This essay describes the process of reassessing our BW program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in order to cultivate a more deliberate, transparent negotiation among stakeholders toward a "transcultural ethos." Informed by Bruce Horner's argument that leading-edge work on language and language difference can take place in BW, we…

For years, educators have approached college writing from three distinct pedagogies: composition studies, basic writing, and ESL. But now as these classrooms have diversified, mixed, and blended, separated pedagogies are no longer effective. In other words, these three fields (each with its own journals and conferences) have the same common…

Literacy narratives have been pedagogically important in writing instruction, particularly in the basic writing class, as a means for students to interrogate the politics of language and education and thus to establish a critical connection to writing. But the literacy narrative as a critical genre is problematic. Such narratives often are…

Rereading the history of basic writing can serve as a context for and a springboard to a reading of selected contemporary basic writing textbooks. For critical scrutiny, articles by Joseph Harris and David Bartholomae offer retellings of the history of basic writing, retellings that challenge the more "heroic" tellings that have become…