College Composition and Communication Feb 2026

Research Brief: Community-Engaged Writing

Jessica Pauszek ; Veronica House ; Paula Mathieu

Abstract

This Research Brief presents an overview of current research in community-engaged writing, particularly foregrounding the importance of praxis-oriented and collaborative approaches. Here, we articulate collaboration, reciprocity, and accountability as some of the main tenets of community-engaged writing, and we showcase the variety of projects that such work can include (from local food writing to prison literacy work to transnational social justice movements and beyond). Then, we explore some of the methods and methodologies that are central in this scholarship, drawing on examples that engage storytelling, oral history and interview methods, archival methods, ethnographic research, and even public performances and workshops. We conclude with a discussion of future possibilities for research, teaching, and the imperative to see community-engaged work as part of scholarly work in tenure, promotion, and review.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2026-02-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc2026773484
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
service learning teacher development collaborative writing labor and working conditions archival research qualitative research literacy studies race and writing
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (61) · 9 in this index

  1. Alvarez (2017)
    Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies
  2. Alvarez (2019)
    English Students Explore Community Literacies Through Tacos
  3. Alvarez (2017)
    Taco Literacy: Public Advocacy and Mexican Food in the U.S. Nuevo South
    Composition Studies
  4. Baker-Bell (2020)
    Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy
     ↗
  5. Baniya (2024)
    Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice and Crisis Communication during Disaster
Show all 61 →
  1. Beardsley (2022)
    Feminist Food Rhetoric: Women’s Rhetorical Strategies Across Instagram, Food Podcasts, and Community Cookbooks
  2. Berry (2018)
    Doing Time, Writing Lives: Refiguring Literacy and Higher Education in Prison
  3. Cavallaro (2019)
    Making Citizens Behind Bars (and the Stories We Tell About It): Queering Approa…
    Literacy in Composition Studies
  4. Cedillo (2021)
    Unruly Borders, Bodies, and Blood: Mexican ‘Mongrels’ and the Eugenics of Empire
    Journal for the History of Rhetoric  ↗
  5. (2022)
    Promotion and Tenure Resources
    Coalition for Community Writing
  6. Cushman (2011)
    The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance
  7. Cushman (2013)
    Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive
    College English
  8. Cushman
    Digital Archive of Indigenous Language Persistence
  9. Deans (2000)
    Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition
  10. Fernheimer (2022)
    Teaching Through the Archives: Text, Collaboration, and Activism
  11. Gere (1994)
    Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition
    College Composition and Communication
  12. Godfrey
    Celebrating Simms: Complicating the ‘Single Story’ in Community-Engagement Projects
    Digital Engagements; Or, the Virtual Gets Real
  13. Gottschalk Druschke
    Stories from the Flood
  14. Druschke et al. (2022)
    Stories from the Flood: Promoting Healing and Fostering Policy Change Through S…
    Community Literacy Journal
  15. Haas (2007)
    Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and P…
    Studies in American Indian Literatures  ↗
  16. Hinojosa (2023)
    Communities in Action: Creating Spaces of Social Change
  17. House (2025)
    Local Organic: Food Rhetorics and Community Writing for Impact
  18. Hsu (2022)
    Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics
     ↗
  19. Hubrig (2022)
    Access as Community Literacy: A Call for Intersectionality, Reciprocity, and Collective R…
    Community Literacy Journal
  20. Hubrig (2020)
    ‘We Move Together’: Reckoning with Disability Justice in Community Literacy Studies
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  21. Itchuaqiyaq (2022)
    No, I Won’t Introduce You to My Mama: Boundary Spanners, Access, and Accountability to In…
    Community Literacy Journal
  22. Jackson (2018)
    Decolonizing Community Writing With Community Listening: Story, Transrhetorical Resistanc…
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  23. Jacobi (2016)
    Against Infrastructure: Curating Community Literacy in a Jail Writing Program
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  24. Kannan (2016)
    Unmasking Corporate-Military Infrastructure: Four Theses
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  25. King (2015)
    Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics
     ↗
  26. Knight (2022)
    Community Is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative Change
     ↗
  27. Kynard (2020)
    ‘All I Need Is One Mic’: A Black Feminist Community Meditation on the Work, the Job, and …
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  28. Kynard (2015)
    Teaching While Black: Witnessing and Countering Disciplinary Whiteness, Racial …
    Literacy in Composition Studies
  29. Lesh (2022)
    The Writing of Where: Graffiti and the Production of Writing Spaces
     ↗
  30. Luther (2022)
    More Than Paper Islands: The Pandemic Circuitry of Quaranzines
    Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
  31. Fendelman (2018)
    Man on Fire
  32. Martinez (2020)
    Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory
  33. Mathieu (2005)
    Tactics of Hope
  34. Milū (2024)
    Writing Our Dreams: A Community Storytelling Project With Students and Teachers at Kūtha …
    Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
  35. Monberg (2011)
    Writing Home or Writing as the Community: Toward a Theory of Recursive Spatial Movement f…
    Reflections
  36. Moss (2003)
    A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches
  37. Mutnick (2018)
    Pathways to Freedom: From the Archives to the Street
    College Composition and Communication
  38. Nordquist (2017)
    Literacy and Mobility: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Agency at the Nexus of High School an…
     ↗
  39. Novotny (2023)
    Infertilities: A Collection
  40. Parks et al. (2000)
    Writing beyond the Curriculum: Fostering New Collaborations in Literacy
    College English
  41. Parks (2018)
    Syrians for Truth and Justice: Articulating Entanglements, Disrupting Disciplinarity
    Making Future Matters
  42. Pauszek (2025)
    Worker Writers: Community Archiving in Action
  43. Pauszek
    Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers Digital Collection
  44. Poudyal (2021)
    The �Nature� of Ethics while (Digitally) Archiving the Other
    Across the Disciplines
  45. Richardson (2004)
    African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives
  46. Richardson (2013)
    Po H# on Dope to PhD: How Education Saved My Life
  47. Richardson (2021)
    'She Ugly': Black Girls, Women in Hiphop and Activism--Hiphop Feminist Literaci…
    Community Literacy Journal
  48. Richardson (2018)
    #StayWoke: The Language and Literacies of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
    Community Literacy Journal  ↗
  49. Riley (2015)
    Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics
     ↗
  50. Ruiz (2016)
    Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and…
     ↗
  51. Ruiz (2019)
    Rhetorics Elsewhere and Otherwise: Contested Modernities, Decolonial Visions
  52. Sackey (2024)
    Trespassing Natures: Species Migration and the Right to Space
     ↗
  53. Schell (2023)
    Food Justice Activism and Pedagogies: Literacies and Rhetorics for Transforming Food Syst…
  54. Shah (2020)
    Rewriting Partnerships: Community Perspectives on Community Learning
  55. Trimbur (2020)
    Grassroots Literacy and the Written Record: A Textual History of Asbestos Activism in Sou…
  56. Vieira (2019)
    Writing for Love and Money: How Migration Drives Literacy Learning in Transnational Families
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Pedagogy Oct 2025
    Contributors ↗
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy advanced composition creative writing writing across the curriculum graduate education two-year college service learning teacher development technical communication professional writing labor and working conditions archival research multimodality artificial intelligence literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies literary studies editorial matter
  2. Pedagogy Oct 2024
    Contributors ↗
    rhetorical criticism first-year composition writing pedagogy basic writing writing across the curriculum graduate education two-year college service learning teacher development revision argument collaborative writing assessment writing program administration multimodality multilingual writers literacy studies race and writing disability studies community literacy editorial matter
  3. Pedagogy Oct 2023
    Contributors ↗
    rhetorical criticism first-year composition writing pedagogy writing across the curriculum two-year college teacher development collaborative writing assessment writing centers qualitative research multimodality literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies affect and writing literary studies book reviews editorial matter
  4. Writing and Pedagogy Aug 2023
    Critical friendship and collegial conversations ↗
    Susan Densmore-James; Bryan Ripley Crandall
    teacher development collaborative writing professional writing qualitative research literacy studies race and writing
  5. Pedagogy Oct 2022
    “A Different Kind of Meaning Is Exposed” ↗
    William Stroup
    rhetorical criticism graduate education service learning teacher development argument collaborative writing empirical research qualitative research digital rhetoric race and writing gender and writing editorial matter