Composition and Rhetoric in Contentious Times

Rachel McCabe and Jennifer Juszkiewicz
Publication Date
2023
“Very relevant, well-conceived, well-written, and compelling.”
—Ellen C. Carillo, University of Connecticut
 
“An engaging and multidisciplinary book that explores the various ways in which the field is still very much set up to exclude people of color, the working class, and other marginalized groups.”
—Charissa Che, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

 

Composition and Rhetoric in Contentious Times poses critical questions of representation, accessibility, social justice, affect, and labor to better understand the entwined future of composition and rhetoric. This collection of essays offers innovative approaches for socially attuned learning and best practices to support administrators and instructors. In doing so, these essays guide educators in empowering students to write effectively and prepare for their role as global citizens.

Editors Rachel McCabe and Jennifer Juszkiewicz consider how educators can respond to multiple current crises relating to composition and rhetoric with generosity and cautious optimism; in the process, they address the current concerns about the longevity of the humanities. By engaging with social constructivist, critical race, socioeconomic, and activist pedagogies, each chapter provides an answer to the question, How can our courses help students become stronger writers while contending with current social, environmental, and ethical questions posed by the world around them? The contributors consider this question from numerous perspectives, recognizing the important ways that power and privilege affect our varying means of addressing this question.

Relying on both theory and practice, Composition and Rhetoric in Contentious Times engages the future of composition and rhetoric as a discipline shaped by recent and current global events. This text appeals to early-career writing program administrators, writing center directors, and professional specialists, as well as Advanced Placement high school instructors, graduate students, and faculty teaching graduate-level pedagogy courses.

Contributors: Jacob Babb, Anna Barritt, Christopher Basgier, Nicholas Behm, Christina Cedillo, William Duffy, Jessica Edwards, Deborah H. Holdstein, Kim Jaxon, Matthew S. S. Johnson, Nicole Khoury, Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Zapoura Newton-Calvert, Matthew Overstreet, Kalyn Prince, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Krista Ratcliffe, Hannah J. Rule, Laura Sparks