Writers: Craft & Context

Cover Art

2023-09-08T16:25:53-05:00

Editor's Introduction

2023-09-08T12:23:56-05:00

A Record of Revision

2022-08-24T14:31:01-05:00

This is a poem about reflexivity in research and writing.

Putting It All on the Table

2023-09-25T13:51:51-05:00

In this autoethnographic article, I argue that the recent and trending new materialist focus within composition studies—which tends to assume the privilege of agency and unmitigated choice on behalf of writers regarding their writing environments (Prior and Shipka, 2002; Alexis, 2016)—doesn’t necessarily hold space for writers whose writing environments regularly yield to and are shaped by the preferences, habits, and material effects of actors outside of themselves—namely, their children. In making my argument about the particular effects of such mutliagent writing environments, I use a materialist lens to reveal and analyze my own and other single mother graduate student writers’ (SMGSWs) scenes of writing, hoping to invite reflection on what assumptions we may hold about the writing environments of our students, our colleagues, and ourselves.

The South Ain't a Lost Cause

2023-09-26T13:53:12-05:00

With so many dominant narratives about the South being “the embarrassing part of the country” because of its seemingly conservative politics, it’s easy to think of this region of the United States as a place beyond redemption. In this piece, I describe the current state of Southern politics (e.g., voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other Right-wing attacks), and how these policies have led to a misleading narrative of the South that ignores the political work of Black queer Southerners. After an analysis of Southern political discourse, I craft a story about a Black queer community organizer tasked with amplifying the voices of marginalized Southerners during a presidential election for a campaign that wants to write off the South for its conservative policies. My counterstory not only rejects the majoritarian narrative that erases the progressive work of Black queer activism, but also provides a heuristic for exposing racist power structures and politically investing in marginalized communities.

Bringing a Burden to Bear

2023-09-26T13:53:21-05:00

In this essay, I consider my position as a multiply marginalized scholar teaching within vastly different spaces—in a neocolonized island territory of the US with a minority majority student population; then to rural, land grant, and predominantly White institutions on the West coast; to a private urban campus in one of the original US colonies. I think deeply about my responsibilities, my complicity, and what it means to carry this weight, truly, across America, in order to confront the complexity of what “America” is alongside my students. To address this complexity of contexts, I look to the ways Amerindian and American Indigenous rhetorics bear against colonial injustice
through language.

Writing in the Profession

2023-09-23T13:49:44-05:00

A conversation between five students and a faculty member, this article explores the experience of writing as a graduate student. Areas of conversation include tensions between being students, writers, and teachers; individuality and vulnerability; and writing in/as community.

Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations

2023-09-08T12:20:59-05:00

This is the lead contribution for the series of fourteen student essays that follow. This first contribution offers contextual information about the course as well as suggestions for replicating this course in other contexts. Provided course materials are a course schedule, readings, and assignments.

Critical Essay 1

2023-09-23T13:49:26-05:00

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Waiting for History

2023-09-23T13:49:17-05:00

Policing the Black Experience and Critical Race Theory

2023-09-23T13:49:07-05:00

Williams’s Polar Bears

2023-09-23T13:48:58-05:00

Counterstory and Representation Through Media

2023-09-23T13:48:50-05:00

How Alice Walker Shaped Derrick Bell’s Counterstory

2023-09-22T13:45:49-05:00

New Trek, 90s Trek, & the Permanence of Racism

2023-09-22T13:45:40-05:00

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Mi Mamá, La que Llora

2023-09-22T13:45:30-05:00

Beloved

2023-09-23T13:48:39-05:00

Intersectionality in South Park

2023-09-23T13:48:13-05:00

Flesh, Blood, and Counterstory

2023-09-23T13:48:03-05:00

A Counterstory

2023-09-26T13:52:12-05:00

Model M

2023-09-23T13:47:53-05:00

Teaching ChatGPT for Grant Writing

2023-09-08T14:27:36-05:00

In the spring of 2023, stirred by reports that AI was radically transforming the writing industry (and "creating an epidemic of cheating"), I taught my Department of English senior capstone students how to use ChatGPT to write grants. In this brief write-up, I describe my rationale for teaching about the AI (to get students jobs); how it can fit into writing studies best practices (e.g., process pedagogy); ways to create assignments that might limit its use (localization and contextualization); as well as a few fast and messy activities and student process examples that evolved over the
semester. The students chose to offer their writing using a first name only and a pseudonym.