In "Active Reading," Mark Panek details the dialogic model for discussing reading assignments in introductory composition courses he developed while teaching at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. He then argues for the model's appropriateness and effectiveness for diverse student populations, situating his discussion in the conversation of…

In "Gumbo Ya ya," the author reflects on how varied stories and cultural and linguistic perspectives encountered during her evolution from student to veteran teacher have helped shape her research and pedagogy. Using a simultaneity of voices that parallel the musical traditions of her Louisiana heritage, she shares her views on teaching…

English 354: Advanced Composition is a required course for undergraduate majors in English, broadcast journalism, criminal justice, and pre-service English education, among others, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a research-one land-grant institution with a student population of about 24,000. English 354 focuses on "intensive study and…

Looks at the current interest in thinking about rhetoric and composition not just as a required first-year course but as a program of study. Suggests that the current trend to think not just of writing courses but of writing studies and a curriculum with advanced courses, majors, and minors is interesting and important. (SG)

Presents an account of the authors' shared explorations and efforts to name some important variables or criteria that bear on the question of whether or not to invite students to write in a home dialect or language. Offers conclusions in the form of a list of 10 variables to consider. (SG)

Explores limitations of current reflective practices, starting with their ideological roots in the process movement. Highlights ways that students are able to remain distanced from the discursive conventions and social practices that they are ostensibly learning to control. Describes a revised reflective assignment involving student portfolio…

Considers how theories of writing grounded in cultural studies and ethnographic writing have explicitly taken up questions of writing students' relations to cultures and communities outside the academy. Considers disciplinary influences in ethnographic writing. Discusses the reenvisioning of the politics of postmodern ethnography. (SG)

Considers how over 10 years of teaching first-year composition, more than two-thirds of the authors' students have elected to write about things that have caused them sorrow, about the deaths of loved ones, about the deaths of neighbors, even of hope itself. Composes a set of "meditations" - brief essays in which the authors try to understand…

Compares evaluation criteria for writing held in two contexts; explores the criteria used to evaluate English-language student writing by German and United States secondary school teachers; and compares the rank ordering of three essays given by teachers from these three groups. Presents results that have important implications for writing…

Considers the author's own experience with "voice" in her graduate studies pursuing poetry writing, women's literature, and composition theory. Notes that because voice as a metaphor has been called into question, many female educators have grown reluctant to use it. Discusses how a metaphor like voice can successfully imply both the stable,…

Notes one of the most prominent debates in composition over the last 10 years concerns abolition of required first-year English. Elaborates three points as they contribute to the author's overall argument that the abolitionist debate is not one that needs to be resolved, but instead is an exchange of ideas from which others in the field can learn…

Explores the tendency to deny embodiment in scholarly and pedagogical sites and the related tendency to conflate disembodiment with authority and freedom. Argues that while feminism has a long tradition of examining the body as a material, political site, "new" postmodernist scholarship has tended to "textualize" the body. Examines critical…

Critiques and advances an understanding for a method of establishing ethos-- promoting one's field by distinguishing it from work associated with women. Provides some reasons why this might have been important to women librarians and argues how this process applies to particular exigencies in the contemporary fields of library science and of…

Presents a polylogue that represents the dilemmas, practicalities, tensions, and rewards encountered by four graduate students and two faculty members through participation in a seminar in qualitative methods and practice, a course that involved student-researchers in reading, reflection, and five weeks of fieldwork. Includes "prologues" for each…

Presents a course syllabus for English 315, Special Topics in Writing, a course at University of North Carolina-Wilmington under which department faculty may propose a focused study of a theme, issue, or genre in writing or rhetoric. Explores the relationship between writing and the self. Includes a critical statement evaluating strengths and…