Anson – The Intelligent Design of Writing Programs: Reliance on Belief or a Future of Evidence

Anson, Chris.  “The Intelligent Design of Writing Programs:  Reliance on Belief or a Future of Evidence.”  WPA 32 (1) 2008. Anson is working to develop methods of research in this piece that respond to “allegations – even unfounded or politicized ones – that current instructional approaches are wrongheaded or ineffective” (11). Key thesis:  “if we continue to rely on belief in our pedagogies and administrative... Read More

Spinuzzi, Hart-Davidson, and Zachry – Chains and Ecologies: Methodological Notes toward a Communicative-Mediational Model of Technologically Mediated Writing

Spinuzzi, Clay, William Hart-Davidson and Mark Zachry.  “Chains and Ecologies: Methodological Notes toward a Communicative-Mediational Model of Technologically Mediated Writing. Abstract:  Studies of knowledge work tend to take one of two research foci: either on communication (the transactional,  intersubjective exchange of information, thoughts, writing, or speech among participants, performed in serial chains) or mediation (the nonsequential,... Read More

Swarts – Recycled Writing: Assembling Actor Networks from Reusable Content

Swarts, Jason.  “Recycled Writing: Assembling Actor Networks from Reusable Content.” JBTC (2010): 127-163. Abstract: Drawing on a study of writers reusing content from one document to another, this study examines the rhetorical purpose of reuse. Writing reuse is predominantly studied through the literature on single sourcing and enacted via technologies built on single-sourcing models. Such theoretical models and derivative technologies... Read More

Canagarajah – A Geopolitics of Academic Writing

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture;. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. Print. The Problem C. begins by telling a story about the politics of intellectual discovery and knowledge creation – highlighting the role of Western academics in claiming indigenous knowledge and non-Western world discoveries to their own glory (and for the constitution of facts... Read More

Dartmouth Seminar on Writing Research – Days 1 & 2 – Reflections

Reflections on the Dartmouth Seminar – Days 1 & 2 Things to Consider: 1.  Look into the methodological work that’s already been done on digital ethnography.  Who are the major voices?  What works have been key in establishing this method of inquiry?  Beyond the ethical treatments and discussions of digital ethnography found in the work of McKee & Devoss’ collection Digital Writing Research and embodied by Gurak’s... Read More