College Composition and Communication
35 articlesFebruary 2025
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Abstract
Critiques of neoliberal capitalism have offered a rich vocabulary for the analysis of the political economy of literacy across professional, public, and classroom contexts. Since the Great Recession, commonplaces about work-readiness have been conditioned by economic precarity and changes to the social contract of work that blur the lines between professionalization and exploitation. Looking beyond the confines of the neoliberal present, the uncertain future of work for our undergraduate students will be shaped by what the World Economic Forum describes as the “double-disruption” of the pandemic and the rise of automation. Whereas neoliberal critique offers a vocabulary for describing many job seekers’ experience of the present, this article seeks to recover an element of “literacy hope” (Wan) by looking to speculative and utopian postcapitalist theory to inform and challenge career guidance conversations with students in writing studies. By framing the future as a resource in the rhetorical constitution of present-day workers, this article advances an inquiry-focused career-guidance pedagogy that asks: How do our assumptions about the future of work inform our relationships with employers and each other in the present?
December 2024
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Abstract
This article shares three focal participant profiles from a national study on graduate student writing pedagogy in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies. Working toward a more linguistically just discipline, this research explores how we might teach graduate students disciplinary genre expectations while centering their embodied ways of composing.
September 2024
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Abstract
This article uses the results of a five-year study of job seekers to argue for improving job search preparation. Graduate students entering the job market want advice that is knowledgeable, realistic, and honest and that goes beyond emphasizing tenure-track research jobs to include a consideration of their needs and interests.
June 2024
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Challenging the Myth of the Traditional Grad Student: A Case Study about Academic Enculturation and Resistance ↗
Abstract
Drawing from a qualitative study, this article advocates for challenging myths about the traditional graduate student. We discuss how these myths create a sense of unbelonging for graduate students, and we call attention to the exigency for transforming graduate programs to validate and sustain students’ diverse literacies and linguistic resources.
September 2022
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Abstract
Drawing on interviews with ten female-identifying graduate students, this article theorizes a norm of recognition and argues that recognition, conceptualized as a masculine-coded good, circulates away from female graduate students toward faculty and from faculty back to male graduate students. Female graduate students instead experience misogyny, understood as a punishment for straying from patriarchal gender roles in which they are required to be givers.
June 2022
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How and What Students Learn in Hybrid and Online FYC: A Multi-Institutional Survey Study of Student Perceptions ↗
Abstract
This multi-institutional study surveyed undergraduate students (n=669) about how and what they learned in hybrid and online first-year composition (FYC) classes, employing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework to analyze their responses. The data illustrated a significant difference in hybrid versus online students’ perceptions of the student-teacher relationship.
June 2016
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Abstract
This article argues that composition should be involved in the study and teaching of graduate level writing. It goes on to argue that independent consulting offers a viable way for compositionists to share expertise with graduate students and programs, as well as to expand opportunities for participation in the profession.
September 2014
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Abstract
What methods do graduate students take up for their dissertation projects? This article shares findings from distant reading of 2,711 abstracts, suggesting that humanist approaches predominate within the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition, but not without some methodological pluralism. A large number of studies outside the consortium are also considered.
June 2014
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Abstract
Reviewed are: Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus, eds. Redesigning Composition for Multilingual Realities Jay Jordan First Semester: Graduate Students, Teaching Writing, and the Challenge of Middle Ground Jessica Restaino
September 2013
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Abstract
Reviewed are: Postcomposition Sidney I. Dobrin The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies Donna Strickland What We Are Becoming: Developments in Undergraduate Writing Majors Greg A. Giberson and Thomas A. Moriarty, editors
December 2012
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Abstract
Reviewed are: Adam J. Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age, Margaret Price, Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life, Mary Soliday, Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments across the Disciplines, Myra M. Goldschmidt and Debbie Lamb Ousey, Teaching Developmental Immigrant Students in Undergraduate Programs: A Practical Guide, Greg A. Giberson and Thomas A. Moriarty, editors, What We Are Becoming: Developments in Undergraduate Writing Majors
February 2012
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Abstract
While reading a series of undergraduate essay drafts, ten newly appointed graduate teaching assistants consistently projected their own anxieties about academic writing onto the authors of the papers, with two exceptions: the students were imagined neither to have the teachers’ compositional agency nor to feel their ambivalence about the academic writing conventions in question. Suggestions for repurposing the intellectual work of the TA-training practicum follow.
December 2010
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Abstract
Master’s programs have been absent from writing studies’ scholarship on graduate education, primarily because they are not sites of disciplinary research. The MA, however, should be valued in writing studies for its demographic and curricular diversity, its responsiveness to local conditions, and its intra- and interdisciplinary flexibility.
February 2010
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Abstract
Using the data collected by the CCCC Committee on the Major, the authors demonstrate how quickly the writing major is growing, map the commonalities among various majors, discuss some of the problems in developing a major, and raise questions about what a writing major should be.
February 2009
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Abstract
Writing the Successful Thesis and Dissertation: Entering the Conversation by Irene L. Clark; Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts by Joseph Harris; The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals by Elizabeth Rankin
December 2008
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Abstract
Reviewed: Changing the Way We Teach: Writing and Resistance in the Training of Teaching Assistants Sally Barr Ebest Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum Sidney I. Dobrin, editor Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing Irene Clark, with Betty Bamberg, Darsie Bowden, John R. Edlund, Lisa Gerrard, Sharon Klein, Julie Neff Lippman, and James D. Williams
September 2008
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Language, Literacy, and the Institutional Dynamics of Racism: Late-1960s Writing Instruction for “High-Risk” African American Undergraduate Students at One Predominantly White University ↗
Abstract
This essay analyzes the ways in which subtly but powerfully racist ideologies of language and literacy shaped the institutional development of one writing program for “high-risk” African American college students during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It further theorizes the value of such institutional analysis for counteracting racism within present-day writing programs.
June 2008
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Abstract
This article places responses received from an open-ended survey of graduate students and faculty in dialogue with published commentary on the scope of composition studies as a discipline to explore three interrelated disciplinary dilemmas: the “pedagogical imperative,” the “theory-practice split,” and the increasingly complicated relationship between “rhetoric” and “composition” as our field’s titular terms.
September 2007
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Abstract
This qualitative investigation explores the perceptions of four women compositionists regarding mothers, teaching, and scholarship in the field of composition. I examine narrative case studies about four women who have PhDs in composition from the same doctoral program.
October 1997
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Present Perfect and Future Imperfect: Results of a National Survey of Graduate Students in Rhetoric and Composition Programs ↗
Abstract
Preview this article: Present Perfect and Future Imperfect: Results of a National Survey of Graduate Students in Rhetoric and Composition Programs, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/48/3/collegecompositionandcommunication3156-1.gif
October 1996
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Abstract
Like its predecessor, the third edition of Academic Writing for Graduate Students explains understanding the intended audience, the purpose of the paper, and academic genres; includes the use of task-based methodology, analytic group discussion, and genre consciousness-raising; shows how to write summaries and critiques; features language focus sections that address linguistic elements as they affect the wider rhetorical objectives; and helps students position themselves as junior scholars in their academic communities. Among the many changes in the third edition: * newer, longer, and more authentic texts and examples * greater discipline variety in texts (added texts from hard sciences and engineering) * more in-depth treatment of research articles * greater emphasis on vocabulary issues * revised flow-of-ideas section * additional tasks that require students to do their own research * more corpus-informed content The Commentary has also been revised and expanded.