Journal of Basic Writing

Volume 18 Issue 2, Fall 1999

Table of Contents

Editors' Column

· Gail Stygall, "Unraveling at Both Ends: Anti-Undergraduate Education, Anti-Affirmative Action, and Basic Writing at Research Schools"

· Jane E. Hindman, "Inventing Academic Discourse: Teaching (and Learning) Marginal Poise and Fugitive Truth"

· Laurie Grobman, "Building Bridges To Academic Discourse: The Peer Group Leader in Basic Writing Peer Response Groups"

· Linda Adler-Kassner, "Just Writing, Basically: Basic Writers on Basic Writing"

· Susanmarie Harrington, "The Representation of Basic Writers in Basic Writing Scholarship, or Who is Quentin Pierce?"

· Laura Gray-Rosendale, "Investigating Our Discursive History: JBW and the Construction of the 'Basic Writer's' Identity"

News and Announcements

Abstracts, volume 18 Issue 2, Fall 1999

Gail Stygall

"Unraveling at Both Ends: Anti-Undergraduate Education, Anti-Affirmative Action, and Basic Writing at Research Schools"

This article describes the double bind of basic writing programs at public research institutions on the West Coast, offering the situation at the University of Washington as a case study. With a conflict between the university's perceived mission as research and graduate education and its commitment to diversity, the university's Educational Opportunity Program writing sequence is itself at risk in the face of the anti-affirmative action movement, Initiative 200. Using Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the university's public documents on mission and diversity, a Seattle newspaper's description of the EOP program and the consequences of the passages of I-200, and the documents of a gubernatorial commission of the future of higher education in Washington state, the author advocates using this analysis in the public debate about diversity and basic writing programs.

Jane E. Hindman

"Inventing Academic Discourse: Teaching (and Learning) Marginal Poise and Fugitive Truth"

This article further develops earlier versions of transformative pedagogy (e.g., Bartholomae and Petrosky's, Bizzell's, Lu's, Horner's), demonstrating how the self-reflexive tactics required in an analysis of professional practice make visible the ways that compositionists authorize academic discourse. David Bartholomae describes this as the teachers' unconscious need to "see ourselves in what [students] do." The pedagogical method proposed explains how features like "objectivity," "clarity," and "voice" in academic discourse are misrecognized in our own rhetoric and in our evaluations of our students. Because we demand these stylistic and institutionalized conventions of academic discourse from our students, we should--the paper argues--include students in the practices by which we "normalize" these conventions. This article suggests how we might include students in our evaluative practices and discusses the successful results of one such effort.

Laurie Grobman

"Building Bridges To Academic Discourse: The Peer Group Leader in Basic Writing Peer Response Groups"

The academic discourse paradigm locates the basic writer outside academic discourse, lacking the authority academic writers possess. This exclusion is manifested in peer response groups, where basic writers often shy away from critiquing substantive issues of content or organization in each other's work. This article describes a study of writing groups which attempted to build the bridges between basic writers and academic writers by incorporating a peer group leader--a sophomore student who guides basic writers--into peer response sessions. The peer group leader straddles the roles of the two primary types of peer collaboration in basic writing--peer response in basic writing classrooms and peer tutorials in Writing Centers--and thus draws from the advantages of both. This article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of this project and its implications for the further use of peer group leaders in basic writing.

Linda Adler-Kassner

"Just Writing, Basically: Basic Writers on Basic Writing"

This article explores three salient findings from interviews with basic writing students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn: students' definition of "basic writing," their understanding of writing and reading expectations in other courses, and their conceptualization of writing. It suggests that these findings cast new light on the responsibilities that we have toward basic writers, both as teachers and as representatives of the institutions where we teach. Ultimately, the article suggests that we must help students understand what it means to be a basic writer in their particular institutions by providing more thorough information before placement procedures; it also suggests that we can help writers contest and refute their labels as basic writers through the curricula in our courses.

Susanmarie Harrington

"The Representation of Basic Writers in Basic Writing Scholarship, or Who is Quentin Pierce?"

This essay argues that basic writing research has focused on teachers' expectations and students' errors, leaving a curious void in our understandings of students needs. It reviews research trends, arguing that researchers who concern themselves directly with what students' voices can add to our knowledge of the field will be filling an important gap in the literature.

Laura Gray-Rosendale

"Investigating Our Discursive History: JBW and the Construction of the 'Basic Writer's' Identity"

This paper offers a brief Foucauldian archaeological and discursive history of the Journal of Basic Writing because of its central place in the history of our scholarship. In doing so, this paper attempts to accomplish the following: 1) describe some of the broad historical features of the construction of Basic Writers' identities, 2) examine instances that appear within the journal in which critical disruptions and overlaps of such constructions occur in unexpected, telling ways, and 3) explore what such discursive moments reveal about trends and tendencies within the scholarship and history of Basic Writing itself. Thus the paper attempts to provide an alternative, metanarrative--resisting history of the journal itself, suggesting the values as well as problems within the current state of the construction of Basic Writers' identities in our scholarship, and presenting some speculations about future constructions of Basic Writers' identities.