Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies collects original scholarship that takes up and extends the practices of inventive theorizing that characterize Sharon Crowley’s body of work. Including sixteen chapters by established and emerging scholars and an interview with Crowley, the book shows that doing theory is a contingent and continual rhetorical process that is indispensable for understanding situations and their potential significance—and for discovering the available means of persuasion. For Crowley, theory is a basic building block of rhetoric “produced by and within specific times and locations as a means of opening other ways of believing or acting.” Doing theory, in this sense, is the practice of surveying the common sense of the community (doxa) and discovering the available means of persuasion (invention). The ultimate goal of doing theory is not to prescribe certain actions but to ascertain what options exist for rhetors to see the world differently, to discover new possibilities for thought and action, and thereby to effect change in the world. The scholarship collected in Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies takes Crowley’s notion of theory as an invitation to develop new avenues for believing and acting. By reinventing the understanding of theory and its role in the field, this collection makes an important contribution to scholarship in rhetorical studies and writing studies. It will be valuable to scholars, teachers, and students interested in diverse theoretical directions in rhetoric and writing studies as well as in race, gender, and disability theories, religious rhetorics, digital rhetoric, and the history of rhetoric. Publication supported in part by the Texas Tech University Humanities Center. Contributors: Jason Barrett-Fox, Geoffrey Clegg, Kirsti Cole, Joshua Daniel-Wariya, Diane Davis, Rebecca Disrud, Bre Garrett, Catherine C. Gouge, Debra Hawhee, Matthew Heard, Joshua C. Hilst, David G. Holmes, Bruce Horner, William B. Lalicker, Jennifer Lin LeMesurier, James C. McDonald, Timothy Oleksiak, Dawn Penich-Thacker, J. Blake Scott, Victor J. Vitanza, Susan Wyche

This volume highlights some of the main issues and questions surrounding the field of second language (L2) writing, and includes 14 chapters authored by contributors from a wide variety of geographical regions including, but not limited to, North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The authors are all experienced L2 writing researchers, and their contributions will enhance the reader’s understanding of issues related to L2 writing. Considering the breadth and the depth of the issues raised and discussed, the book will appeal to a wide readership, including postgraduate students of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Applied Linguistics (AL), and both early-career and experienced TESOL/AL researchers.

Spanning a decade of key research, this collection brings together a selection of essays and chapters from leading media scholar Graeme Turner for the first time. The organising theme of transition focuses on both the state of the media as it continues its evolution into the digital era, and the fields of media and cultural studies as they grapple with modifying their approaches and assumptions in response to the changing dynamics of the systems they study. In their own attempts to understand a range of contemporary moments over the decade, these essays also provide a personal history of Graeme Turner’s participation in the key debates within media and cultural studies. The essays deal with the shifting states of television, with the changing relation between the media and the state, the rise of celebrity, and the role of a critical agenda for media and cultural studies in the future. The collection is introduced and concluded by two new essays, respectively assessing the recent past and the necessary futures for these fields of study. Providing key insights into a range of topics, this book is ideal for students and scholars looking to deepen their understanding of the transitionary nature of media and cultural studies.

This collection of original essays explores the relationship between publishing and literature in America. "Right at the leading edge of scholarship on the history of the book". -- William Gilmore-Lehne

Interdisciplinarity covers one of the most important changes in attitude and methodology in the history of the university. Taking the study of English as its main example, this fully updated second edition examines the ways in which we have organized knowledge into disciplines, and are now reorganizing it into new configurations as existing structures come to seem restrictive. Joe Moran traces the history and use of the term ‘interdisciplinarity’, tackling such vital topics as: the rise of the disciplines interdisciplinary English Literary and Cultural Studies 'theory' and the disciplines texts and histories literature and science, space and nature. Including an updated further reading section and new concluding chapter, Interdisciplinarity is the ideal entry point into one of today's most heated critical debates.

Ten essays from a June 1991 conference in Dedham, Massachusetts explore the political cultures that shape both the agenda and the content of scholarship on foreign areas, and how such political cultures have been the subject of both study and public policy. No index. Annotation copyright Book News,

Myth, art, literature, film, and other discourses are replete with depictions of evil plants, salvific plants, and human-plant hybrids. In various ways, these representations intersect with “deep-rooted” insecurities about the place of human beings in the natural world, the relative viability of animalian motility and heterotrophy as evolutionary strategies, as well as the identity of organic life as such. Plants surprise us by combining the appearance of harmlessness and familiarity with an underlying strangeness. The otherness of vegetal life poses a challenge to our ethical, philosophical, and existential categories and tests the limits of human empathy and imagination. At the same time, the resilience of plants, their adaptability, and their integration with their habitat are a perennial source of inspiration and wisdom. Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies examines the manner in which literary texts and other cultural products express our multifaceted relationship with the vegetable kingdom. The range of perspectives brought to bear on the subject of plant life by the various authors and critics represented in this volume comprise a novel vision of ecological interdependence and stimulate a revitalized sensitivity to the relationships we share with our photosynthetic brethren. Randy Laist is Associate Professor of English at Goodwin College. He is the author of Technology and Postmodern Subjectivity in Don DeLillo’s Novels and the editor of Looking for Lost: Critical Essays on the Enigmatic Series. He has also published dozens of articles on literature, film, and pedagogy.

WRITING PROGRAMS WORLDWIDE offers an important global perspective to the growing research literature in the shaping of writing programs. The authors of its program profiles show how innovators at a diverse range of universities on six continents have dealt creatively over many years with day-to-day and long-range issues affecting how students across disciplines and languages grow as communicators and learners.