Assembling Composition (Studies in Writing and Rhetoric)

Drawing on historical studies as well as on current innovations of composing, Assembling Composition provides a new framework for understanding composing. 

As Kathleen Blake Yancey, Stephen J. McElroy, and their contributors detail, assemblage theory explains disparate composing practices—from postcard production in the early twentieth century to database-informed composing in the twenty-first, from museum-inspired collecting to creative repetitions of authentic Native American practices. And as a key concept, assemblage has been field tested in several settings, including first-year composition, upper-level writing courses, and graduate courses. Assembling Composition speaks particularly to four dimensions of assemblage: 

• Ways that assemblage helps us theorize current digital and material composing practices
• Ways that employing assemblage as a key term and practice in the teaching of writing can assist both teachers and students
• Ways that assemblage has historically contributed to everyday composing
• And ways that we can interrogate assemblage as an ethical practice

Collectively, these chapters complicate and enrich our understandings of composing, our sense of what constitutes a text, and our expectation of the potential effects of texts.

Kathleen Blake Yancey, a Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor, focuses her research on composition studies generally; on students' transfer of writing knowledge and practice; on creative non-fiction; on cultural studies of everyday writing; on writing assessment, especially print and electronic portfolios; and on the intersections of culture, literacy and technologies.

In addition to co-founding the journal Assessing Writing and co-editing it for seven years, she is the immediate past editor of College Composition and Communication, the flagship journal in the field. She has also authored, edited, or co-edited sixteen scholarly books and two textbooks as well as over 100 articles and book chapters.

Stephen J. McElroy is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of First-Year Writing. He specializes in composition theory and pedagogy, multimodal production, digital composing, and assemblage theory. His work has appeared in Computers and Composition, Kairos, and Enculturation, among other venues. His 2017 collection, Assembling Composition, co-edited with Kathleen Blake Yancey and published in the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series by NCTE, examines the relationship between assemblage and composing in theory, in the classroom, and in the world. For his 2014 Kairos article, he and his coauthors Michael Neal and Katherine Bridgman received the Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Production/Scholarship Award. 

Before joining Babson, Stephen directed the Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio at Florida State University, where he previously earned his PhD, and taught courses in FSU's Editing, Writing, and Media major and College Composition program. He also holds an M.A. in English from Belmont University and a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from the Gordon Ford College of Business at Western Kentucky University.