This article critically analyzes under-acknowledged influences on the recent turn toward emotions, happiness, and well-being in higher education generally and in writing studies specifically: positive psychology (the science of happiness) and positive education (teaching well-being). I provide an overview of their primary features and complicate…

An essay's motive or research problem consists of the rhetorical moves illuminating why that essay matters--what puzzling elements of a primary source it resolves, which contradictions in the data it explains, or what gaps in the literature it fills. This article invites college instructors to dedicate some of their classroom time to teaching…

While "transfer" has become, in recent years, a subject of great research interest to our field, we still have much to learn about how we can best use this research knowledge to inform local efforts in program development. In this profile, we describe the foundations of the Dartmouth Institute for Writing and Rhetoric and explain how…

Following a brief introduction to problem-based learning (PBL) as one type of highly-engaged pedagogy, this article examines how PBL activities in a first-year writing class and an upper-level professional writing and rhetoric class led students to develop rhetorical subjectivities. We conclude that highly engaged pedagogies, like PBL, that…

I see a parallel between the illiteracy I witnessed while working in the court system and the challenges facing first-year writers at the university. In both cases, problems arise due to unfamiliarity with the discourse community into which one enters. In response, because much of the language governing composition and rhetoric is rife with place…

The treatment of a research paper as an isolated utterance within a composition classroom is problematic in that such papers may fail to encourage transfer of writing knowledge. In this essay, I argue that a research paper's failure to work as a utterance situated within a conversation--as critiqued through a framework constructed by Mikhail…

If I can show my literature students how Nabokov can take them from familiar representations of experience to representations of less familiar experiences, from a knowledge of the given world to an understanding of the world of the imagination, then, it seems to me, I ought to be able find some way of showing my composition students how to do it…

According to the Michigan State University (MSU) course catalog, Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRA) 125--Writing: The Ethnic and Racial Experience is a themed-based Tier I (first-year) writing course that focuses on "drafting, revising, and editing compositions derived from readings on the experience of American ethnic and racial…

Amy Lynch-Biniek begins by introducing popular yet controversial concepts presented in the Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's "They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing" (NY: Norton & Company, 2006). As stated in the book's introduction, the goal of Graff and Birkenstein's text is "to demystify academic…

English 1311: Expository English Composition is the first semester course in a two-semester first-year composition (FYC) sequence. Both ENG 1311 and its second-semester counterpart, ENG 1312, are required for all students unless they have transfer credit covering this requirement or place out of one or both of the courses via the College-Level…

Traces the author's internal quarrel while looking for "ethos" in "the text." Asks whether those who write theory are sheltered from other kinds of writing; if they inevitably think of themselves as theorists, not as writers; and if one can know a text or just one's reading of the text. (RAE)

Describes how rhetoric replaced literature as the prevalent focus for teaching composition. Questions why teachers neglect the use of literature in composition classrooms. Argues for the inclusion of literature into composition courses as a means of inspiring conversations beyond the realm of academia. (HB)

This paper contends that modern compositionist courses have successfully met the goal of training students to become socially productive citizens by teaching them to be proficient "readers" who critically examine the sources and dissemination of knowledge, but that the field has fallen short of its goal of training students to actively…

Explores the apparent conflict in writing instruction between an emphasis on general versus local (specific) knowledge. Explains that the general knowledge focus is based upon cognitive rhetoric, whereas the local knowledge perspective comes from social theories of knowledge. Argues for a pluralistic theory of expertise which incorporates both…

Argues that digressiveness enables the effective writer to avoid the limitations of the small thesis statement and to explore freely thought and experiences. Describes several kinds of digression, including: Platonic thesis; structural; the example "digressio"; figurative; modification; monistic; allusive; and Dali. (RS)