.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20097201

February 2009

  1. Interchanges “Read As If for Life”: What Happens When Students Encounter the Literature of the Shoah
    Abstract

    In any course about the Holocaust, students become engaged, or rather entangled, in ways that I had never dreamed possible in a school setting. The reader becomes the subject of the course as much as Eli Wiesel or Nelly Sachs or Primo Levi. And difficulty becomes the operating principle. Research into readers’ response to Holocaust literature, therefore, becomes imperative, as does research into faculty expectations when assigning the literature of trauma.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20096973
  2. Review Essay :The Power of One: Truth amid Triumph in Women’s Literacy
    Abstract

    Our Sisters’ Keepers: Nineteenth-Century Benevolence Literature by American Women edited by Jill Bergman and Debra Bernardi; From the Garden Club: Rural Women Writing Community by Charlotte Hogg; Whistlin; Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices Since College by Katherine Kelleher Sohn

    doi:10.58680/ccc20096977
  3. From Journals to Journalism: Tracing Trajectories of Literate Development
    Abstract

    Drawn from a longitudinal ethnographic study, this article elaborates the trajectories linking one undergraduates extracurricular journaling to her school writing and her emerging identity as a journalist. This portrait of literate development highlights how our sense of ourselves as literate persons is forged in the interplay of multiple encounters with literacy, private as well as public, and how authoring a literate life means engaging in the ongoing work of reconciling the conflicts and synergies among them.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20096970
  4. 2008 Exemplar Award Remarks
    Abstract

    Following are the remarks presented by Patricia Bizzell at the 2008 CCCC on having received the Exemplar Award.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20096972

December 2008

  1. Holy Cards/Immaginette: The Extraordinary Literacy of Vernacular Religion
    Abstract

    Like other seemingly ordinary materials (cookbooks, street art, scrapbooks, etc.) the subject of our investigation “holy cards or (in Italian) immaginette” often function as rich repositories of personal and cultural memory as well as indicators of popular literacy practices. But to relegate them to the category of ephemera, as is customary with materials of this sort, diverts attention from their significant cultural and pedagogical value.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086867

September 2008

  1. Review Essay: Politics, Gender, Literacy: The Value and Limitations of Current Histories of Women’s Rhetorics
    Abstract

    Reviews of: “Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women’s Narratives on Reading and Writing in the Nineteenth Century” by Sarah Robbins; “Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Writers” by Lindal Buchanan; “Vote and Voice: Women’s Organizations and Political Literacy, 1915–1930” by Wendy B. Sharer.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086756

June 2008

  1. “Seemingly Uncouth Forms”: Letters at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary
    Abstract

    Dispelling historical narratives in composition and rhetoric that largely depict nineteenth-century student compositions as “vacuous” themes, this archival study examines women’s compositions at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary as complex generic hybrids, in which the composition is fused with common social and dialogic forms.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086673

February 2008

  1. “English May Be My Second Language, but I’m Not ‘ESL’”
    Abstract

    In this essay, I present three case studies of immigrant, first-year students, as they negotiate their identities as second language writers in mainstream composition classrooms. I argue that such terms as “ESL” and “Generation 1.5” are often problematic for students and mask a wide range of student experiences and expectations.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086405
  2. Perspectives
    Abstract

    Coming to See Myself as a Vernacular Intellectual: Remarks at the 2007 CCCC General Session on Receiving the Exemplar Award Peter Elbow My Five-Paragraph-Theme Theme Ed White The Fourth Generation Kristen Kennedy.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086411
  3. Review Essays
    Abstract

    Review Essays: The Literacies of Hip-Hop Nancy Effinger Wilson Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture H. Samy Alim “Gettin’ Our Groove On”: Rhetoric, Language, and Literacy for the Hip Hop Generation Kermit E. Campbell Hiphop Literacies Elaine Richardson Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans Geneva Smitherman.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20086412

December 2007

  1. Revisions: Rethinking Joseph Janangelo’s “Joseph Cornell and the Artistry of Composing Persuasive Hypertexts”
    Abstract

    The next entry into our “Re-Visions” feature—a series that offers reconsiderations of particularly significant work in CCC—is a reappraisal of Joseph Janangelo’s “Joseph Cornell and the Artistry of Composing Persuasive Hypertexts,” which originally appeared in February of 1998 (volume 49.1, 24– 44). In addition to commentaries by Anne Frances Wysocki, Collin Gifford Brooke, and Jeff Rice is a “comment on the comments” by Joseph Janangelo. The subject of these commentaries is readily available for reference at the CCC Online Archive (www.inventio.us/ccc). I welcome your feedback on this feature and suggestions for subjects of future “Re-Visions.”

    doi:10.58680/ccc20076396
  2. Writing and Teaching behind Barbed Wire: An Exiled Composition Class in a Japanese-American Internment Camp
    Abstract

    By reflecting on Japanese internment camps executed by the U.S. government in World War II, this article examines camp schools’ curricula and writing assignments and an English teacher’s response to student essays to show how racially profiled students and their Caucasian teacher negotiated the political meanings of civil rights and freedom.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20076393
  3. Portfolio Partnerships between Faculty and WAC: Lessons from Disciplinary Practice, Reflection, and Transformation
    Abstract

    In portfolio assessment, WAC helps other disciplines increase programmatic integrity and accountability. This analysis of a portfolio partnership also shows composition faculty how a dynamic culture of assessment helps us protect what we do well, improve what we need to do better, and solve problems as writing instruction keeps pace with programmatic change.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20076392

February 2007

  1. Review Essay: Reflections on the Future of Rhetorical Education
    doi:10.58680/ccc20075916

December 2006

  1. From “Self-Righteous Researcher” to “Fellow Teacher”
    Abstract

    This is the second installment in the Re-Visions series’ an occasional series for which I invite essays that reconsider important work previously published in the pages of CCC. The full text of Nancy Sommers’s “Responding to Student Writing” (CCC, May 1982, 148–56) is available at www.inventio.us/ccc.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20065901