Writers: Craft & Context

Cover Art

VÕ THIÊN VIỆT — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Introduction

Aja Y. Martinez, Sandra L. Tarabochia, Michele Eodice — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

A Record of Revision

Rosanna Vail — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

This is a poem about reflexivity in research and writing.

Putting It All on the Table

Jayne Stone — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Erin Green — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Tabitha Espina — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Aja Y Martinez; Robert O. Smith — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Emily Bailey — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Cat Sylvia Blackwell — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Policing the Black Experience and Critical Race Theory

Nicholas Durham — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Williams’s Polar Bears

Grace Leuschen — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Counterstory and Representation Through Media

V. Manuel Muñiz — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

How Alice Walker Shaped Derrick Bell’s Counterstory

Eva Thor — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Josephine Collins — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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

Natali Coronado — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Beloved

Kaley Johnson — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Intersectionality in South Park

Sami Pray — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Flesh, Blood, and Counterstory

McKenzie Shoemaker — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

A Counterstory

Alaia Snell — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Model M

Sam Thiersch — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Teaching ChatGPT for Grant Writing

Will Kurlinkus — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

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.