Storied Practices: Positionality in Writing Studies
Edited by Kristine Acosta, Michelle Cowan, Rebecca Rickly, Nancy Small, and Erica M. Stone
Copyedited and designed by Mike Palmquist.
The contributors to Storied Practices: Positionality in Writing Studies explore how the various identities and lived experiences of scholars shape their professional personas, research methodologies, and teaching practices. The chapters in this edited collection employ reflexivity and storytelling in ways that can help emerging and experienced scholar-teachers rethink their conception of academic work. The result is a book that serves as an intersection point from which more scholarship about positionality can grow.
Kristine Acosta is Assistant Teaching Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and the Student Success Coordinator for the English Department at Florida International University. Her research centers around how technical communication and rhetoric impact communities. Much of her work focuses on the importance of storytelling and positionality in research. She is particularly interested in community writing, Cuban-American studies, and the Latine experience. As a teacher of professional and technical writing, Kristine is passionate about using rhetoric, writing, and intercultural communication to help advance community literacy in today’s world.
Michelle Cowan is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Washington and Lee University, where she teaches business communication and multimedia design. Her research focuses on rhetorics of health and medicine, corporate care discourse, and assessment practices in the workplace and the classroom.
Rebecca J. Rickly is Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric and Technical Communication at Texas Tech University. At TTU she taught courses in research methods, writing for publication, rhetoric, and style. Her publications include The Online Writing Classroom and Performing Feminism and Administration in Rhetoric and Composition Studies as well as articles, special issues, and book chapters. Now she spends her time enjoying central Texas hill country, tending to the land, and riding her lovely horses: Paddy 2.0, Crunchie, and Noa.
Nancy Small is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her primary research focus is the rhetorical structures and power of everyday storytelling and narrative across a wide variety of forms. Her first monograph, A Rhetoric of Becoming: USAmerican Women in Qatar, demonstrates the emergence of a complicated community lifeworld formed through the sharing of lived experiences. She has also published articles, chapters, and an edited collection demonstrating how stories about the research process yield insights into more ethical practices. She is currently working on a second monograph that uses a braided rhetorical approach to consider the lives of women in the American West.
Erica M. Stone (she/her) is a content designer and researcher with experience in both academia and industry. She works at the intersection of technical communication, public rhetoric, and community organizing. Erica’s writing can be found in Journal of Technical Writing & Communication; Technical Communication; Writing Program Administration; Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy; Forum: Issues about Part-time & Contingent Faculty; Basic Writing Electronic (BWe) Journal; Spark: A 4C4Equality Journal; Community Literacy Journal; and various edited collections. She can be reached via email at erica.m.stone@gmail.com.
Publication Information:
Acosta, Kristine, Michelle Cowan, Rebecca Rickly, Nancy Small, & Erica M. Stone. (2026). Storied Practices: Positionality in Writing Studies. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/1010.37514/PRA-B.2026.2906
Series Editors: Aimee McClure, Clarke University; Aleashia Walton, University of Cincinnati; Jagadish Paudel, Clemson University; and Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado .
