Economies of Writing: Revaluations in Rhetoric and Composition

Economies of Writing advances scholarship on political economies of writing and writing instruction, considering them in terms of course subject, pedagogy, technology, and social practice. Taking the "economic" as a necessary point of departure and contention for the field, the collection insists that writing concerns are inevitably participants in political markets in their consideration of forms of valuation, production, and circulation of knowledge with labor and with capital.

Approaching the economic as plural, contingent, and political, chapters explore complex forces shaping the production and valuation of literacies, languages, identities, and institutions and consider their implications for composition scholarship, teaching, administration, and public rhetorics. Chapters engage a range of issues, including knowledge transfer, cyberpublics, graduate writing courses, and internationalized web domains.

Economies of Writing challenges dominant ideologies of writing, writing skills, writing assessment, language, writing technology, and public rhetoric by revealing the complex and shifting valuations of writing practices as they circulate within and across different economies. The volume is a significant contribution to rhetoric and composition’s understanding of and ways to address its seemingly perennial unease about its own work.

Contributors: Anis Bawarshi, Deborah Brandt, Jenn Fishman, T. R. Johnson, Jay Jordan, Kacie Kiser, Steve Lamos, Donna LeCourt, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Samantha Looker, Katie Malcolm, Paul Kei Matsuda, Joan Mullin, Jason Peters, Christian J. Pulver, Kelly Ritter, Phyllis Mentzell Ryder, Tony Scott, Scott Wible, Yuching Jill Yang, James T. Zebroski

Bruce Horner is Endowed Chair in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville. His books include Cross-Language Relations in Composition, winner of the 2012 CCCC Outstanding Book Award; Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition; and Rewriting Composition.

Brice Nordquist is assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Syracuse University. He is the chair of the CCCC’s Transnational Composition Group and assistant editor of Working Papers on Negotiating Differences in Language and Literacy.

Susan M. Ryan is associate professor of English at the University of Louisville, where she specializes in American literature and culture. She is the author of The Grammar of Good Intentions and The Moral Economies of American Authorship.