The WAW executive team is delighted to invite you to view our virtual discussion. Rebecca Day Babcock and Cynthia Cochran share their article, “Writing about Writing: A Snapshot in Time,” soon to be published in Composition Studies—which surveys instructors’ theoretical and practical definitions of WAW within the higher education landscape.
WAW Fall Workshop Roundtable September 2023
The WAW executive team is delighted to invite you to view our virtual roundtable on Next Steps: New Directions for/in Writing about Writing to mark the launch of our 2023-2024 event programming. Our guests are the editors of the collection: Doug Downs, Barbara Bird and Jan Rieman. This session took place on Zoom on September 18th at 7 pm EST.
WAW Spring Workshop May 2023
We talk with Professor Aja Martinez, Associate Professor of English at the University of North Texas, to discuss her book, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory (2020) and winner of the 2023 CCCC Outstanding Book Award.
WAW Spring Workshop February 2023
Samuel Stinson delivers the keynote presentation for this year’s WAW standing group meeting, followed by a question and answer based discussion.
Readings for WAW Courses
Readings for WAW Courses
Rebecca Babcock, Cynthia Cochran, and Aliethia Dean
5/14/2023
In 2015 and 2016, we surveyed and interviewed 31 instructors from the US and Canada who self-identified as being practitioners of WAW and WAW-based courses (see the published study, “WAW: A Snapshot in Time,” in the Fall 2023 issue of Composition Studies). We also examined any course material the participants shared with us. This blog post is meant as a companion piece to the work we did in that study; specifically, it focuses on the readings instructors reported assigning in their writing about writing courses. We hope readers will find inspiration for their own courses.
In analyzing the data we found a number of readings used by 2 – 6 instructors as well as some used by only one instructor. The list below indicates the number of respondents who used each reading.
We thought this blog space a good venue to share readings being used in WAW classrooms at the time of the research. Since that time, there have been several books published that are suitable to WAW as well, of course, as an ever-growing body of writing studies literature, and thus an ever-growing list of WAW readings. If you are interested, another place to find readings is https://writingaboutwriting.net/category/resources/teaching-resources/reading-lists-for-courses/.
We hope that over time this list will grow. Please add readings you currently use in the Comments section.
Used by 6 instructors:
†Wardle “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in the New Workplace.”
Used by 4 instructors:
†Brandt “Sponsors of Literacy.”
†Haas and Flower “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning.”
†Kain and Wardle “Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing Classroom.”
†Porter “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”
†Swales “The Concept of Discourse Community.”
Used by 3 instructors:
†Alexie “The Joys of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.”
†Bazerman “Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activities and People.”
†Covino and Jolliffe “What is Rhetoric?”
†Mahiri and Sablo “Writing for Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of California’s Urban, African American Youth”
†McCarthy “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum.”
†Perl “The Composing Process of Unskilled College Writers.”
†Rose “Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block”
†Sommers “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”
†Villanueva excerpts from Bootstraps
†X “Learning to Read”
Used by 2 instructors:
Foley “Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay”
†Gee “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics”
†Grant-Davie “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents”
†Greene “The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Assignment”
Hartwell “Grammar, Grammars and the Teaching of Grammar”
†Kantz “Helping Students use Textual Sources Persuasively”
†LaMott “Shitty First Drafts.”
†Murray “All Writing is Autobiography”
†Prior “Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being”
†Sommers “I Stand Here Writing”
†Swales “Create a Research Space (CARS) Model of Research Introductions.”
*Wardle and Downs “Introduction”
Lists of Readings Mentioned by Only One Instructor (65)
Allen “The Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer”
*Alexie “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”
Bartholomae “Inventing the University”
Bazerman Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts
Bazerman “A Relationship between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model”
Beaufort College Writing and Beyond 2007
Bishop The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students
Bizup & Williams Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Brand “The Why of Cognition: Emotion and the Writing Process”
Brannon, Courtney, Urbanski, et al. “The Five-Paragraph Essay and the Deficit Model of Education”
Bruce “Listening to and Learning from ESL Writers”
Carroll “Backpacks vs Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis”
Covino & Joliffe “What is Rhetoric?”
Cronk (dir.) God’s Not Dead (movie)
Crowley “Tolerance and the Christian Right”
Dean “Muddying Boundaries: Mixing Genres with Five Paragraphs”
Driscoll “Introduction to Primary Research: Observations, Surveys, and Interviews”
Edlin “Keeping the Faith: The Christian Scholar in the Academy in a Postmodern World”
Elbow “Speaking with My Eyes Closed”
Elbow, Belanoff Being a Writer: A Community of Writers
Fulweiler “Looking and Listening for My Voice”
Grant-Davie “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents”
Greene “Argument as Conversation”
Hartwell “Grammar, Grammars and the Teaching of Grammar”
Hesse “Writing Beyond Writing Classes: Useful Strategies for Busy Professors”
Hinton “So You’ve Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?”
Hoffmann “Cool at 13, Adrift at 23”
Horning & Becker Revision: History, Theory, and Practice
Khan “Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context”
Lunsford and Lunsford “’Mistakes Are a Fact of Life’: A National. Comparative Study”
*Mahiri & Sablo “Writing for Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of California’s Urban, African American Youth”
McLeod “Some Thoughts about Feelings: The Affective Domain and the Writing Process”
Miller Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
Miller Norton Book of Composition 2009
Miller “Speaking My Mind: Persistence of the Five-Paragraph Essay”
Montenegro “Is There a Better Word for Doom?”
Murray “Teach Writing as Process Not Product”
Murray The Craft of Revision
Nunes “The Five-Paragraph Essay: Its Evolution and Roots in Theme-Writing”
Nunnally “Breaking the Five-Paragraph Theme Barrier”
Penrose & Geisler “Reading and Writing Without Authority”
Perl “Understanding Composing”
Rand “Enacting Faith: Evangelical Discourse and the Discipline of Composition Studies”
Reynolds “For Fitness, Push Yourself”
Rose Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared
Rosenberg “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”
Sargent and Paraskevas Conversations About Writing: Eavesdropping, Inkshedding, and Joining In
Seo “Speaking My Mind: Defending the Five-Paragraph Essay”
Smith “Speaking My Mind: In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay”
Sommers (dir.) Beyond the Red Ink: Teachers’ Comments through Students’ Eyes (video)
*Sommers “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”
Sommers and Saltz “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year”
Speer “Re-Conceiving the Five Paragraph Essay in an Era of Uncertainty”
Spinuzzi “Four Ways to Investigate Assemblages of Texts: Genre Sets, Systems, Repertoires, and Ecologies.”
†Straub “Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students’ Writing”
Steelman “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”
Tremmel “What to Make of the Five-Paragraph Theme: History of the Genre and Implications”
*Wardle and Downs “Introduction”
Wardle and Down Writing About Writing; A College Reader
Webb-Sunderhaus “A Family Affair: Competing Sponsors of Literacy in Appalachian Students’ Lives”
Wesley “The Ill Effects of the Five-Paragraph Theme”
White “My Five-Paragraph-Theme Theme”
*Windsor “Joining the Engineering Community: How Do Novices Learn to Write Like Engineers?”
X, Malcolm “Learning to Read”
Zeiger “The Exploratory Essay: Enfranchising the Spirit of Inquiry in College Composition”
†appears in WAW 1st ed.
†appears in WAW both 1st and 2nd ed.
*appears in WAW 2nd ed only.
WAWN 2022-2023 Workshop Series
Our WAWN 2022-2023 Workshop Series via Zoom continues on Monday, May 29th at 7 pm EST/6 pm CST. We are thrilled to welcome Pr. Aja Martinez, Associate Professor of English at the University of North Texas, to discuss her book, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory (2020) and winner of the 2023 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. Further optional readings can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YlwjwJCAPiBojlwUHjrbaOiaI6HLZ6Ko?usp=share_link
The Zoom link for the workshop is below. Hope to see you there.
https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/2176050277
Passcode: 408794
WAW SG FALL WORKSHOP: NOVEMBER 2022
We talk with Dominic DelliCarpini about his edited collection, The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies. The collection is also edited by Jenn Fishman and Jane Greer.
#EVENT WAWN NOV 21 WORKSHOP, THE NAYLOR REPORT ON UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH IN WRITING STUDIES
Our WAWN 2022 Workshop Series via Zoom continues on Monday, November 21 at 6pm CST/7pm EST. Dr. Dominic DelliCarpini. will join us for a discussion of his edited collection, The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies. The collection is also edited by Jenn Fishman and Jane Greer.
The Zoom link for the workshop is below. Hope to see you there.
https://minotstateu.zoom.us/j/93864261535?pwd=RVpjV05GZlpENVpWYVBab0ErUytZUT09
About the series: The goal of this series is to provide an opportunity for our community to explore WAW-focused literature in a synchronous group setting, both to find practical applications to implement in our teaching and to inform our own WAW projects. Graduate students and faculty within our WAW community select articles and discussion prompts to guide and engage us in conversations. These papers are a starting point to explore and examine one WAW area of scholarship and/or teaching pedagogy, and topics chosen will resonate across WAW experience levels and institutional contexts.
We hope you consider joining our sessions; everyone is welcome, whether you are a long-time group member, just joined this year, or are simply curious about WAW.
*The readings are not prerequisites for attendance. Summaries of the article will be provided at the beginning of each session.
WAW SG FALL WORKSHOP: SEPTEMBER 2022
Facilitator Rebecca Babcock talks with David Greene about his article, “A Seat at the Table: Reflections on Writing Studies and HBCU Writing Programs.” The article is included in Black Perspectives in Writing Program Administration.
#EVENT WAWN Sept 26 Workshop, “A Seat at the Table: Reflections on Writing Studies and HBCU Writing Programs”
Our WAWN 2022 Workshop Series via Zoom continues on Monday, Sept 26 at 7pm CST/8pm EST. Dr. David F. Green Jr. will join us for a discussion of his article, “A Seat at the Table: Reflections on Writing Studies and HBCU Writing Programs.” The article is included in Black Perspectives in Writing Program Administration edited by Stacy Perryman-Clark and Collin Lamont Craig. A PDF will be provided upon request (email sfrances@svsu.edu).*
The Zoom link for the workshop is below. Hope to see you there.
https://minotstateu.zoom.us/j/93864261535?pwd=RVpjV05GZlpENVpWYVBab0ErUytZUT09
About the series: The goal of this series is to provide an opportunity for our community to explore WAW-focused literature in a synchronous group setting, both to find practical applications to implement in our teaching and to inform our own WAW projects. Graduate students and faculty within our WAW community select articles and discussion prompts to guide and engage us in conversations. These papers are a starting point to explore and examine one WAW area of scholarship and/or teaching pedagogy, and topics chosen will resonate across WAW experience levels and institutional contexts.
We hope you consider joining our sessions; everyone is welcome, whether you are a long-time group member, just joined this year, or are simply WAW-curious.
*The readings are not prerequisites for attendance. Summaries of the article will be provided at the beginning of each session.
Writing about Writing Network 