Composition Forum 40, Fall 2018
http://compositionforum.com/issue/40/

From the Editors

Christian Weisser, Greg Giberson, and Tom Sura

As our longtime readers know, Composition Forum seeks to publish articles and other forms of scholarship that engage the intersections of writing theory and pedagogy. We believe that scholarly work addressing this intersection is vital, both in our understanding of writing as a subject and in the application of writing pedagogy across diverse contexts. This volume of Composition Forum provides a range of voices that address that intersection. The interview, retrospective, articles, program profile, and reviews published in Volume 40 all contribute to our understanding of how writing studies as a field engages writers and writing in varied settings.

The volume begins with a conversation between Algerian Civic Engagement Specialist Ahmed Abdelhakim Hachelaf and Professor Steve Parks of Syracuse University. Their dialogue, entitled Dreams of تويزة/Twiza as Transnational Practice: Managing Risk, Building Bridges, and Community Partnership Work discusses an ongoing international dialogue they have been developing to create civil society workshops for students and scholars. We are thrilled to share this important and engaging interview with our readers. If you’d like to propose or suggest an interview with a leading scholar in rhetoric and composition, contact our Interviews Editor.

Next, readers will find a retrospective entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Donald Murray: Revisiting A Writer Teaches Writing at 50 by Michael Michaud, which revisits Murray’s considerable contributions to writing studies’ ethos. Scholars interested in publishing a retrospective on their own or others’ work should contact our Retrospectives Editor.

The volume features seven articles addressing the intersections of theory and pedagogy in writing studies, and these articles reflect the diverse settings in which writing resides. Interrogating the “Deep Story”: Storytelling and Narratives in the Rhetoric Classroom by Sharon Yam analyzes students’ writing and reflections to demonstrate how mutual listening and inquiry function as an effective means to cultivate self-reflexivity and ethical relations with others who do not share the same positionality. Jason Schneider’s Passages into College Writing: Listening to the Experiences of International Students draws on a longitudinal study to explore the ways in which the experiences of international students are both similar to and different than those of their U.S.-educated peers. Rethinking Translingual as a Transdisciplinary Rhetoric: Broadening the Dialogic Space by Zhaozhe Wang explores the many issue surrounding translingualism in the field. In The Use of Artistic Tools in Composition Pedagogy, Kyle Winkler examines the ways in which writers use diverse tools to add depth and complexity to texts. Carrie Byars Kilfoil’s The Postmonolingual Condition and Rhetoric and Composition Ph.D.: Norming Language Difference in a Doctoral Program draws upon survey data to elucidate ways to leverage students’ positive perceptions of and attitudes toward multilingualism to norm language differences in its mainstream rhetoric and composition graduate curriculum.

When Rubrics Need Revision: A Collaboration Between STEM Faculty and the Writing Center by Anna Rollins and Kristen Lillivis investigates how writing center intervention can aid STEM faculty in revising assignment rubrics and conveying to students the discourse conventions and expectations for writing tasks And Norbert Elliot, Alice Horning, and Cynthia Haller’s Message in a Bottle: Expert Readers, English Language Arts, and New Directions for Writing Studies concludes the articles section of this volume with a case study of English Language Arts models (ELA) that has educative implications for the teaching of writing.

The articles in Volume 40 were curated and edited by incoming Managing Editors Greg Giberson of Oakland University, and Tom Sura of West Virginia University, who we welcome onto the editorial board. Greg and Tom take over those duties as Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff step down. We owe our deepest thanks to Anis and Mary Jo, who have done remarkable work with Composition Forum for many years. We are confident that Greg and Tom will extend their record of high-quality scholarship in Composition Forum in the future.

This volume’s program profile provides another example of the intersection between writing theory and pedagogy. John Belk’s Maintaining a Humanistic Center: Rhetorical Humanism as a Holistic Framework for Writing Programs describes how the Writing Program at Southern Utah University enacts a rhetorical humanist framework in its administrative and curricular structures. If you’d like to propose a profile of your institution’s program, please send a query to our new program profile editors: Ashley Holmes of Georgia State University and Faith Kurtyka of Creighton University, who we also welcome as new members of the editorial staff at Composition Forum.

Volume 40 includes three reviews of important new scholarly books, all of which reflect intersections between theory and pedagogy in the field. The section includes a Review of John Tinnel’s Actionable Media: Digital Communication Beyond the Desktop by Scott Sundvall; a Review of Xiaoye You’s Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy by Hua Zhu; and a Review of Genesea M. Carter and William H. Thelin’s Class in the Composition Classroom: Pedagogy and the Working Class by Sheri Rysdam. Please send review queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our review editor.

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