The overarching goal of this study is to suggest that the essay as a genre, although seeming to manifest the epistemological conceptions of the modern, possesses certain qualities from its origin that justify and strengthen its position in the paradigm of the postmodern condition. It is my argument that misconceptions about such qualities have led to its mistreatment by writing teachers in accordance with two dominant pedagogical approaches, formalism (current-traditionalism) and romanticism (expressivism). My argument requires a detailed examination of the political, historical and cultural reality that cultivated and nurtured the genre of the essay, and a major focus of my study is on the way Montaigne conceived of the new mode of writing as his response to the new social realities of the sixteenth century, an age marked by discoveries and inventions. To justify this approach, I consider works by composition theorists who promote an agenda of critical literacy, scholarly works on Montaigne's essays, as well as various relevant works on postmodernism and literary theory. Perhaps more importantly, I look back to the chaotic, unpredictable, and skeptical mentality of the sixteenth century and attempt to draw connections between that time period and the present, as our present postmodern era is also marked by major shifts of conceptions about reality, knowledge, authority, and the self. From this framework, I indicate connections can be drawn between the two revolutionary ages, both marked by explosion of new knowledge and dissipation of authority and certainty. It is my proposition that the essay, arising from the need to question traditions and to adapt to new emerging realities, possesses qualities--explorative, skeptical, and dialogical--that procure a valid position in the ongoing questioning and challenging of the Modern by the Postmodern. Finally, I examine how essay has been and continues to be taught just for its formalistic merits and ignored for its epistemological, aesthetic, and philosophical values, an examination that serves to repudiate the wrongful relegation and dismissal of the essay and to establish a justification of not only the literary merits, but also the pedagogical values of the essay.

As multimodal composing plays more prominent roles in academic, professional, and public life, writing centers are challenged to take on multiliteracy work, and some have even gone so far as to redefined themselves as multiliteracy centers. However, writing centers that take on this work will find process theory, which has dominated writing consulting since the 1970s, inadequate for the task. A study of the history of the higher- and lower-order concern prioritizing strategy demonstrates the shortcomings of process pedagogy-based tenets of writing center practice. They represent historical vestiges of the field’s struggle for disciplinary legitimacy rather than a response to exigencies of composing. Teaching multiliteracies instead demands a rhetoric-based approach. This project explores what such an approach would mean for the writer/consultant interaction, consulting staffs, the writing center’s institutional identity, and centers' role in the public sphere. I redefine the role of writing consultant as rhetoric consultant and propose a writing/multiliteracy center-specific pedagogy of multimodal design. The focus then turns to finding definitions of centers that can shape their evolving identities and construct multiliteracy work as integral rather than an add-on. Drawing upon Kenneth Burke’s frames of acceptance, I examine the limitations of the field’s defining mythologies and propose a way forward in identity formation, shaping definitions of writing/multiliteracy centers that are at once stable and flexible. Finally, this project argues for a fresh interpretation of the center’s core identity as a democratizing force. John Dewey's definition of publics helps to define the field's democratizing mission as a project of extending access to education to diverse groups of people. Projected growth in the number and diversity of higher education enrollments offers writing/multiliteracy centers important opportunities to shepherd underrepresented groups through college. However, a more ambitious democratizing mission stands within reach: the changing landscape of composing challenges centers to support composers who want to take active roles in the public sphere. This project proposes pedagogical shifts that make public work possible. / text

With the rise of the writing-to-learn (WTL) movement, studies on reflection and implementing reflective writing became key focal points in research on writing across the curriculum (WAC). Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have noted the benefits of implementing genres of writing that prompt students to look back and assess aspects of their own performance and understanding. Other inquiries examine if reflective writing impacts student performance, as well as analyze students' reflective processes and their perceptions of reflection. This investigation represents a continuation and expansion of these different research efforts on reflection across the curriculum. The goal of this work is to gain more knowledge about students' reflective processes and the language that they use to describe reflective thought and action by focusing on multiple, discipline-specific contexts. Through an exploratory study of four courses within two disciplines--English and History--at a large, public university, this work examines the reflective processes and perceptions of students and how their perceptions and processes align with their instructors' expectations. This study suggests that students and instructors in various disciplines have unique and sometimes divergent ways of using and talking about reflection, which presents implications for research on WAC and knowledge transfer. Aligning with the rich body of research in the field, this investigation uses reflection as both a subject of inquiry and a guiding action.

abstract: This research works from in an institutional ethnographic methodology. From this grounded approach, it describes the dialectic between the individual and the discourse of the institution. This work develops a complex picture of the multifarious ways in which institutional discourse has real effects on the working lives of graduate teaching associates (GTAs) and administrative staff and faculty in Arizona State University's Department of English. Beginning with the experiences of individuals as they described in their interviews, provided an opportunity to understand individual experiences connected by threads of institutional discourse. The line of argumentation that developed from this grounded institutional ethnographic approach proceeds thusly: 1) If ASU’s institutional discourse is understood as largely defined by ASU’s Charter as emphasizing access and academic excellence, then it is possible to 2) see how the Charter affects the departmental discourse in the Department of English. This is shown by 3) explaining the ways in which institutional discourse—in conjunction with disciplinary discourses—affects the flow of power for administrative faculty and manifests as, for example, the Writing Programs Mission and Goals. These manifestations then 4) shape the training in the department to enculturate GTAs and other Writing Programs teachers, which finally 5) affects how Writing Programs teachers structure their courses consequently affecting the undergraduate online learning experience. This line of argumentation illustrates how the flow of power in administrative faculty positions like the Department Chair and Writing Program Administrator are institution-specific, entangled with the values of the institution and the forms of institutional discourse including departmental training impact the teaching practices of GTAs. And, although individual work like that done by the WPA to maintain teacher autonomy and the GTAs to facilitate individual access in their online classrooms, the individual is ultimately lost in the larger institutional conversation of access. Finally, this research corroborates work by Sara Ahmed and Stephanie L. Kerschbaum who explain how institutions co-opt intersectional terms such as diversity and access, and that neoliberal institutions' use of these terms are disingenuous, improving not the quality of instruction or university infrastructure but rather the reputation and public appeal of the university. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

Working mothers are stressed, juggling various roles and responsibilities both at home and at work, which can result in life imbalance. Writing has the potential to help working mothers to more effectively manage the challenges that cause this imbalance. Previous research and studies have shown that engaging in personal narrative writing can have physical and psychological healing effects, enhance problem-solving, lead to self-discovery, and build social connections, all factors that could potentially provide support to working mothers. This qualitative study explored the specific effects that personal narrative writing could have on the lives of working mothers. Initial data collection included autobiographical samples from each participant, in which she described her current issues as a working mother, her coping methods, and her previous experiences with personal writing. Over the next five months, participants were asked to write at least two times per week, at least 20-30 minutes per session, or longer if she felt compelled or simply chose to do so. Participants were interviewed four times: once before they began the study writing, once during the five-month study period, and twice during the post-study periods, during which each participant was also invited to share some of her personal writing as data sources. Analysis of the collected data enabled five themes to emerge: 1) writing can relieve stress; 2) writing can impact problem-solving and memory; 3) writing can impact concepts of identity and self; 4) writers desire to control writing practices; and 5) a relationship exists among motivation, perceived value of writing, and stress relief. From these themes, five recommendations related to establishing balance within the composition classroom were made: 1) balance personal and social elements in composition research; 2) balance personal and social elements in composition instruction; 3) balance personal and social elements through online networks; 4) balance mind and body in composition instruction; 5) balance writing with elements of personal value. From this last recommendation, a Linked Value Balance Model was proposed, which can have applications both for working mothers and within the composition classroom. / Dr. Jeannine M. Fontaine Dr. Ben Rafoth Dr. Lynne Alvine

In this project, I argue for the importance of public engagement as a method of scholarship for the discipline of creative writing, in writing studies, and the broader humanities. I do so by using historical study, ethnography and survey data, in order to trace the history of creative writing's disciplinarity, define its contemporary practices as socially collaborative and inventive, and show how those practices align with the goals and methods of public engagement projects. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of work in composition studies calling for collaboration between composition and creative writing, and I argue that though creative writers in the academy often participate in what is variously called "community outreach" or "public engagement" activities, that work can and should be more clearly articulated as part of the work of the discipline. Higher education's recent turn toward public engagement--as evidenced by monographs on the subject but also by real-world changes like the addition of language about public engagement to the tenure and promotion guidelines and ten-year plans of many universities--presents a compelling opportunity to re-articulate what it means to be a writer in the university. Work in public engagement provides new access to institutional prestige and funding, and opens connections between the various areas of writing studies in order to better serve university communities, teachers, and students.

This project presents the results of a case study of creative nonfiction (CNF) pedagogical practices in undergraduate composition studies and creative writing courses at The University of Arizona, exploring how those who teach CNF at this top-ranked school for the study of the genre are shaping knowledge about it. This project analyzes within a rhetorical framework the various subject positions CNF teachers assume in relation to their writing and teaching as well as the teaching methodologies they utilize. I do this to articulate a theory of CNF pedagogy for the twenty-first century, one that represents the merging of individualist and public intellectual ideologies that I have observed in teacher interviews, course documents, and pedagogical publications about the genre. For students new to the genre, so much depends on how CNF is first introduced through class discussion, representative assigned prose models, and invention activities when it comes to creating knowledge about exactly what contemporary CNF is/can be and how writers might best generate prose that fits the genre's wide-ranging conventions in form, content, and rhetorical situation. Understanding how and why instructors promote certain ideologies in relation to CNF becomes increasingly important as this mode of personally situated, fact-based, narrative-privileging, literarily stylized discourse continues to gain popularity within and beyond the academy.

The number of adult learners entering or returning to institutions of higher education is increasing in general and in relation to the traditional student population, and projections suggest that the trend will continue. As automation and technology impact the labor force, educational access is becoming a national concern and a necessity for more adult learners. Access to higher education impacts minority and economically depressed populations disproportionally and increases the personal and professional success of adult students and the long-term prosperity of their families. Although Composition Studies has a history of recognizing and facilitating student populations as they enter the Academy, adult learners have been overlooked and marginalized within Composition Studies. Through analysis of the foundational disciplinary literature, my research establishes that adult learners played a pivotal role in the development of Composition Studies and argues that Composition Studies can and should play a pivotal role in the success of adult learners in higher education. Locating adult learners in the disciplinary literature and demonstrating their impact on the theories and practices of Composition Studies creates a collective resource of research on which to ground current approaches and from which to launch future research; connecting this literature to the larger literature on adult learners allows Composition to contribute to and benefit from Academy-wide efforts. Stated simply, the goal of this dissertation is to recognize and support adult learners in Composition Studies. Such work is imperative because Composition Studies is continuing to construct adult learners through deficiency narratives and overlook adult learners in the current literature and classroom practices, as evidenced by the research on student-veterans. As a result, I suggest addressing the disciplinary responsibility to adult learners immediately through programmatic responses to the needs of adults in Composition Studies and by using the acknowledgment of their presence to call for institutional resources in support of all adult learners.

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