Composition theory and pedagogy have variously understood writing as a noun or as a verb, a product or a process. This paper proposes a shift to theorizing writing as a gerund (writing "g.") and argues that this approach opens a space for more productive composition theory. A gerund orientation focuses attention on the virtual and…

As compositionists have constructed a critical discourse on whiteness, they have tacitly theorized how students' bodies can stifle efforts to both reflect on unfamiliar beliefs and critique their own beliefs. While Composition's latent theories of "embodied censorship" challenge the notion that rationality or empathy can enable…

This article offers strategies for administrators who struggle to contextualize their writing programs in institutional climates increasingly focused on recruitment and retention, rather than discipline and discovery. As composition scholars negotiate disciplinary and institutional values, there are productive juxtapositions of university mission…

Published in a 2008 issue of "Journal of Basic Writing" ("JBW"), "Journalism, Poetry, Stand-Up Comedy, and Academic Writing: Mapping the Interplay of Curricular and Extracurricular Literate Activities" was Kevin Roozen's first single-authored publication. Drawn from data collected for the first case study from…

Writing studies' "recent enthusiasm" (Roderick "CF 25") for complexity theory has morphed into higher education's rabid embrace of reform. New curricula claim commitment to an "advanced," "networked," and "global" culture by erasing introductory composition, thereby dismissing the…

This essay considers the long-standing challenges, in both practice and theory, to collaborative writing in the first-year classroom. I argue that Hannah Arendt's concepts of plurality and natality are useful frameworks for thinking constructively and practically about teaching argumentative writing through collaboration. I explore these…

This essay explores Black male literacy practices as institutional critique at a large Midwestern land grant university. Through documenting a student's process of reinstatement at his university, I demonstrate how vernacular perspectives, language, and networking strategies are used for developing self-efficacy and critical literacies. Black…

I argue in this article that digital composing practices require composition teachers to rethink the way we articulate learning outcomes and conduct classroom assessment. To accomplish this, we must revise the language we use to talk about outcomes and assessment in the context of new media. We also need to better understand how technologies are…

This article reviews insights from place-based education and ecological models of writing to show how these theories can work together to shape locally focused composition pedagogies. From place-based education, the researcher takes an emphasis on physical specificity, and from ecological models of writing, the researcher takes an emphasis on…

"Sharing" is a ubiquitous yet largely unexamined term in composition scholarship and practice. Scholars and teachers use the term widely to talk about practices such as peer review, collaboration, and student-teacher conferences, all of which have been used to support the relevance of composition as a social and communal act. Yet, as…

Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer (LGBTQ) representation in composition readers remains limited and is frequently nonexistent. In addition, the LGBTQ-related materials that do find their way into composition readers are often problematic. In this essay I explain why WPAs and composition teachers should be concerned about LGBTQ representation…

Approaching definitions (and the act of defining) as inherently political and ideological, this article argues that there is a lack of definitional precision surrounding "critical pedagogy" and its core terms (e.g., "student empowerment"). This lack of precision can impede the successful and ethical implementation of critical…

Writing centers can be staffed wholly or partially by tutors with little training in science writing. This article suggests that an emphasis on scientific rhetoric, not content, may be most useful for training tutors and developing handouts and checklists to aid novice science writers in invention and revision. The article also suggests that a…

Recent explorations position multimodality as a largely curricular practice wherein the body typically is not figured as a potential mode of meaning making. Such a projection not only fails to acknowledge extracurricular uses of such a rhetoric but also fails to acknowledge the role of the body in and especially for composing. In hopes of…

This article features the diaries and letters of a college student, John Price, who attended Denison University from 1917 to 1921. It shows how Price was pushed and pulled into writing in the extracurriculum by his literacy sponsors, which resulted in his founding a humor magazine as "the jock" took over as "the big man on college…