Composition Forum 46, Spring 2021
http://compositionforum.com/issue/46/

From the Editors: Volume 46

Christian Weisser, Greg Giberson, Ashley Holmes, and Faith Kurtyka

While the last year has been challenging and stressful for all of us, it has also given many scholars in rhetoric and composition a space in which to focus on their scholarship. At Composition Forum, we’ve seen an increase in submissions of various types over the past year. While we cannot publish all of the great scholarship we receive, we were able to pack this volume with some outstanding research and writing, which we believe will be interesting and useful for our readers.

All of this is due to the hard work of our editorial team. We have a number of editorial staff changes to announce at Composition Forum. Ashley Holmes and Faith Kurtyka are our new Managing Editors as Greg Giberson transitions out of that role. Crystal Fodrey and Meg Mikovits are stepping into the Program Profiles Editors positions. And Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Rachel Daugherty will become our new Book Review Editors as Sean Morey steps down. We thank the outgoing editors for their years of service, while looking forward to the new ideas and perspectives that the incoming editors bring with them.

The volume begins with Memoria with a Friend of Mine: An Interview with Victor Villanueva by Tabitha Espina. In this interview, Victor Villanueva and Tabitha Espina discuss how the teaching of Composition has changed throughout the years to consider the needs and exigencies of the times. Using rhetorical analysis and application of some of Villanueva’s most influential texts, Villanueva and Espina discuss the field’s critical responses to the racial reckoning of this historical moment through translingualism, decolonial pedagogies, agonism, and pluriversality. 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.

The volume features six articles that engage the intersections of theory and pedagogy in writing studies. Assignments and Expectations: The Role of Genre and Faculty Expectations in Transfer Jane Danielewicz, Jordynn Jack, Ashley Hall, Sarah Ann Singer, Emi Stuemke, and Jennifer Ware draws from interviews with faculty members from a range of disciplines about their writing assignments in courses in the major. Their study presents a three-part rhetorical framework for faculty that relies on genre to clarify expectations and allows for cuing to promote transfer for students in disciplinary writing contexts. Havva Zorluel Özer’s “We Are Going to Negotiate!”: Graduate Teacher-Scholars’ Understanding of Translingual Pedagogy documents graduate teacher-scholars’ conceptual understanding of translingual pedagogy in the context of college writing instruction. The article analyzes the possibilities and challenges confronted by prospective composition teacher-scholars in implementing translingual pedagogy and discusses the implications for mentoring programs, WPAs, and TAs. In Revising Reflection for Results in Teacher Research by Adrienne Jankens and Amy Ann Latawiec, the authors argue that using students’ reflective writing to understand specific aspects of their classroom experience requires that researchers systematically integrate into the curriculum reflections that responsibly attend to both students’ learning and the focus of classroom research. They pose that more systematic reflection in paired courses might have bring collaborative learning even more to the surface both for students and researchers. Remediation that Delivers: Incorporating Attention to Delivery into Transmodal-Translingual Approaches to Composition byTait Bergstrom examines multilingual students’ application of multimodal composition practices to writing assignments that emphasize delivery and circulation. This article draws on Rhetorical Genre Studies and Translingualism to address this issue in Multimodal Composition by outlining a pedagogical approach that emphasizes delivery and measuring uptake. Ryan P. Shepherd, Courtney A. Mauck, Christopher J. Barber, and Sue Fletcher’s Beyond Osmosis: Developing Teaching for Transfer Pedagogy for Graduate Classes in Composition suggests that scholars in the field endeavor to develop pedagogical methods for graduate education, while also proposing one such pedagogical approach. Drawing on a graduate course, interviews, and research, the authors outline a transfer-based pedagogy for graduate classes. And finally, Retention and Persistence in Writing Programs: A Survey of Students Repeating First-Year Writing by Todd Ruecker draws on a survey/interview project involving 67 students repeating first-year writing classes at a diverse institution in the Southwestern US. The article takes a student-centered approach to understand the reasons they drop first-year writing, such as health concerns, lack of engagement with the curriculum, and their incompatibility with online learning or poorly taught online classes. If you have questions or comments about the articles in this volume, or wish to propose an article, contact our Editors.

This volume also offers two program profiles addressing the intersection between writing theory and pedagogy. Creating a Collaborative Culture of Access through the Accessibility Working Group by Molly E. Ubbesen describes the Accessibility Working Group (AWG) at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which aims to create a collaborative culture of access within various communities. This program profile provides the theories, goals, practices, and challenges of the AWG as a model to foster a collaborative culture of access in other composition programs and contexts. Design and Implementation of the First Peer-Staffed Writing Center in Thailand by Martha Olson, Sutraphorn Tantininarat, Molly McHarg, and Weraphon Carmesak describes the design and establishment of the first peer-staffed writing center in Thailand, including its inspiration, its planning, the tutor-training process, and its implementation up to and through the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed some of the writing center’s activities, it continues to be a model for other universities in the region and beyond. If you’d like to submit a Program Profile for consideration with Composition Forum, please contact our Program Profile Editors.

Volume 46 also features three timely and interesting book reviews: A Review of Frankie Condon and Vershawn Ashanti Young’s Performing Antiracist Pedagogy in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication by Kimberly A. Bain; A Review of Hannah Rule’s Situating Writing Processes by Jeremy Levine; and A review of “What is writing education for?”: Challenging the Transfer Turn with Rhetorical Ethos and Place-Based Writing by Russell Mayo. Please send review queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our Review Editors.

We will continue to use Composition Forum’s Weblog to disseminate news and updates about the journal more quickly. We encourage readers to contribute timely and pertinent information to the blog. Add our feed to your newsreader to receive alerts about new volumes of Composition Forum and other news from the field of rhetoric and composition. Please follow us on Twitter @Comp_Forum and Facebook for regular updates and relevant news. Readers can also send questions or comments about the Composition Forum website to our Website Editor. General inquiries about the journal can be sent to Editor Christian R. Weisser.