Ira Shor serves on the English faculty at the College of Staten Island, CUNY and is Professor in the City University of New York’s Graduate School, where he started up the doctorate in composition/ rhetoric in 1993. His nine books include a recent three-volume set in honor of the late Paulo Freire which includes Critical… Continue reading Hybrid Idioms in Writing the Community: An Interview with Ira Shor by Hannah Ashley

When service-learning educators of future generations look back at the development of the field, they may well point to three events at the turn of the century as watershed moments in service-learning research. In 1999, Janet Eyler and Dwight Giles published Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning?, drawing upon their own ambitious nationwide studies and dozens… Continue reading Setting the Course for Service-Learning Research by Nora Bacon

“Setting the Course for Service-Learning Research” | Nora Bacon “Hybrid Idioms in Writing the Community: An Interview with Ira Shor” | Hannah Ashley “Review of Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition by Thomas Deans” | Joseph Harris “Review of Charting A Hero’s Journey by Linda A. Chisholm” | Rachel Rigolino “Review of The Real World of… Continue reading Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 2001

In what can be called a “culture of disconnect,” students and teachers alike often want to engage in public discourse but do not know where to begin. The newsletters and newspapers produced to support the work of small, alternative hospitality houses and prison ministries reveal the role communication plays in the lives of active participants… Continue reading The Word On the Street Public Discourse in a Culture of Disconnect by Diana George

Examination of the Compass Learning Community shows that service-learning, when integrated into first-year learning communities, expands each student s ability to determine a college major in an informed manner. The combination of a first-year writing course linked with an academic course in career discovery provided students with a variety of opportunities for experiential learning about… Continue reading Helping Undeclared Majors Chart a Course Integrating Learning Community Models and Service-Learning by Gerry McNenny

This paper describes methods to study the impact of service-learning on the writing performance of students in first-year college composition. Linguistic and rhetorical features commonly identified as affecting judgments of writing quality are compared to holistic essay ratings to assess the impact of different teaching and learning contexts on writing performance. Link to PDF

The authors argue that writing-intensive service-learning courses extend the lessons of first-year composition courses by teaching students how to understand and negotiate differences between the discourses of the academy and those of community-based organizations. While first-year writing courses lead students through successive approximations of a generalized academic discourse in the relative safety of the composition… Continue reading Confronting Clashing Discourses: Writing the Space Between Classroom and Community in Service-Learning Courses by Caryn Chaden, Roger Graves, David A. Jolliffe, Peter Vandenberg

“The Word On the Street: Public Discourse in a Culture of Disconnect” | Diana George “Confronting Clashing Discourses Writing the Space Between Classroom and Community in Service-Learning Courses” | Caryn Chaden Roger Graves, David A. Jolliffe, & Peter Vandenberg “Text-Based Measures of Service-Learning Writing Quality” | Adrian Wurr “Helping Undeclared Majors Chart a Course Integrating… Continue reading Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2002

This article underscores the importance of examining community-based writing in practice. It traces the evolution of an “International Connections” service-learning project from a well-intentioned add-on to a thoughtful and critical component of a writing course. Distilling best practices from recent service-learning literature, the article concludes with a call for 1) integration of the service-learning project… Continue reading Tapping the Potential of Service-Learning Guiding: Principles for Redesigning Our Composition Courses by Cheryl Hofstetter Duffy

This article adopts the perspective of rhetorical theory to examine student, teacher, and client assessments of community service writing projects created by students in a technical writing course. The study compares both students’ and clients’ assessments of the benefits of the service-learning experience and the teacher’s and clients’ evaluations of the documents. It highlights significant… Continue reading In the Eye of the Beholder: Contrasting Views of Community Service Writing by Teresa M. Redd

This article compares ten English composition courses–six taught with traditional methodologies and four incorporating service-learning. Four instructors, each of whom taught both the traditional and service-learning versions of the composition courses, and one hundred twenty-eight students were involved in the study. The authors demonstrate that service-learning improves students’ attitudes toward civic engagement and social responsibility,… Continue reading Service-Learning Outcomes in English Composition Courses An Application of the Campus Compact Assessment Protocol by J. Richard Kendrick, Jr. & John Suarez

Is service-learning of value for community college students who have very limited time and who do not need to “be exposed” to the neighborhoods in which they live? Yes. Service-learning can be a vital bridge connecting community and college for students who frequently are the first of their family or friends to go to college,… Continue reading Keep it Real A Maxim for Service-Learning in Community Colleges by Michelle Navarre Cleary

Professor of Political Science and former Director of the Feinstein Institute for Public Service at Providence College, Rick Battistoni is a distinguished author in the field of political theory with a principal interest in the role of education in a democratic society. As Campus Compact’s Engaged Scholar for Civic Engagement, Battistoni has published a recent… Continue reading From Service-Learning to Service Politics: A Conversation with Rick Battistoni by Barbara Roswell

Bruce Herzberg is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Bentley College. He is the author of several articles on service learning, including “Community Service and Critical Teaching,” published originally in CCC and reprinted in a number of anthologies, and “Public Discourse and Service Learning,” published in JAC . He is also the… Continue reading Community Service and Critical Teaching A Retrospective Conversation with Bruce Herzberg by Thomas Deans

In his introduction to Life Stories, a collection of New Yorker Profiles, David Remnick confesses that “the Profile is a terribly hard form to get right.” Conceived as a form to describe Manhattan celebrities, the genre now travels widely and along all emotional and occupational registers. One quality runs through many of the best Profiles,… Continue reading “The Book Man” by Courtney Hollender

“Tapping the Potential of Service-Learning: Guiding Principles for Redesigning Our Composition Courses” | Cheryl Hofstetter Duffy “In the Eye of the Beholder: Contrasting Views of Community Service Writing” | Teresa M. Redd “Service-Learning Outcomes in English Composition Courses: An Application of the Campus Compact Assessment Protocol” | J. Richard Kendrick, Jr. & John Suarez “Keep… Continue reading Issue 3, Vol 1, Winter 2003

In the midst of this unprecedented global pandemic, Reflections coeditors Laurie Grobman and Deborah Mutnick invite submissions for a special section in the Spring 2021 issue that document, analyze, and reflect on the impact of COVID 19 on existing community-engaged writing projects, partnerships, and communities, including the transformation of K-16 classrooms by remote instruction. The work of… Continue reading Call for Submissions for Spring 2021 Issue with Special Section on COVID-19 & Community Engaged Writing

Click to download the full issue, or visit the archive for individual articles. We write this introduction for our fourth, coedited issue of Reflections at a historic moment between the passage of two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the House and his possible (theoretical) removal in the Senate. This conjuncture comes just… Continue reading Introducing Reflections 19.2

The following email conversation, much of it done in a coffee shop in Amherst, Massachusetts across a table from each other, contains two strands that quickly merge into one. We’ve reproduced the beginning of each strand. We each sent an initial email (before either of us had read the other’s posting) and responded to them.… Continue reading A Conversation about Literacy Narratives and Social Power by Lauren Rosenberg and Kirk Branch

This project investigates how a group of adult learners who are acquiring new literacies articulate their relationships to dominant ideologies of literacy. My goal is to look beyond typically expressed motivations for becoming more literate to understand how people see the roles of writing and reading in their lives. I argue that adult learners can… Continue reading Retelling Culture Through the Construction of Alternative Literacy Narratives: A Study of Adults Acquiring New Literacies by Lauren Rosenberg

In this article, Williams-Christopher calls for greater awareness of the educational import of non-traditional texts, specifically black women’s memoir, for college composition and rhetoric courses. Williams-Christopher contends that including texts that illustrate the various ways black women have transcended forms of oppression, abuse, and disenfranchisement helps to validate the experiences of black women inside and… Continue reading The Relevance of Homeplace Narratives in the Academy by Yaa Williams-Christopher

This article nods to a writing project in a Detroit Metro area writing class where students were challenged to take a metaphorical walk inside the walls of inner-city Detroit. Modeling the intersection of theory and practice embedded in this method of seeing the city, it introduces terms from compositionists and other scholars who write about… Continue reading Writing of and on the City by Liz Rohan

Warrior Writers: A Collection of Writing & Artwork By Veterans offers a voice for soldiers speaking their truths and a rare glimpse inside their hearts and minds for the civilians who remain homeside, creating an open channel to the lesser known, (and rarely discussed), personal details of warfare through poetry, creative nonfiction, and photography. Editors… Continue reading Review: Warrior Writers: A Collection of Writing & Artwork Veterans by Aleashia Walton Valentin

Veterans are cast into two roles in American public discourse: Hero (Hawrot Weigel and Detweiler Miller) and Threat (also called Rambo (Schell & Kleinbart, Valentino); Ticking Time Bomb (Hawrot Weigel and Detweiler Miller, Wood); and Victim (Katopes) among others). Only half of one percent of Americans serve on active duty, so the gap between military… Continue reading Review Essay: When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home & See Me For Who I Am by Catherine St. Pierre

Sue Doe and Lisa Langstraat’s edited collection of theory, practice, and personal stories from both teachers and veteran students provides insights into how the field of composition serves and networks with increasing numbers of the specialized veteran-student population. The most significant contribution this collection makes lies in its consistently networked connections between students and instructors… Continue reading Review: Generation Vet: Composition, Student- Veterans, and Post- 9/11 University by Jeanne Law Bohannon

The day you waved at me For the first time The convoy was Transformed Into a parade I lowered my weapon Waved back like a beauty queen In desert camo… Link to PDF

The CCCC position statement on student veterans (2015) reminds writing program administrators (WPAs) of their responsibility to prepare faculty to understand not only the challenges these returning students may face but also the assets they bring with them. This essay argues that writing programs must develop faculty education programs that go beyond solo workshops to… Continue reading Articulating Veteran-Friendly: Preparing First-Year Writing Instructors to Work with Veterans by Thomas Sura

While many colleges and universities have earned a “military friendly” designation, too few offer opportunities for faculty to learn about military culture and the specific issues facing student veterans as they transition from active duty to student status. This article chronicles the authors’ experiences with and approaches to a workshop series, “Working with Post-9/11 Student-Veterans:… Continue reading Faculty Development Workshops with Student-Vet Participants: Seizing the Induction Possibilities by Sue Doe & Lisa Langstraat

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics is the sixth book in the Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition series, whose editor, Charles Bazerman, has set out to provide “compact, comprehensive, and convenient surveys of what has been learned through research and practice” on a single topic. The topic here is community literacy, and… Continue reading Review of Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics by Elenore Long by David Coogan

Paxton, Nebraska (population 542) may look like another blink-and-you-miss-it Midwestern town, but Charlotte Hogg, in her book From the Garden Club: Rural Women Writing Community, reveals how much her hometown has to teach us about rural places and the literacy practices of the women who live there. This book does essential work by providing theoretical… Continue reading Review of From the Garden Club: Rural Women Writing Community by Charlotte Hogg by Ryan Patrick Witt

If service education is to avoid the many cultural pitfalls that have been signaled to date in the literature, it seems crucial that town-gown articulations be nurtured as organic, reciprocating, knowledge-producing endeavors that position the ethnographic encounter at their epistemological center. For these articulations to be organic, they must grow from encounters between graduate students… Continue reading Service Education as (Auto?)-Ethnographic Encounter by Jim Henry

Rejecting the conventional academic wisdom that tells us to “put community-based programs and partnerships on hold or on the side until we achieve tenure,” I resolve this day to hold my multiple subjectivities together by remaining holistic, committed, concerned, connected, and compassionate, but most importantly, centered in the constellation of my community. I will not… Continue reading A Charter for Civic Engagement and Holistic Academic Process by Winona Wynn

A few years ago I served as a graduate assistant in an experimental course for freshmen at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia. New Portals to Appreciating our Global Environment (NewPAGE) united faculty and graduate students across disciplines to tackle instruction on pressing global issues such as climate change, health, sustainable development, and environmental… Continue reading Courage, Commitment and a Little Humility: The Path to Civic Engagement by Jennifer J. Kidd

In spring 2007, I began working with a fellow graduate student in Purdue’s Rhet/Comp program on a community engagement project that would become the basis for both our dissertations. Allen and I agreed to work together because of our mutual interests in community engagement and public rhetorics, as well as our complementary interests in professional… Continue reading One Grad Student’s Reflections by Jaclyn M. Wells

Although conventional academic wisdom discourages young scholars from becoming involved in community-based work, the growing interest in service-learning and community literacy reflected in contemporary scholarship in composition and within the larger academy suggests that these are now viable paths to pursue throughout the trajectory of a scholarly career. Link to PDF

In the spring of 2007 I helped organize a research cluster with three other graduate students at the University of Washington that focused on the question of public scholarship for academics. We formed the group Students Writing in Public (SWIP), and, taking it as given that public scholarship is of value because it extends the… Continue reading Does the Academy Need an ‘Extreme Makeover’? by Allison Gross

Becoming “publicly active” as a Ph.D. student in English and Education at the University of Michigan was a slow and at times bewildering process, with periods of frustration punctuated by moments of exhilaration. Consistently I encountered exciting opportunities for public scholarship and then saw these efforts dismissed or ignored. On one hand, I was fortunate… Continue reading The Push and Pull of Being Publicly Active in Graduate School by Paul Feigenbaum

This essay considers the implications of using David Russell’s activity theory to re-conceptualize models of community service writing (CSW) that stem from discourse community theory. Here I argue that the notion of discourse community is of limited use to practitioners committed to CSW, because it leads students to adopt unrealistic expectations about their roles in… Continue reading From Discourse Communities to Activity Systems: Activity Theory as Approach to Community Service Writing by Michael-John DePalma

This essay examines the origins and initial objectives of the Comedy Club—an after school comic theatre program that develops an original sketch comedy show annually at Colonel E. Brooke Lee Middle School in Wheaton, Maryland—along with the value of university-middle school collaborations. Throughout, I document administrative issues, some associated with university collaborations and others endemic… Continue reading Who Knew Public Scholarship was so Fun(ny)?: Practical Applications Within and Beyond the Academy by Rebecca Krefting

We discuss how studying and creating zines in our composition classes allows our students to negotiate and explore the complexities of writing without the compulsions of many of the politically problematic commonplaces of composition pedagogy. We use zines to examine the unique ways in which their rhetorical devices address conflicts around questions of audience and… Continue reading The Politics of Persuasion versus the Construction of Alternative Communities: Zines in the Writing Classroom by Aneil Rallin and Ian Barnard

This essay explores the ways in which narratives pieces (beginning with my own personal narrative, moving to the community outreach project that I have been working with, and finally through the narratives of my students) fit together to inform my work and I hope the work of other emerging scholars interested in community outreach. Ultimately,… Continue reading Piecing Together Narrative Puzzles: A New Scholar’s Reflections on a Community Partnership in an Attempt to Reconcile the Research Teaching and Outreach Triad by Sheila Carter-Tod

This article explores publicly active graduate work that engages with survivors of violence as they become testimonial narrators. Drawing on challenges I faced in transcribing and contextualizing the testimonio of Jorge Velásquez, who narrates his experience with injustice in post-war Guatemala, this analysis addresses some of the tensions that emerge during textual interactions with violence… Continue reading Invoking Solidarity and Engaged Listening in Publicly Active Work: Translating and Transcribing Jorge Velasquez’s Testimonio by Michelle Bellino

This article explores the disconnect between academic, interview-based research with adolescents and the actual lived experiences of teenagers. I advocate that through longterm relationships, community partnerships, creating safe and creative spaces and empowering youth to understand and make meaning of their own experiences, we can truly begin to investigate the issues relevant to their lives. Through… Continue reading Poetry of Desire: Teenage Girls Challenge the “Dilemma” and Write about Sexuality by Dana Edell

“What does public scholarship look like at the graduate level?” “What do publicly engaged graduate students want? What are their pressing concerns?” “How do graduate students get into publicly active work?” “What are publicly active graduate students doing?” Link to PDF

I argue that literacy studies needs to define the role of peace in our efforts to pursue social justice. Drawing on the work of Vietnamese Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, I show that promoting peace is the means, as well as the end, of working toward social justice. Further, I demonstrate that the process of… Continue reading Writing Peace: From Alienation to Connection by Gwen Gorzelsky

Writing assignments carry political ramifications even when they attempt neutrality; students should learn that all writing occurs within larger contexts of power. To accomplish this goal, I advocate instruction derived from practices of critical rhetoric, critical revision, and critical discourse analysis. Rhetoric education, based on Donald Lazere’s Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy, trains students… Continue reading Window Washing or War and Peace: Critical Rhetoric, Critical Revision, and Critical Analysis in Student Writing by Gae Lyn Henderson

This is a story. Or it is a story among the many stories. At the 2000 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Minneapolis, George Googleye, a tribal elder from Leech Lake, opened our caucus with a pipe ceremony, and specific prayers were offered for the members. Often we begin our caucuses with words… Continue reading Response: Native American Caucus by Joyce Rain Anderson

This article examines Montana’s effort to implement legislation “Indian Education for All,” which is intended to help all Montanans learn about the historical and contemporary contributions and achievements of Montana’s Native people, in light of peace-building. It describes three community projects developed by the Montana Writing Project to contribute to implementation efforts and peace activism… Continue reading Peace-Building in Indian Country: ’Indian Education for All by Heather E. Bruce

This paper profiles the creation of the Nyerere Centre for Peace Research in Arusha, Tanzania and the evolution of a unique approach to applied peace and conflict resolution in Arcadia University’s Master’s degree program in International Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR). The focus is on a curriculum that bridges theory and practice in the conflict… Continue reading A Case-Study of Applied Peace and Conflict Resolution in East Africa and the Founding of the Nyerere Centre for Peace Research by Warren Haffar & Sandra Jones

In honor of the International Day of Peace (September 21, 2008), established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981 to be “devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among, all nations and peoples,” the United Nations organized a global peace messaging campaign inviting citizens from every country to urge… Continue reading TXT/WRITE 4 PEACE to World Leaders: United Nations International Day of Peace by Melanie Nolte