Transforming Ethos: Place and the Material in Rhetoric and Writing

In Transforming Ethos Rosanne Carlo synthesizes philosophy, rhetorical theory, and composition theory to clarify the role of ethos and its potential for identification and pedagogy for writing studies. Carlo renews focus on the ethos appeal and highlights its connection to materiality and place as a powerful instrument for writing and its teaching—one that insists on the relational and multimodal aspects of writing and makes prominent its inherent ethical considerations and possibilities.
 
Through case studies of professional and student writings as well as narrative reflections Transforming Ethos imagines the ethos appeal as not only connected to style and voice but also a process of habituation, related to practices of everyday interaction in places and with things. Carlo addresses how ethos aids in creating identification, transcending divisions between the self and other. She shows that when writers tell their experiences, they create and reveal the ethos appeal, and this type of narrative/multimodal writing is central to scholarship in rhetoric and composition as well as the teaching of writing. In addition, Carlo considers how composition is becoming compromised by professionalization—particularly through the idea of “transfer”—which is overtaking the critical work of self-development with others that a writing classroom should encourage in college students.
 
Transforming Ethos cements ethos as an essential term for the modern practice and teaching of rhetoric and places it at the heart of writing studies. This book will be significant for students and scholars in rhetoric and composition, as well as those interested in higher education more broadly.

Rosanne Carlo is associate professor in rhetoric and composition, codirector of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program, and facilitator of faculty professional development in the Writing Program at the College of Staten Island CUNY, where she teaches primarily first-year writing and MA courses on the teaching of writing. She also coleads a writing partnership with local high schools called #SIWrites: Engaging in College and Career Preparation. Her work has appeared in Community Literacy Journal, Composition Forum, Intraspection, Journal for the Assembly on the Expanded Perspectives on Learning, Rhetoric Review, and The Writing Instructor.