Disability studies (DS) within rhetoric and composition has productively challenged us to reexamine our commonplace assumptions about "normal" students and enabled us to understand the generative capacities of disability as critical lens. Such presence has created more space for more minds and bodies not only in classrooms but among…

This essay explores "content," a word and concept now often associated with writing in fields including marketing, journalism, publishing, and technical communication. I present a definition of content appropriate to writing studies and explore a range of issues and practices that the content metaphor can bring to our professional,…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

This article provides an analysis of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's "The Medium Is the Massage," a visual-verbal text that is generally acknowledged as innovative but seldom taken seriously or read carefully. The analysis draws on the visual language vocabulary developed by Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" and argues that the field of…

Discussions of intellectual property are often the focus of rhetoric and composition research, and the question of textual origins grounds these discussions. Through an examination of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, this essay addresses disciplinary concerns about textual origins and intellectual property through a discussion…

In the technical communication classroom, the received wisdom is that good instructions should "stay out of the way" of the users' engagement with technological systems. This article draws on Burke's concept of perspective by incongruity and on examples of instructions produced during the Women's Health Movement to demonstrate that sometimes…

The assessment framework presented here draws on theories of reflective practice and mediated activity to update or "multimodalize" the reflective texts students are sometimes asked to compose after completing an essay. The article underscores the importance of having students assume greater responsibility for cataloging and assessing the…

Our article seeks to integrate alternative voices into traditional rhetorical study by turning to "Bitch" and "BUST," two mainstream zines that serve as dynamic examples of young women's rhetoric in action. We believe these zines are shaping the present and future of women's rhetoric. Their most significant contribution to the understanding of…

When the author became a professor with interests in literature, composition, technical communication, speech, and rhetoric, he little anticipated the extent to which book collecting could affect research and teaching, but his finds increasingly enlightened him. As he gravitated toward composition, technical communication, speech, and rhetoric in…

Describes how a "strip story" activity (reassembling a text from strips of paper containing the text's sentences) develops reciprocity, the interaction between reading and writing as the reader negotiates a text and the writer assists the process. (MM)

Demonstrates why traditional methods of audience analysis in composition have so little practical rhetorical value. Provides a backdrop for a broader and more useful view of what can go into audience analysis. (HTH)

Explores the physical characteristics of text and how they help the reader, suggesting that if teachers encouraged students to experiment with visible features of written texts, it would increase their ability to understand and use hierarchical and classificatory arrangements in their own writing. (HTH)

Notes that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is frequently encountered in textbooks that ignore the existence of the original audience. Argues that textbook editors thereby misinform students by failing to show how writers recognize and write to particular audiences, and how writers' specific audiences determine many of the authors'…

Suggests enlarging the sphere of feminist composition by including in it an approach to argument, ways to proceed if one is in conflict with one's audience. Explores the beginning of the feminist theory of composition. (MG)

Reflects on a thematic section on "The Status of Women" taught in a freshmen writing class. Discusses the resistance of the author and students and the angered and impassioned writing that arises when texts challenge the ideologies of readers. (MG)