Composition Forum 47, Fall 2021
http://compositionforum.com/issue/47/

From the Editors: Volume 47

Christian Weisser, Ashley Holmes, and Faith Kurtyka

One of the most rewarding aspects of editing Composition Forum is the opportunity to engage with diverse and wide-ranging topics in the field of rhetoric and composition. This journal has an intentionally broad focus, and our goal is to publish a range of high-quality scholarship dealing with varied issues in the field. As our editorial policy states, Composition Forum seeks work that “explores the intersections of composition theory and pedagogy.” While highly specialized journals serve an important function, there is something to be said for getting an expansive view of the many subjects, locations, and issues related to writing studies. As editors, we appreciate and learn so much from the varied perspectives we are able to accommodate in Composition Forum, and we hope that our readers appreciate this diversity as well.

This volume feels especially spacious to us, addressing writing at diverse levels, across various spans of time, and engaging with numerous issues relevant to the field. It begins with an interview with scholar and author Howard Tinberg, a professor at Bristol Community College, former Chair of CCCC, and former Editor of Teaching English in the Two-Year College. In this interview, Tinberg discusses his recent work adapting the teaching-for-transfer (TFT) curriculum for the diverse two-year college classroom and offers advice for new two-year faculty as they develop their identities as teacher-scholars working in open-access institutions. We are thrilled to share this important and engaging interview with our readers. If you’d like to propose or suggest an interview with a leading scholar in rhetoric and composition, contact our Interviews Editor Brian Bailie.

Volume 47’s “retrospective” article is written by Chris M. Anson, Professor of English at North Carolina State University. In Echoes of Distant Voices: A Retrospective on Technological Days of Future Past, Anson reflects on his widely-cited 1999 College English article entitled, Distance Voices: Teaching Writing in a Culture of Technology. Anson’s compelling narrative considers social engagement and the ubiquity of technology two decades later. Please send Retrospective queries or nominations to the Retrospectives Editor Elizabeth Wardle.

The volume features six articles that engage the intersections of theory and pedagogy in writing studies. Ethos and Dwelling in the University: Using Online Writing Projects to Help Students Navigate Institutional Spaces and Classroom Experiences by Matthew Kelly and Tara Propper examines how online writing projects can provide students an opportunity to critically reflect upon their literal and conceptual position within university spaces. Brent Lucia’s Mapping a Network: A Posthuman Look at Rhetorical Invention argues that composition instructors should enhance students’ awareness to their own dynamic, writing subjectivities through a more expansive view of rhetorical invention, using posthumanism as a lens for composition pedagogy. In Welling Desire and Affective Rupture: Helping Students Become Hopeful Writers, Amy D. Williams theorizes the phenomenon of affective rupture, a tension between the affect students experience while writing in school and their belief in the value of school-based writing. “Your Grammar is All Over the Place”: Translingual Close Reading, Anti-Blackness, and Racial Literacy among Multilingual Student Writers in First Year Writing by Sophie R. Bell centers students’ invocations of Black language in the emerging discussion of translingual writing in composition studies, arguing that these students help to connect global and local US language struggles. In Rhetorical Training Across the University: What and Where Students and Alumni Learn about Writing, Julia Bleakney, Li Li, Emily Holland, Paula Rosinski, and Jessie L. Moore report on a survey of students and alumni, examining their rhetorical training—their writing knowledge and experiences across multiple courses, campus employment, and workplace contexts. And Jeff Pruchnic, Ellen Barton, Sarah Primeau, Thomas Trimble, Nicole Varty, and Tanina Foster’s Correlating What We Know: A Mixed Methods Study of Reflection and Writing in First-Year Writing Assessment analyzes a mixed methods assessment study they conducted, measuring the relationship between evaluative skills embedded in the genre of reflective writing and lower-order writing skills that follow sentence-level conventions of academic discourse. If you have questions or comments about the articles in this volume, or wish to propose an article, contact Managing Editors Ashley Holmes and Faith Kurtyka.

This volume offers two program profiles addressing the intersection between writing theory and pedagogy. Redesigning Graduate Composition Courses for Justice: A Case Model for Promoting Access, Inclusivity, and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy by Bridget Gelms, James Gilligan, Robert Kohls, Tara Lockhart, and Mark Roberge describes a pandemic-influenced redesign of the graduate Composition program at San Francisco State University. And in The Black Ink Project, Nathaniel Norment, Jr. describes a writing program curriculum revision at Morehouse College, the world’s only Historically Black College and University (HBCU) for men. If you’d like to propose a profile of your institution’s program, please send a query to our Program Profile Editors Crystal Fodrey and Meg Mikovits.

The Reviews section includes a Review of Paul Butler, The Writer’s Style: A Rhetorical Field Guide by Jon Udelson and a Review of Robert Eddy and Amanda Espinosa-Aguilar’s Writing Across Cultures by Janissa Marie Analissia Martinez. Please send review queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our Review Editors Rachel Daugherty and Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott.

Please follow us on Twitter @Comp_Forum for news and updates about the journal. We will continue to use Composition Forum’s Weblog as another source of information about the journal, and we encourage readers to contribute timely and pertinent information to our Twitter feed and to our blog. Add our feed to your newsreader to receive alerts about new volumes of Composition Forum and other news from the field of rhetoric and composition. Please send questions or comments about the Composition Forum website to Website Editor Kevin Brock. General inquiries about the journal can be sent to Editor Christian Weisser.