For the past few decades, composition researchers have devoted critical attention to studying the ways that African American students employ Africanized linguistic and rhetorical patterns successfully in expository writing situations. More recently, research has focused on the use of African-based rhetorical patterns, since the use of African…

This article situates the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing" in current educational policy and in the discipline of rhetoric and composition. It argues the Framework positions the discipline to address gaps in American education by reinvigorating historical and traditional frames for writing instruction--ancient rhetoric and the…

Recent surveys of feminist rhetorical historiography by Royster and Kirsch, Elizabeth Tasker and Frances B. Holt-Underwood, K. J. Rawson, Kathleen J. Ryan, and Jessica Enoch reveal that very few feminist historiographers have taken up digital methodologies or engaged digital humanist conversations. Thus while digital feminist scholars have…

This study examines how changes in a key scientific genre supported anthropology's early twentieth-century bid for scientific status. Combining spatial theories of genre with inflections from the register of economics, I develop the concept of "rhetorical scarcity" to characterize this genre change not as evolution but as manipulation that…

This article reviews the deeply conflicted literature on learning transfer, especially as it applies to rhetorical knowledge and skill. It then describes a study in which six students are followed through their first co-op work term to learn about which resources they draw on as they enter a new environment of professional writing. It suggests…

Design is a rhetorical activity that requires creative thinking in response to difficult situations. That creative work ultimately builds new relationships and new contexts. Sustainable design can become an approach to composition that alters ways of thinking about writing situations, keeping ethical and contextual factors in focus, and…

In this essay, the author aims to show how a specific focus on interactionally emergent and rhetorically negotiated elements of a communicative situation can enrich the study of difference in composition research. She develops this argument by first identifying two strategies used by writing researchers when forwarding new understandings of…

The author--drawing both on history and on his own experience as faculty member, WPA, department head, and dean--examines the set of practices we associate with the tenure and promotion process, finding that they differ across sites at the same time that they look very similar in their assumptions. His review then culminates in a set of questions…

Rhetoric and composition historiography has recently undergone a rapid transformation as scholars have complicated and challenged earlier narratives by examining diverse local histories and alternative rhetorical traditions. This revisionist scholarship has in turn created new research challenges, as scholars must now demonstrate connections…

This article raises multiple issues associated with archival research methodologies and methods. Based on a survey of recent scholarship and interviews with experienced archival researchers, this overview of the current status of archival research both complicates traditional conceptions of archival investigation and encourages scholars to adopt…

Over the past two decades, critical discourse analysis has emerged as a major new multidisciplinary approach to the study of texts and contexts in the public sphere. Developed in Europe, CDA has lately become increasingly popular in North America, where it is proving especially congenial to new directions in rhetoric and composition. This essay…

Presented as a series of graphs, bibliographic data gathered from "College Composition and Communication" provides perspective useful for inquiring into the changing shape of the field as it continues to mature. In its focus on graphing, the article demonstrates an application of distant reading methods to present patterns not only reflective of…

This article is a pragmatic, classroom-focused conversation about the teaching of writing among three teachers living in the United States and China, separated by many thousands of miles and many centuries of tradition and culture. Our focus here is on classroom concerns: actual student writing, assignment design, and assessment. We seek to…

This essay reveals the importance of investigating mundane internal documents, particularly when considering muted rhetors, who may use such texts strategically in an attempt to subvert the status quo. It does so by examining the first and second women presidents of NCTE and their efforts to professionalize the organization and to strengthen the…

This is a written version of the address that Malea Powell gave at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday, March 22, 2012. This address is a collection of stories. According to her, stories take place. Stories practice place into space. Stories produce habitable spaces. She…