By Andy Kirkpatrick and Zhichang Xu

The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world."

Edited by Patricia Portanova, J. Michael Rifenburg, and Duane Roen

Since the 1980s, even as international writing scholars have embraced cognitive science, the number of studies building on research in writing and cognition has decreased in the United States. Despite this decline, significant interest and ongoing research in this critical area continues. This collection explores the historical context of cognitive studies, the importance to our field of studies in neuroscience, the applicability of habits of mind, and the role of cognition in literate development and transfer. 

By Nathan Shepley

In Placing the History of College Writing, Nathan Shepley argues that pre-1950s composition history, if analyzed with the right conceptual tools, can pluralize and clarify our understanding of the relationship between the writing of college students and the writing's physical, social, and discursive surroundings. Even if the immediate outcome of student writing is to generate academic credit, Shepley shows, the writing does more complex rhetorical work.