This article uses rhetorical genre theory to discuss methods for writing studies research in light of increasing participation of Indigenous scholars and students in disciplines throughout the academy. Like genres, research methods are embedded in systems of interaction that create subject positions and social relations. Using rhetorical genre theory to understand methods as the cultural tools of research communities, we argue that methods can be enacted as flexible resources in the interest of advancing ethical knowledge. In the context of Indigenous epistemological activism, researchers can then take a contingent stance toward method, a stance we name “principled uncertainty.”

This article explores bodily movement practices as a foundational component of rhetorical awareness. Through ethnographic study of dance pedagogy, the author demonstrates how genre uptake is enabled by bodily experience; learned ways of moving produce inclinations toward certain rhetorical pathways over others.Enabling students to uptake new genres means teaching them to be aware of the intersection of bodily and intellectual resources.

This article connects the pedagogy of the multimajor professional writing (MMPW) course with two important contemporary discussions in composition studies: the pedagogy called writing about writing (WAW) and the conversation about the transferability of rhetorical knowledge from school to work. We argue that the capaciousness of the WAW approach accommodates the best of genre-based and client-based pedagogies for the MMPW course and provides a framework for expanding the course beyond skill-based outcomes to include preparing students to be learning transformers. The article includes two iterations of what a writing about writing–professional writing (WAW-PW) course can look like.

In this essay I present the results of a national study of over 2,000 writing assignments from college courses across disciplines. Drawing on James Britton’s multidimensional discourse taxonomy and recent work in genre studies, I analyze the rhetorical features and genres of the assignments and consider the significance of my findings through the multiple lenses of writing-to-learn and writing-in-the-disciplines perspectives. Although my findings indicate limited purposes, audiences, and genres for the majority of the assignments, instructors teaching courses explicitly connected to a Writing Across the Curriculum program or initiative assigned the most writing in the most complex rhetorical situations and the most varied disciplinary genres.

In this essay I present the results of a national study of over 2,000 writing assignments from college courses across disciplines. Drawing on James Britton’s multidimensional discourse taxonomy and recent work in genre studies, I analyze the rhetorical features and genres of the assignments and consider the significance of my findings through the multiple lenses of writing-to-learn and writing-in-the-disciplines perspectives. Although my findings indicate limited purposes, audiences, and genres for the majority of the assignments, instructors teaching courses explicitly connected to a Writing Across the Curriculum program or initiative assigned the most writing in the most complex rhetorical situations and the most varied disciplinary genres.

This essay explores the challenges facing students and teachers in the interdisciplinary classroom. Based on observations of a team-taught interdisciplinary class and drawing on cultural historical activity theory, I argue that the psychological double binds that result from the clash of different disciplinary activity systems constitute both the greatest challenge and richest potential of interdisciplinary classrooms.

In the interest of better understanding the challenges of enacting new pedagogies in the classroom, the following essay focuses on the role of genre and uptake in the relational negotiation of self-presentation. I argue that to bring our teaching practices in line with our best intentions and most progressive pedagogies we need to be aware not only that reliance on the legibility associated with familiar subject positions motivates student resistance in the composition classroom but, moreover, that our interest in securing self-presentations as teachers may motivate everyday interactions that work to maintain the status quo.