With increasing threats to democracy, we call for communication educators to renew and re-examine their commitment to advancing civic engagement in the basic course. Given recent scholarly criticism that civic engagement pedagogies falsely present democratic practice as neutral or apolitical and reinforce the status quo, we set an agenda for basic…

This article seeks to theorize the pedagogical work disabled instructors navigate to create accessible writing classrooms. Through retroactive analysis, I introduce the concept of Access Negotiation Moments (ANMs) as limited, low-stakes contexts where disabled instructors define the limits of their own access needs. Ultimately, I theorize a…

Critical analysis of the literacy narrative assignment within the context of the other genres in a basic writing course complicates understandings of the political import of the assignment. While several advocates of the literacy narrative have argued that it has the power of what Jean-François Lyotard has called petits récits, the authors argue…

This article describes an assignment piloted in spring of 2008 called the Rhetorical Analysis Project, which required students to analyze three different texts addressing a common issue, compose an argument about the representation of that issue as illustrated by those texts, and revise that argument to match a rhetorical model they chose from…

This paper examines the mechanics of argumentation, some features of computer conferencing software that might support this teaching and learning method (e.g., strategies for sharing, examining and commenting on various kinds of evidence, threading a conversation, indicating type of message, linking to outside information, highlighting new…

The Service Learning Writing Project at Michigan State University links service-learning and writing instruction. Students read and discuss American literary and historical texts, write academic analyses of ideas, and practice peer editing and revision in small workshops, while working in service placements in community and nonprofit…