Writing on the Wall: Writing Education and Resistance to Isolationism

The first concerted effort of writing studies scholars to interrogate isolationism in the United States, Writing on the Wall reveals how writing teachers—often working directly with students who are immigrants, undocumented, first-generation, international, and students of color—embody ideas that counter isolationism.
 
The collection extends existing scholarship and research about the ways racist and colonial rhetorics impact writing education; the impact of translingual, transnational, and cosmopolitan ideologies on student learning and student writing; and the role international educational partnerships play in pushing back against isolationist ideologies. Established and early-career scholars who work in a broad range of institutional contexts highlight the historical connections among monolingualism, racism, and white nationalism and introduce community- and classroom-based practices that writing teachers use to resist isolationist beliefs and tendencies.
 
“Writing on the wall” serves as a metaphor for the creative, direct action writing education can provide and invokes border spaces as sites of identity expression, belonging, and resistance. The book connects transnational writing education with the fight for racial justice in the US and around the world and will be of significance to secondary and postsecondary writing teachers and graduate students in English, linguistics, composition, and literacy studies.
 
Contributors: Olga Aksakalova, Sara P. Alvarez, Brody Bluemel, Tuli Chatterji, Keith Gilyard, Joleen Hanson, Florianne Jimenez Perzan, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Layli Maria Miron, Tony D. Scott, Kate Vieira, Amy J. Wan
 

David S. Martins is associate professor of rhetoric at the Rochester Institute of Technology and was the founding director of RIT’s University Writing Program. His edited collection Transnational Writing Program Administration won the CCCC/NCTE 2017 Outstanding Book Award.
 
Brooke R. Schreiber is assistant professor in the English department at Baruch College, CUNY. Her work has appeared in TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, Journal of Second Language Writing, Composition Studies, Composition Forum, and Language Learning and Technology.
 
Xiaoye You is Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He has published five books on teaching writing in global contexts. Among them, Writing in theDevil’s Tongue: A History of English Composition in China won the 2011 CCCC Outstanding Book Award and Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy won the 2018 CCCC Research Impact Award.