Making Writing Matter: Composition in the Engaged University

by Feldman, Ann M.

• ISBN13: 9780791473825
• ISBN10: 0791473821
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

In Making Writing Matter, Ann M. Feldman explores how changing scholarship at engaged metropolitan universities offers an opportunity to redesign first-year writing classes in ways that make students better writers. An engaged university commits to a relationship with its surrounding metropolitan area, with faculty members undertaking collaborative research with community Partners. The more vibrant, Participatory role of an engaged university allows students to link their academic studies to important public issues and gain real-world writing experience, such as writing press releases and letters to organizations. This newly focused and contextualized research and scholarship at engaged universities shows students how discourse and writing matter in new ways. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Ann M. Feldman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Writing and Learning in the Disciplines and the coauthor (with Ellen McManus and Nancy Downs) of In Context: Reading and Writing in Cultural Conversations, Second Edition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction Making Writing Matter	p. 1
What Is Engaged Scholarship?	p. 2
Making Writing Matter for First-Year Students	p. 3
Writing for Civic Engagement	p. 5
How I Came to Write This Book	p. 7
The Organization of This Book	p. 9
The Place of Writing in the University
Engaged Scholarship at the University	p. 13
Changing The Kind of Thing We Do Around Here	p. 15
Important Work, But Not University Partnership	p. 19
How Discourse Drives Engagement	p. 22
The New Learner Writes	p. 29
Educating Citizens to Write	p. 32
When Students "Walk" the City	p. 36
Writing as Participation	p. 41
The Purloined Petition	p. 42
Institution, Genre, and Social Action	p. 48
This Container Isn't Big Enough	p. 53
Writing About What Others Have Written	p. 55
Writing for Participation	p. 59
Revision or Social Action?	p. 65
Writing in a Community of Practice	p. 68
Telling Tales Out of School	p. 71
When Is a Diary Not a Diary?	p. 71
Down the Elevator	p. 72
Both Ends Against the Middle	p. 74
The University in Ruins	p. 77
What's a Writing Program For?	p. 79
The Mountain Makes It's Own Weather	p. 83
Learning to Spell Rescission	p. 86
The Grammar Sessions	p. 89
Getting What You Wish For	p. 94
Reflecting on Experience?	p. 96
Designing Instruction to Make Writing Matter
Rethinking Reflection in Community-Based Writing	p. 99
A New Space for Teaching and Learning	p. 99
Tales of Becoming a Writer	p. 103
Performing in Writing	p. 105
The Memoir and Its Truth or Consequences	p. 107
On Not Assigning Literacy Narratives	p. 109
Against Reflection	p. 112
Recruiting Students for CCLCP	p. 120
Developing Community-Based Partnerships	p. 122
Designing a First-Year Curriculum for CCLCP	p. 125
Recapping the Argument	p. 134
Assessing Writing and Learning in Community-Based Courses (with Candice Rai and Megan Marie)	p. 135
Entering a New Situation	p. 135
Situated Writing and Learning	p. 136
Complicating Assessment	p. 147
Developing an Assessment Matrix	p. 151
Conducting Assessment	p. 155
Teaching the Teachers	p. 163
Writing About Essays	p. 164
The Syllabus as Genre	p. 167
Against First-Year Writing	p. 171
The Paradox of Transferability	p. 175
Designing Situated Writing Projects	p. 177
A Manifesto for First-Year Writing	p. 187
Notes	p. 195
Works Cited	p. 203
Index	p. 219
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