Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives
Edited by Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell
Copy edited by Cissy Ross. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
The chapters in this edited collection, published solely in electronic format, consider human activity and writing from three different perspectives: the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves and communities; and the role of writing formal education. The editors observe, "The activity approaches to understanding writing presented in this volume give us ways to examine more closely how people do the work of the world and form the relations that give rise to the sense of selves and societies through writing, reading, and circulating texts. These essays provide major contributions to both writing research and activity theory as well as to the recently emerged but now robust research tradition that brings the two together."
Charles Bazerman, professor and chair of the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is interested in the social dynamics of writing, rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of knowledge production and use. He has been active in developing graduate degree objectives in rhetoric, literacy, and communication at UCSB and previously at Georgia Tech. His most recent book, The Languages of Edison’s of Edison’s Light, won the American Association of Publisher’s award for the best scholarly book of 1999 in the History of Science and Technology. Previous books include Constructing Experience, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines, and Involved: Writing For College, Writing for Your Self.
David R. Russell is professor of English at Iowa State University, where he teaches in the Ph.D. program in Rhetoric and Professional Communication. His research interests are in writing across the curriculum, international writing instruction, the history of rhetoric in education, and cultural-historical Activity Theory. His book Writing in the Academic Disciplines: A Curricular History examines the history of American writing instruction outside of composition courses. He has published many articles on writing across the curriculum and co-edited Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum, a special issue of Mind, Culture, and Activity on "The Activity of Writing, The Writing of Activity," and Writing and Learning in Cross-National Perspective: Transitions from Secondary to Higher Education. He has given workshops and lectures on WAC, nationally and internationally, and he was the first Knight Visiting Scholar in Writing at Cornell University.
Publication Information:
Bazerman, Charles, & David R. Russell (Eds.). (2003). Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. The WAC Clearinghouse; Mind, Culture, and Activity. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2003.2317
