Tag Archives: editing

Long Live Pedagogy!

Since 2005 I have had the good fortune to help build and sustain a vibrant discourse around teaching in English studies as Associate Editor of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. This year I am moving on from this position along with the founding editors, Marcy Taylor and Jennifer Holberg.

My first contribution to Pedagogy was as a reviewer (On Becoming a Teacher Winter 2002). Soon after I joined the editorial team I contributed Where Do You Teach (Fall 2005), an Associate Editor’s Introduction (Winter 2006), and an introductory note (Winter 2008) to a collaboratively written essay a group of graduate students preparing to teach a literature course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, guided by their professor, Dale Bauer, and who were immersed in current debates about teaching by reading Patrick Allitt’s I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, Shari Stenberg’s Professing and Pedagogy, Paul Kameen’s Writing/Teaching, Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe, and one textbook, Mariolina Salvatori and Pat Donahue’s The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty.

In addition to working with dozens of authors as an editor of the reviews section of the journal, I served as guest editor of a special issue on the small college department (Spring 2010) that included my introductory essay Centers and Peripheries in which I introduce the two goals of the special issue: to investigate what might be possible in the small college department as well as to suggest how these possibilities might inspire comparable intellectual work in other professional and institutional contexts. My essay surveys a selection of published writing produced within the small college department and points to the practices of smaller institutions and departments in which faculty and students collaborate and envision scholarly and creative activities within the mission and values of a particular institution. I argue that if the current traditional conception of the discipline has rendered a great deal of the work of the profession invisible, then it would make sense to talk more about what our colleagues are actually doing outside the doctorate-granting institution. And I conclude that representing more fully what we do will require us to move beyond general claims for teaching as a form of scholarship and away from decontextualized arguments about the value of teaching. Finally, my Commentary Who We Are, Why We Care (Winter 2010) appeared in our Ten Year anniversary issue.

Between 2006 and 2023 I edited over seventy-five book reviews, and I am grateful to all of the authors who shared with our readers a few of the many books on teaching and learning published each year. The list of books and authors is below.

Inventing the Discipline: Student Work in Composition Studies. Eds. Edited by Stacey Waite and Peter Wayne Moe (Jessica Masterson, Washington State University Vancouver)

Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Generation Writing and Literacy Education. Ed. Kelly Ritter. (Molly Parsons, Keene State College)

Reading and Writing Instruction in the Twenty-First Century: Recovering the Transforming the Pedagogy of Robert Scholes. Eds. Ellen C. Carillo. (Martin Bickman, University of Colorado Boulder)

Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice. Eds. Bridget Draxler and Danielle Spratt (William Stroup, Keene State College)

 Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media. Ed. Cajetan Nwabueze Iheka. (Jennifer Horowitz, Rhode Island School of Design)

Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies, by Nicole B. Wallack. (Jenny Spinner, Saint Joseph’s University)

Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom, edited by Patrick Sullivan, Howard B. Tinberg, and Sheridan D. Blau. (Nick Sanders, Michigan State University)

Learning Legacies: Archive to Action through Women’s Cross-Cultural Teaching, by Sarah Ruffing Robbins. (Siobhan Senier, University of New Hampshire)

From Boys to Men: Rhetorics of Emergent American Masculinity, by Leigh Ann Jones. (Christopher M. Parsons, Keene State College)

Digging into Literature: Strategies for Reading, Analysis, and Writing, by Joanna Wolfe and Laura Wilder, and Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines. (Paul T. Corrigan. “Teaching What We Do in Literary Studies”; Jamie K. Paton. “From the Parlor to the Classroom: An Undergraduate Perspective”; Nancy L. Chick. “Beginning Where the Students Are Beginning.”

Composition in the Age of Austerity, edited by Nancy Welch and Tony Scott. (Phillip Goodwin, University of Nevada, Reno)

Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle. (Rebecca C. Conklin, Central Michigan University)

Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age, by Thomas Leitch. (Patrick C. Fleming, Rollins College)

Other People’s English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy. Vershawn Ashanti Young, Rusty Barrett, Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, and Kim Brian Lovejoy.  (Alexis McGee, University of Texas–San Antonio)

The Value of the Humanities, by Helen Small. (Kurt Spellmeyer, Rutgers University)

The Humanities “Crisis” and the Future of Literary Studies, by Paul Jay. (Deborah H. Holdstein, Columbia College Chicago)

Facing the Center: Toward an Identity Politics of One-to-One Mentoring, Harry C. Denny; Xiaoqiong You, Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT, Mya Poe, Neal Lerner, and Jennifer Craig; Meaghan Elliott, Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College, Katherine Kelleher Sohn; Adam Parker Cogbill. Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, Peter Elbow; Matt Switliski “(Writing) Centers and Margins.” (“Introduction: Developing a Dialogue about Language and Politics, by Christina Ortmeier-Hooper and Meaghan Elliott)

The Readers’ Thoreau and “Walden”: A Fluid Text Edition. (Paul Schacht, State University of New York Geneseo, Kristen Case, University of Maine Farmington)

Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, & Schema Criticism. Mark Bracher. (Eric Leake, University of Denver)

Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres. Eds. Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus. (Lauri Bohanan Goodling, Georgia Perimeter College)

The Centrality of Style. Eds. Michael Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri. (Gretchen Dietz, Miami University)

The Evolution of College English: Literacy Studies from the Puritans to the Postmoderns. Thomas P. Miller. (Yvonne Bruce, University of Akron and John Carroll University)

Teaching the Literature of Today’s Middle East. Ed. Allen Web. (Beth Stickney, Keene State College)

On Critical Pedagogy. Henry Giroux.(Michael Sutcliffe, Washington State University Vancouver)

The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Thomas P. Miller. (Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, “Shaping the Field:  A Review of The Norton Book of Composition Studies”; Thomas L. Burkdall, “Pencil Traces: The Conversations of Composition”; Lori Ostergaard and Greg A. Giberson, “What Do Writing Majors Need to Know? Contextualizing a Discipline’s Conversations for Undergraduates”)

Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook. Ed. Joshua Marie Wilkinson. (Kevin Craft, Everett Community College)

Dead Letters: Error in Composition, 1873-2004. Tracy Santa. (Andrea Olinger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? Ed. Dianne Donnelly. (Adam Breckenridge, University of Florida)

A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck. Suzanne Bordelon. (Susan Pagnac, Iowa State University)

The Transition to College Writing, 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Hjortshoj. (Cary Moskovitz, Duke University)

Embracing Vernacular Literacies. The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction. By Shannon Carter. (Jamey Gallagher, Lehigh University)

First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. Robert D. Richardson. (Sean Meehan, Washington College)

Science in the Writing Classroom: Interdisciplinary Rhetorical Explorations. Michael Zerbe. (Paula Comeau, North Dakota State University)

Assigning, Responding, and Evaluating: A Teacher’s Guide. Ed White. (Lee Nickoson-Massey, Bowling Green State University)

The Locations of Composition. Eds. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser (Caroline Dadas, Miami University)

Standards-Based Constructivism: a Two-Step Guide for Motivating Middle and High School Students. Ed. Pat Flynn, et al.  (Be-Asia McKerracher, Truman State University)

Writing and Motivation. Pietro Boscolo and Suzanne Hidi. (Danielle Cordaro, Purdue University)

The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein as Writers in Community. Diana Glyer. (Cheryl O’Sullivan, Azusa Pacific University)

Approaches to Teaching Wiesel’s Night. Alan Rosen. (Nona Fienberg, Keene State College)

Making Teaching and Learning Visible. Eds. Daniel Berstein, Amy Nelson Burnett, Amy Goodburn, and Paul Savory. (John Webster, University of Washington)

Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation. Mark Bracher. (David Brenner, Universität Konstanz)

What Is College-Level Writing. Eds. Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg. (Katheleen Hunzer, University of Wisconsin, River Falls)

They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Eds. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein.  (Laura Grow, Central Michigan University, Phyllis Benay, Keene State College)

Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice. Eds. Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie (Shima Carter, Nova Southeastern University)

Life on the Tenure Track:  Lessons from the First Year.  James M. Lang.  (William H. Wandless, Central Michigan University)

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.  Walter Benn Michaels. (John Marsh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Disciplinary Identities: Rhetorical Paths of English, Speech, and Composition. Steven Mailloux. Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy. Elizabeth Ellsworth. (Dale Bauer and the UIUC Pedagogy Collective: Dale Bauer, Rebeccah Bechtold, Mike Behrens, Nick Capell, Adam Deutsch, Zia Glubhegovic, Marilyn Holguin, Merton Lee, Carl Lehnen, Kim O’Neill, Christy Scheuer, Melissa Tombro, Jason Vredenburg)

Local Knowledges, Local Practices: Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell. Ed. Jonathan Monroe. (John Bean, Seattle University)

Tactics of Hope: the Public Turn in English Composition. Paula Mathieu. (Roxanne Spray, University of South Carolina)

Personally Speaking:  Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse. Candace Spigelman.  (Molly Flaspohler, Concordia College)

Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece. Debra Hawhee. (Chris Drew, Indiana University)

The English Teacher’s Companion. Jim Burke. (Howard Sklar, University of Helsinki)

Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project. Ed. Anna Leahy. (Miriam Marty Clark)

Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing. Carl Whithaus. (Paul L Yoder, Saint Louis University)

The Oxford Companion to the Brontes. Eds. Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith. (Diane Hoeveler, Marquette University, Terri Hasseler, Bryant University)

Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts. Julie Jung. (Sandy Tarabochia,  University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

On Bullshit. Harry Frankfurt. (David Kellogg, Northeastern University)          

Why Does Literature Matter? Frank B. Farrell. (Cristy Vischer Bruns, University of California—Santa Barbara)

Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century. Gregory Colon Semenza. (Genevieve Bressard, University of Portland)

The Profession of English in the 2 Year College . Eds. Mark Reynolds and Sylvia Holladay-Hicks. (Wendy Swyt, Highline Community College,  Jason Kane, Elgin Community College, Lucia Elden and Barry Alford, Mid-Michigan Community College)

The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication. Wayne C. Booth (Mike Edwards, University of Massachusetts and Collie Fulford, University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Crossing Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford and Lahoucine Ouzgane. (Frederick Luis Aldama, U Colorado Boulder)

Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America. Eds. Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L. Dahlberg. (Christie Launius, Augusta State University)

Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching. Margaret J. Marshall (Michele Fero, Michigan State University)

Professing and Pedagogy: Learning the Teaching of English. Shari J. Stenberg. (Kirsti Sandy, Keene State College, Colin Irvine, Augsburg College)

The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty. Eds. Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori and Patricia Donahue. (Mary Ann Crawford, Central Michigan University, John Webster, University of Washington)

The Art of Teaching. Jay Parini. (Bartholomew Brinkman, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Melissa Free, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

The End of Composition Studies. David W. Smit. (Lance Massey, Elon University)

Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post Civil-Rights Era.

Henri and Susan Searls Giroux. (Jonathan Vincent, University of Illinois)

The Small College Department

1 Reply

For ten years the journal Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture has distinguished itself as the only profession-wide journal devoted exclusively to teaching in English studies. The journal, founded by Marcy Taylor and Jennifer Holberg, has sustained a professional conversation around teaching and the scholarship produced around it. A winner of the 2001 Best New Journal Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, Pedagogy is celebrating its tenth anniversary.

My work on the journal includes writing book reviews, an essay and since 2005 serving an associate editor of the journal. As associate editor, I am responsible for the book review section in our three issues published each year. I serve as a liaison with book publishers, recruit reviewers, edit individual and roundtable reviews, and work with the authors of longer “Forum” essays by senior teachers.

The Spring 2010 special issue of Pedagogy

My most recent contribution to Pedagogy, and to the profession-wide conversation about teaching, is a special issue dedicated to the small college department. As guest editor for the spring 2010 issue I asked ten contributors to foreground the ways the small college departments generate conditions for innovative pedagogy, curriculum development, and the integration of the professional activities of reading, writing and teaching. In my Guest Editor’s Introduction, “Centers and Peripheries,” I introduce the two goals of the special issue: to investigate what might be possible in the small college department as well as to suggest how these possibilities might inspire comparable intellectual work in other professional and institutional contexts. Because the current traditional conception of the discipline has rendered a great deal of the intellectual work of the profession invisible, I contend, we need to talk more about what our colleagues are actually doing outside the doctorate-granting institution. My claim is that representing more fully what we do will help us to move beyond general claims for teaching as a form of scholarship and away from de-contextualized arguments about the value of teaching.

Since graduate school I have been surprised by the parochial discourse of the profession that situates the so-called research institution at the center of intellectual production, value and prestige. Over the years, I have tried to bring people together to talk about the ways we devalue significant intellectual work and to make visible the a more complex system of postsecondary education made up of four-year liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, two-year colleges, community colleges, and public and private colleges and universities.  As an assistant professor I was fortunate  to find at the annual Modern Language Association (MLA) convention colleagues interested in making visible forms of intellectual work in small college departments. After presenting on issues in small college departments for a couple of years, I began organizing and chairing the annual session sponsored by the Association of Departments of English (ADE). At the 2005 convention in Washington, D.C., the session “Graduate Education and the Small College Department” I invited graduate directors from research institutions (U of Wisconsin, Rutgers U, U of Pittsburgh) and small-college faculty (Marywood U, U of the Pacific, and Cornell College). And in 2006, in Philadelphia, I focused the session on the procedures and criteria for tenure and promotion in the small college department. And in 2009 we considered criteria and requirements for earning tenure—specifically how these criteria may have changed or be changing, whether changes (and what changes) would seem more productive and more counter-productive, and how institutional conditions and complexities determine the work of promotion and tenure committees. Have the requirements for publication for tenure and promotion changed in institutions over the past ten years? How do small-college departments define productivity and growth in scholarship and related professional activity? How do small-college departments value scholarship beyond the standard peer-reviewed journals or monograph? How does the apparently necessary specialization in graduate school prepare graduate students for positions where the publication of a monograph is not the requirement for tenure?

My inquiry into the conditions for teaching and learning in small college departments led to an invitation  to write a featured “Commentary,” “Where Do You Teach?”, for the fall 2005 issue of Pedagogy and an essay, “Reading, Writing and Teaching in Context” in the book Academic Cultures: Professional Preparation and the Teaching Life (MLA 2008). In both of these essays I consider the debilitating representation of faculty work in terms of research and teaching as separate activities. My argument is that this pervasive subplot in the narrative of the profession is rooted in a representation of faculty work that transcends the local institution and the ways that departments and institutions define intellectual work.

The special issue of Pedagogy dedicated to the small college department is a culmination of many years of work. My hope is that the professional conversation about our intellectual work will continue and that our special issue will inspire others to explore what  it means to be primarily a teacher in a community of writing and scholarly exchange.

From the Editor’s Desk

Leave a reply

It is difficult to  sustain a writing project during an academic term. Hence the interval between semesters is the time when ideas and outlines and notes find their way into written form. I also find myself, during my idle time between semesters, preoccupied with ongoing editorial tasks.

Working scholars are often asked to review and offer comments on manuscripts under consideration for publication. Most recently, I have served a a reviewer for PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association; Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry; Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture;  JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory; 5) IJE: Indian Journal of Ecocriticism; 6) ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Indiana University Press.

In 2004 I was appointed associate editor of the journal Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. This profession-wide journal—the winner of the 2001 Best New Journal Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals—was founded to reverse the longstanding marginalization of teaching and the scholarship produced around it and instead to assert the centrality of teaching to the work of scholars and professionals across the field of English studies. As associate editor, I am responsible for the book review section in our three issues published each year. I read a range of new books relevant to the readers of our journal and then recruit reviewers, solicit reviews, edit individual and roundtable reviews, and serve as a liaison with book publishers. Currently, I am completing an introductory essay for a special issue of Pedagogy I have been invited to guest edit dedicated to the small college English department. The issue will foreground the ways the small college department continues to generate its own conditions for innovative pedagogy, curriculum development, and the integration of the professional activities of reading, writing and teaching.