Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, MLA Update Edition

Laurence Behrens

Laurence Behrens has focused for more than thirty-five years on interdisciplinary approaches to the teaching of undergraduate writing.  His Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, co-authored with Leonard J. Rosen, originally published in 1982 and now in its 13^th edition, was the first widely-used cross-curricular textbook in freshman composition.

Dr. Behrens earned an A.B. in Theatre Arts from Brandeis University, an M.F.A. in Film, Radio, and Television from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in literature from UCLA.  He has taught at UCLA, the University of California at Irvine, The American University in Washington, D.C., and most recently, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He was one of the original members of the interdisciplinary Writing Program at UCSB, where he originated the lower division course in writing about classical music.  He has also taught lower-division courses in writing about sociology and psychology.  At the upper division level, he has taught business writing, legal writing, and writing about history and film studies, as well as graduate seminars in writing for teaching assistants.

His articles have appeared in College English, College Composition and Communication, The English Journal, The Maryland Composition Review, Freshman English News, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Notes and Queries, Literature/Film Quarterly, and The Journal of the University Film Association.  In addition to Sequence for Academic Writing and Writing Across the Curriculum, Dr. Behrens’ other books with Leonard J. Rosen include Writing Papers in College, Reading for College Writers, Theme and Variations: The Impact of Great Ideas, and The Allyn & Bacon Handbook.  He has also authored the historically-oriented The American Experience: A Writer’s Sourcebook and the legal casebook for undergraduate writers, Making the Case: An Argument Reader.

Leonard Rosen

After earning a B.A. in English and Education at Trinity College (Hartford), Leonard Rosen taught high school English in Baltimore City before earning his Ph.D. in Literary Studies, with a focus in composition, at The American University. He went on to teach at Bentley University and in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University.

In addition to best-selling textbooks co-authored with Laurence Behrens, most notably Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum and Sequence for Academic Writing, he has written (and read) commentaries for Boston’s NPR station and written numerous op-eds published in the Boston Globe, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. He is also an award-winning novelist, the author of All Cry Chaos (translated into ten languages) and The Tenth Witness.