College of Arts and Letters (OER Hub): ENGL 1020: Composition II

Teaching/Writing in Thirdspaces: The Studio Approach examines a dynamic approach to teaching composition that reimagines not only the physical space in which writing and learning occurs but also the place occupied by composition in the power structure of universities and colleges. In response to financial and programmatic cutbacks at the University of South Carolina in the 1990s, authors Rhonda C. Grego and Nancy S. Thompson used their academic backgrounds in composition and English education, along with their personal histories in working-class families, to look at compositional spaces and places with an eye to challenging the embedded issues of race, class, and gender within the university hierarchies. The result was a supplemental writing program that they called the writing studio. The studio model emphasizes individual participation in a small group that allows students to present work they are preparing for outside classes, discuss their challenges, and refine their ideas with other students and staff facilitators. This “interactional inquiry” is replicated and reinforced by the facilitators, who meet in their own small groups to analyze larger patterns, possibilities, and needs as they arise in their studios. Grego and Thompson argue that because the studio is physically and institutionally “outside but alongside” both students'other coursework and the hierarchy of the institution, it represents a “thirdspace,” a unique position in which to effect institutional change.

This volume, edited by Grace Veach, explores leading approaches to foregrounding information literacy in first-year college writing courses. Chapters describe cross-disciplinary efforts underway across higher education, as well as innovative approaches of both writing professors and librarians in the classroom. This seminal work unpacks the disciplinary implications for information literacy and writing studies as they encounter one another in theory and practice, during a time when "fact" or "truth" is less important than fitting a predetermined message. Topics include reading and writing through the lens of information literacy, curriculum design, specific writing tasks, transfer, and assessment.

The Two Cultures of English examines the academic discipline of English in the final decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the new millennium. During this period, longstanding organizational patterns within the discipline were disrupted. With the introduction of French theory into the American academy in the 1960s and 1970s, both literary studies and composition studies experienced a significant reorientation. The introduction of theory into English studies not only intensified existing tensions between those in literature and those in composition but also produced commonalities among colleagues that had not previously existed. As a result, the various fields within English began to share an increasing number of investments at the same time that institutional conflicts between them became more intense than ever before. Through careful reconsiderations of some of the key figures who shaped and were shaped by this new landscape—including Michel Foucault, Kenneth Burke, Paul de Man, Fredric Jameson, James Berlin, Susan Miller, John Guillory, and Bruno Latour—the book offers a more comprehensive map of the discipline than is usually understood from the perspective of either literature or composition alone. Possessing a clear view of the entire discipline is essential today as the contemporary corporate university pushes English studies to abandon its liberal arts tradition and embrace a more vocational curriculum. This book provides important conceptual tools for responding to and resisting in this environment.

Magazine providing forum for teachers of writing in two-and four-year colleges. Contributions discuss the theory and practice of teaching composition or communication, and relate them to the teaching of literature and language.

College English is the professional journal for the college scholar-teacher. CE publishes articles about literature, rhetoric-composition, critical theory, creative writing theory and pedagogy, linguistics, literacy, reading theory, pedagogy, and professional issues related to the teaching of English. Issues may also include review essays.

Computers and Composition: An International Journal is devoted to exploring the use of computers in writing classes, writing programs, and writing research. It provides a forum for discussing issues connected with writing and computer use. It also offers information about integrating computers into writing programs on the basis of sound theoretical and pedagogical decisions, and empirical evidence. It welcomes articles, reviews, and letters to the Editors that may be of interest to readers, including descriptions of computer-aided writing and/or reading instruction, discussions of topics related to computer use of software development; explorations of controversial ethical, legal, or social issues related to the use of computers in writing programs; and to discussions of how computers affect form and content for written discourse, the process by which this discourse is produced, or the impact this discourse has on an audience.