This reflective essay investigates why writer's block affects novice and expert writers on a continuum from students in first-year writing seminars to teachers of writing, paying particular attention to the shared experiences of this pair of practitioners. I begin by focusing on my own experiences as a blocked writer making a disciplinary…

Explores the relationship among forensic, deliberative, and epideictic modes of rhetoric in the cold fusion controversy. Shows the interactions between three modes of rhetoric. Examines the ways in which the modes have shaped the emerging scientific consensus. Supports Robert Sanders' contention that rhetorical practices interact with scientific…

Recounts an earlier case analysis describing ethical differences in collectivist and individualistic rhetorics experienced by a writer in a literature seminar and a public relations office. Examines how this analysis is problemmatized by alternative interpretations demonstrating how collectivist rhetoric practiced by researchers involves the…

In literacy and composition studies, efforts to develop data-driven theories of disciplinary writing expertise and of writers' developmental processes in joining specific discourse communities have so far been limited. This case study, of one writer's experiences as an undergraduate history major, parses the multiple knowledge domains comprising…