Primary Research and Writing: People, Places, and Spaces

This thoroughly revised new edition offers a comprehensive introduction to the writing process, one grounded in archival and primary research methodologies.

This second edition includes updated readings and student examples, expanded in-text features such as “Profile of a Primary Researcher” and “Communities in Context,” and emphasizes the role primary investigation plays across academic disciplines, in workplace writing, and within personal communication. This unique approach to writing instruction provides extensive practice in blending primary and secondary research, and connects students to topics they genuinely care about―including personal communities, professional interests, and the stories around them. Relying heavily upon innovative assignments and student examples, the second edition retains study of classical rhetorical components, but also explores research possibilities using generative artificial intelligence technologies, illustrates how to present findings using engaging elements of multimodality, and provides teachers with a complete toolbox for developing students’ natural curiosities about material culture.

Designed for writing courses across disciplines, this student-centered approach to learning prepares readers for a lifetime of research and writing. Students find the study of enduring issues and materials, focus on multimedia research and composition, and the invitation to make meaning for targeted audiences to be authentic, urgent, and relevant.

Online resources, including sample syllabi and course designs, sample class projects/assignment descriptions, activities, and discussion questions are available at www.routledge.com/9781041025825.

Lynée Lewis Gaillet is Distinguished University Professor in the English department at Georgia State University, USA. She has served as Writing Program Administrator, Writing Center Director, Department Chair, and is a Past President of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Composition and Rhetoric.

Michelle F. Eble is Professor of Rhetoric, Writing, and Professional Communication in the Department of English at East Carolina University (ECU), USA. She serves as Chair of ECU’s Behavioral and Social Sciences Institutional Review Board and is a Past President of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW).