Composition Studies

We put three Composition Studies pieces side by side this week to follow one question across twelve years: who gets asked to absorb the difficulty when a writing class runs on less than it should.

In 2013, Christine Denecker studied three dual enrollment setups in Ohio and asked the people in them, high school teachers, college instructors, and students, to name what counts as good writing. The definitions split along the line between high school and college, and the student is the one who has to cross it.

By 2022, and had moved the question off the student. They argue that the labor of resilience falls hardest on disabled, q***r, and BIPOC students who are, as they put it, resilient as hell, and that the fix belongs in the design of the course. Put the weight in the syllabus and the assignment sheets. A syllabus, they write, is a community manifesto.

In 53.2, , , and Hermansen put it on the institution. Their account of co-teaching first-year writing across the high school and college line turns on the relationship between two teachers, and on the support that paid for their planning time, until that support ended in 2019.

Read in order, the three trace the same difficulty changing hands. It doesn't go away. It moves, from the student, to the design, to the institution.

All three are at the link in our bio. Which version of the difficulty is closest to the room you teach in?

If you've been sitting on a piece about teaching writing, summer is a good time to write it. FEN Blog—a subset of Composition Studies, by writing teachers, for writing teachers—is open for submissions.

Editors Emily Brier and Daniel Libertz publish short articles (1,000–2,000 words, MLA format) on praxis and research in the writing classroom. They're open to any topic related to teaching composition, with particular interest in the areas listed in the slides. They especially encourage work from graduate students, non-tenure-track instructors, early career researchers, and historically marginalized writers.

Send full drafts or pitches to [email protected]. Browse recent FEN Blog posts at the link in our bio.