Key Faculty Publications

Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch

Offers a thorough look at peer review in virtual environments. In a reassessment of peer review practices, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch explores how computer technology changes our understanding of this activity. She defines "virtual peer review" as the use of computer technology to exchange and respond to one another's writing in order to improve it. Arguing that peer review goes through a remediation when conducted in virtual environments, the author suggests that virtual peer review highlights a unique intersection of social theories of language and technological literacy. [More information on the book Virtual Peer Review]

Patrick Bruch and Richard Marback, Eds.

This book engages the formative influence on composition studies of the landmark 1974 "Students' Right" to Their Own Language resolution. Combining elements of documentary history and a collection of original scholarship, this book enables current professional hopes for the teaching of writing to be invigorated and informed by the lessons available within the legacy of debate over issues raised by "Students' Right." These include issues of racial identity and language diversity, social justice and literacy education, language politics and teacher attitudes, and classroom practices and the purposes of schooling in a pluralistic democracy. As a collection, it provides a resource for historically contextualized and theoretically informed engagements with the central tensions facing teachers, students, and scholars in the field. Taken together the essays track the impact of the "Students' Right"resolution through the past and into the future, enriching discussions of how research and practice in composition studies can best address issues of racial identity, writing instruction, and the purpose of schooling. [More information on the book The Hope and the Legacy]

Ann Duin, Linda L. Baer, and Doreen Starke-Meyerring

Partnering in the Learning Marketspace describes how leaders in higher education, government, community, and business can form productive partnerships to leverage the best content and provide a gateway to that content for learners around the globe. The authors present a framework for understanding the learning marketspace concept and offer an engaging blueprint for developing and implementing partnerships to support lifelong learners. The book includes practical information that will help potential learning marketspace partners learn to: understand the dynamics of marketspace portals; set priorities for partnering; assess partnership readiness; overcome obstacles to building partnerships; develop tools to support learners in e-mentor and e-community relationships; and identify leadership competencies in a global learning marketspace. The book includes insightful commentaries by national and international education leaders who have participated in electronic learning environments. [More information on the book Partnering in the Learning Marketspace, Volume 4]

Richard Graff, Arthur E. Walzer, Steven Mailloux, and Janet M. Atwill, Eds.

Interrogates the story of rhetoric promoted in standard historical accounts and reconsiders the relationship between rhetorical theory, practice, and pedagogy. The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition reconsiders the relationship between rhetorical theory, practice, and pedagogy. Continuing the line of questioning begun in the 1980s, contributors examine the duality of a rhetorical canon in determining if past practice can make us more (or less) able to address contemporary concerns. Also examined is the role of tradition as a limiting or inspiring force, rhetoric as a discipline, rhetoric's contribution to interest in civic education and citizenship, and the possibilities digital media offer to scholars of rhetoric. [More information on the book The Viability Of The Rhetorical Tradition]

Laura Gurak

The Internet has changed our social spaces, our political and social realities, our use of language, and the way we communicate, all with breathtaking speed. Almost everyone who deals with the Internet and the new world of cyberspace communication at times feels bewildered, dismayed, or even infuriated. In this clear and helpful book, computer communications scholar Laura J. Gurak takes a close look at the critical issues of online communication and discusses how to become literate in the new mass medium of our era. [More information on the book]

Received Honorable Mention for the 2002 Educator’s Award given by the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International

Anne Lazaraton

Language testers have generally come to recognize the limitations of traditional statistical methods for validating oral language tests. They have begun to consider more innovative approaches to test validation, approaches that promise to illuminate the assessment process itself, rather than just assessment outcomes (i.e., ratings). One such approach is conversation analysis (or CA), a rigorous empirical methodology developed by sociologists, which employs inductive methods in order to discover and describe the recurrent, systematic properties of conversation, including sequential organization, turn-taking, repair, preference structure, and topic management. CA offers a systematic approach for analyzing spoken interaction from a qualitative perspective, allowing one to make observations about a stretch of talk while at the same time interacting with it. This book provides language testers with a background in the conversation analytic framework and a fuller understanding of what is entailed in using conversation analysis in the context of oral language test validation. [More information on the book A Qualitative Approach to the Validation of Oral Language Tests]

John Logie

Writing in the Clouds is an intensive examination of the profound consequences of contemporary writing technologies for the act—and art—of composition. In the 1980s and 1990s, the increasing adoption of computers as digital composing tools prompted scholars to re-examine the roles technology might play in written composition. This book elaborates those consequences at a time when internetworked writing has supplanted digital composition. Our centuries-long relationship with paper as the default space for certain types of written composition has been thrown into question. The advent of ebooks and their sharply spiking popularity is one indication of the ongoing technological and cultural shift. Perhaps more important is the relative affordability of tablet computers and their increasingly widespread acceptance and use in roles that formerly required paper-based writing. For years, the notion of the paperless office has been an ironic joke. Paper consumption soared after the adoption of desktop computers. Now portable and tablet computing appear to be contributing to a dramatic decline in US per capita paper consumption. Today’s writers are increasingly aware of the likelihood that their compositions may never be printed. When they are certain that their works are being developed for digital delivery, they cannily adapt their writing to exploit the affordances of internetworked digital spaces. Writing in the Clouds offers history, analysis, and a set of keywords to help readers better understand these changes in their particularity and help them prepare for what’s next as writers embrace the expansive opportunities of cloud-based writing spaces. [More information on the book Writing in the Clouds]

Thomas Reynolds

The article focuses on periodicals related to college literacy in the early twentieth century. Representations of the modern college–in fiction, non-fiction, editorials, and advertisements–as a place and an experience receptive to middle class youth, in particular, contributed to a normalization of college as a literacy pathway for many who wished to advance economically and socially. Particularly the periodical "The Saturday Evening Post," promoted colleges as modern institutions fit to train young people, especially young men, for success and advancement in society. Despite suspicions voiced by cultural and academic elites, magazines provided significant outlets for literate skills that students gained in school. Developments in the magazine industry at the turn into the 20th century greatly increased the amount and kinds of texts available to young people. Despite their poor reputation for some cultural elites, magazines often played an "extracurricular" supportive role to the literacy work of high school and college English classes. [Read the journal article Selling College Literacy]

Donald Ross

In detailing the most significant events that have shaped U.S. history from Columbus to cable television, Donald Ross has provided a concise and essential volume ideal for all high school and college students of American culture. The main emphasis of this book is on the headlines, that is, important national and political events – war and government, including the Revolutionary War and the creation of the Constitution; the complexity of race relations, including the institution of slavery, the displacement of Native Americans, and the civil rights movement; the rise and fall of unions; environmental reforms and the construction of skyscrapers and museums; the emergence of feminism; and the protests of the Sixties. In addition, this book describes major cultural and technological changes that affected everyday life in America, such as the proliferation of electricity and the automobile, the transformation of rural America and the growth of the suburbs, the emergence of radio, movies, television, and different forms of entertainment. [More information on the book American History and Culture from the Explorers to Cable TV]