Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies

Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams

Description

Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies coordinates mixed methods approaches to survey, interview, and case study data to study Canadian writing studies scholars. The authors argue for networked disciplinarity, the notion that ideas arise and flow through intellectual networks that connect scholars not only to one another but to widening networks of human and nonhuman actors. Although the Canadian field is historically rooted in the themes of location and national culture, expressing a tension between Canadian independence and dependence on the US field, more recent research suggests a more hybridized North American scholarship rather than one defined in opposition to “rhetoric and composition” in the US. In tracing identities, roles, and rituals of nationally bound considerations of how disciplinarity has been constructed through distant and close methods, this multi-scaled, multi-scopic approach examines the texture of interdependent constructions of the Canadian discipline. Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies also launches a collaborative publishing network between Canadian publisher Inkshed and US publisher Parlor Press.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 18 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602359253
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Inkshed Publications
Inkshed is an imprint for works of Canadian scholarship about writing,
reading, and learning. More information about Inkshed Publications can be found at the Inkshed blog, http://www.inkshed.ca/blog/inkshed-publications/ .
Inkshed Books
Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies by Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon (2017).
Genre Studies around the Globe: Beyond the Three Tradition , edited by. Natasha Artemeva and Aviva Freedman (2015).
Writing in a Community of Practice: Composing Membership in Inkshed by Miriam Horne (2012).
Rhetorical Genre Studies and Beyond , edited by Natasha Artemeva and Aviva Freedman (2006).
Writing Centres, Writing Seminars, Writing Culture: Writing Instruction in Anglo-Canadian Universities , edited by Roger Graves and Heather Graves (2006).
Critical Moments in the Rhetoric of Kenneth Burke: Implications for Composition by Martin Behr (1996).
Integrating Visual and Verbal Literacies , by W. F. Garrett-Petts and Donald Lawrence (1996).
Writing Instruction in Canadian Universities by Roger Graves (1994).
Two Sides to a Story: Gender Difference in Student Narrative by Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (1994).
Contextual Literacy: Writing Across the Curriculum , edited by Catherine F. Schryer and Laurence Steven Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (1994).


Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies
Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams,
Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon
Afterword by Andrea Lunsford
Inkshed
Edmonton, Alberta
http://www.inkshed.ca/blog/
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2017 by Inkshed.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on File
1 2 3 4 5
978-1-60235-922-2 (paperback)
978-1-60235-923-9 (hardcover)
978-1-60235-924-6 (PDF)
978-1-60235-925-3 (ePub)
Copyeditor: Jared Jameson.
Cover design by Derek Mueller
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [e-mail].


Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Becoming Networked, Cross-Border Scholars: Sources and Development of the Project
Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon
2 Emplaced Disciplinary Networks from Middle Altitude
Derek Mueller
3 Voicing Scholars’ Networked Identities through Interviews
Andrea Williams
4 Four Scholars, Four Genres: Networked Trajectories
Louise Wetherbee Phelps
5 A Case-Study Approach to Examining Cross-Border Networks
Jennifer Clary-Lemon
6 Conclusion
Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon
7 Afterword
Andrea A. Lunsford
Index to the Print Edition
About the Authors


Acknowledgments
T his book is a collaborative work beyond having four co-authors. Surveys and interviews generated much of our data, so we would like to thank the many people who completed the surveys and participated in the interviews. The following scholars generously shared their time, stories, and insights in interviews: Natasha Artemeva, Doug Brent, Rick Coe, Jay Dolmage, Aviva Freedman, Roger Graves, Dale Jacobs, Lorelei Lingard, Anthony Paré, Margaret Procter, Dan Richards, Cathy Schryer, Ron Sheese, and Graham Smart. We thank Aviva Freedman, Jim Reither, Sharon Hamilton, and Cathy Schryer for graciously providing biographical materials and responding to questions. We also appreciate Ian Pringle’s and Janice Lauer’s help with research: Ian searched his garage for conference materials and shared memories of his collaborations with Aviva Freedman, while Janice provided information on Canadian participation in the Purdue Seminar. We are grateful to scholars at the University of Rhode Island willing to share their work and materials, as well as those at the University of Winnipeg who shared their memories of the birth of the program.
We are also grateful to Andrea Lunsford for her invaluable contribution to the early development of Canadian writing studies and for writing the response.
We owe thanks to Roger Graves for suggesting at the Writing Research Across Borders Conference 2014 conference that we publish our research as a book. We would also like to thank the Inkshed editorial board, along with David Blakesley, who has given this book a wider audience by co-publishing it with Parlor Press.
We would like to acknowledge the University of Winnipeg and Eastern Michigan University for contributing funds for the editing and indexing of this book. We thank Jared Jameson for his meticulous copyediting and Jo-Anne Pelissier for her indexing.


1 Becoming Networked, Cross-Border Scholars: Sources and Development of the Project
Derek Mueller, Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon
I t’s always a bit arbitrary to pinpoint the origin of a project or piece of writing, but our cross-border collaboration began with Jennifer Clary-Lemon’s initiative to bring Louise Wetherbee Phelps from the US to the University of Winnipeg as a Fulbright Specialist Scholar in the spring of 2011, to consult and collaborate with the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications on a vision for its future development. Winnipeg’s anomalous history in Canada as a longstanding independent writing department with an American-style first-year program and a major in rhetoric and communications made this cross-border consultation especially appropriate. Based on Louise’s work on the Visibility Project seeking recognition for rhetoric and composition as a research field in American higher education (Phelps and Ackerman, 2010), Jennifer’s proposal envisioned that the project could not only inform the department’s own strategic planning but also promote greater visibility and agency for writing studies as a discipline in the Canadian academy. Jennifer, herself a dual citizen with an American doctorate, emphasized the potential for cross-border conversations to use complementary strengths and develop the field both nationally and internationally.


“The project’s outcome will be . . . one of the only existing attempts at co-constructing knowledge about a North American (rather than simply American) concept of writing studies, drawing on the strength and history of the development of the field in the United States, and the innovation and initiative of fledgling programs in Canada.” (Clary-Lemon, Fulbright proposal)
To further these goals, part of Louise’s commission was to research various contexts for understanding the department’s history, character, and potential future: a local perspective, situating it in the university, the city of Winnipeg, and the region; a comparative perspective, placing its curriculum in the landscape of Canadian instructional programs in writing and rhetoric and, contrastively, undergraduate and graduate programs in the US; and a field perspective, examining the department in the context of discourse and writing studies as a still-emerging scholarly field in the Canadian academy, interlinked with US rhetoric and composition and contributing to international writing studies. To fulfill this charge, Louise read widely in Canadian scholarship on writing and rhetoric, including publications by faculty at Winnipeg; studied websites and writings on Canadian programs; and interviewed several Canadian scholars at other institutions by phone and Skype. She was particularly informed by Jennifer’s own inventory of Canadian scholarship (Clary-Lemon, 2009), the first to survey Canadian research and publication in writing studies as distinct from instructional programs. This article examined how the Canadian field is historically rooted in the themes of location and national culture, expressing a tension between Canadian independence and dependence on the US field, with more recent research such as the new genre theory exemplifying a more hybridized North American scholarship rather than one defined in opposition to “rhetoric and composition” in the US.


“Canadian scholarship has shown itself as loyal to its historical themes of location and national culture . . . ; yet at the same time, there are, and must be, hybrid systems that blend the best research and practice of North America, as dual citizens and Canadians with American rhet/comp PhD specializations enter the picture.” (Clary-Lemon, 2009, p. 105)
After Louise completed her report (Phelps, 2011), it was taken up by the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Communications as a starting point for curricular revision at Winnipeg (discussed in chapter 4). The following spring Jennifer, Louise, and other Winnipeg faculty (Judith Kearns, Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, and Tracy Whalen) presented a roundtable at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (“4Cs”) on the Fulbright collaboration (March, 2012). Their session, “Cross-Border Collaboration in Charting a Department’s Future: Towa