Creole Composition: Academic Writing and Rhetoric in the Anglophone Caribbean

Creole Composition is a collection featuring essays by scholars and teacher-researchers working with students in/from the Anglophone Caribbean. Arising from a need to define what writing instruction in the Caribbean means, Creole Composition expands the existing body of research literature about the teaching of writing at the postsecondary level in the Caribbean region. To this end, it speaks to critical disciplinary conversations of rhetoric and composition and academic literacies while addressing specific issues with teaching academic writing to Anglophone Caribbean students. It features chapters addressing language, approaches to teaching, assessing writing, administration, and research in postsecondary education as well as professionalization of writing instructors in the region. Some chapters reflect traditional Caribbean attitudes to postsecondary writing instruction; other chapters seek to reform these traditional practices. Some chapters’ interventions emerge from discussions in writing studies while other chapters reflect their authors’ primary training in other fields, such as applied linguistics, education, and literary studies. Additionally, the chapters use a variety of styles and methods, ranging from highly personal reflective essays to theoretical pieces and empirical studies following IMRaD format.

Creole Composition, the first of its kind in the region, provides much-needed knowledge to the community of teacher-researchers in the Anglophone Caribbean and elsewhere in the fields of rhetoric and composition, writing studies, and academic literacies. In suggesting frameworks around which to build and further institutionalize and professionalize writing studies in the region, the collection advances the broader field of writing studies beyond national boundaries.

Contributors include Tyrone Ali, Annife Campbell, Tresecka Campbell-Dawes, Valerie Combie, Jacob Dyer Spiegel, Brianne Jaquette, Carmeneta Jones, Clover Jones McKenzie, Beverley Josephs, Christine E. Kozikowski, Vivette Milson-Whyte, Kendra L. Mitchell, Raymond Oenbring, Heather M. Robinson, Daidrah Smith, and Michelle Stewart-McKoy.

Vivette Milson-Whyte is a senior lecturer (associate professor) at The University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica, where she serves as the coordinator of the Language Section that offers courses in academic writing and technical and professional communication in the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy. Her essays have appeared in JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Caribbean Journal of Education, and various edited collections. Her book Academic Writing Instruction for Creole-Influenced Students was named a finalist in the education/academic (nonfiction) category of the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Raymond Oenbring is an assistant professor in English Studies at the University of the Bahamas, where he serves as writing program coordinator. His work has appeared in a variety of academic fora, including English World-Wide, and Language, Discourse & Society, the latter article receiving in 2014 the Academic Excellence Award from the Language and Society research committee of the International Sociological Association.

Brianne Jaquette is an associate professor of English literature and culture at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Høgskulen på Vestlandet) in Bergen, Norway. Her work on composition and literature can be found in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, The International Journal of Bahamian Studies, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, and Pedagogy.