Making Space for What Lies in the Interstices: The Composing Practices of Single Moms

This article focuses on the composition practices of three single moms across academic ranks and single mom identities in order to expand our understanding in Composition and Rhetoric of how composing processes are influenced by lived experience and material circumstances. Drawing on composition process research, I argue for the need to give greater attention to the individual composing practices of those with marginalized identities in order to strengthen our work in Comp/Rhet as teachers, mentors, and colleagues. Written in a style that combines testimonios and analysis, this article pushes and expands our understanding of what counts as composition practice, why composition practice does not happen, and how composition practices in and out of the classroom can be valuable resources.

“Let's Hope for the Best!”

In this chapter, the author sets out to explore the best strategies for not only supporting peer tutoring during a pandemic, but also to better acknowledge the mental strain many students have experienced since COVID-19 emerged. Using a composition and rhetoric studies approach as well as psychological research, the author proposes that professionals in higher education need to actively find ways to incorporate “expressive space” for students to work through hurdles in their learning because students are now processing significant traumatic experiences and motivational challenges while pursuing their academic goals. Tutoring coordinators and educators are encouraged to give students opportunities to mindfully engage with internal and environmental obstacles in order to persist throughout their academic career and in the lives they lead after college.

Exploring Wordless Feedback Mechanisms in an EAP course in an English-medium University: An Ethnographically-oriented Approach

Feedback is considered an integral part of the writing process. It has thus engendered the attention of scholars in discourse analysis, applied linguistics, language education, composition and rhetoric studies, and English for Specific Purposes. This attention, however, is heavily tilted towards worded feedback, at the expense of wordless feedback. Thus, this study explored the use of wordless feedback mechanisms in an EAP course in an English-medium university in Ghana. Thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine scripts of students’ essays, and interviews with academics and students constituted the datasets for the study. By doing a qualitative content analysis, we extracted wordless feedback codes from the scripts. The study yielded that teachers used tick, ring, vertical lines, arrows, question marks, carets, and underline as feedback mechanisms. The responses from the teachers and students on the use of these codes indicated that there were variations at three levels: inter-teacher, inter-student and teacher-student, which resulted to miscommunication in the feedback system. The study calls for a standardized feedback code, and education of teachers and students on this system of feedback for effective teaching and learning.

Critical archival research in Translation Studies: when a translation scholar becomes an archivist-researcher

In Translation Studies, we are increasingly seeing the use of archival materials that allow translation scholars to find out more about the working conditions of translators, their motivations and relationships with authors, editors or publishers, all of whom have always influenced their work to some extent. This paper builds on the knowledge of working with archival materials and other primary sources already described in Translation Studies, and is complemented by still-useful methods of source criticism and current topics that are addressed by historians dealing with archival research. Particular emphasis is placed on the critical approach of historians specializing in composition and rhetoric who are reassessing methods of archival research and ways of writing about it, and who are encouraging scholars to adopt the stance of archivist-researcher. The paper shows and further discusses the importance of their knowledge and possible application in Translation Studies.Enfoque crítico de la investigación archivística en estudios de traducción: Cuando un investigador de la traducción se convierte en archivista-investigadorResumenEn los estudios de traducción encontramos una tendencia creciente a la utilización de materiales de archivo, que permiten a los estudiosos obtener información valiosa acerca de cuestiones como las condiciones de trabajo de los traductores o las relaciones con otros agentes (autores, editores o correctores) que siempre han influido en cierta medida en su labor. En este artículo partimos de la bibliografía disponible acerca de los métodos de trabajo con materiales de archivo y otras fuentes primarias, ya suficientemente descritos en los estudios de traducción, y la complementamos con una serie de aproximaciones novedosas en los ámbitos de la metodología de la crítica de fuentes y de las nuevas perspectivas empleadas por los historiadores en el análisis de los materiales de archivo. Hacemos especial hincapié en el enfoque crítico de los historiadores respecto de la composición y retórica, que ha permitido una reconsideración de los métodos de investigación archivística y de sus formas de escritura, alentando a los investigadores a adoptar una posición de archivista-investigador. Discutimos y tratamos de remarcar la relevancia de estos planteamientos y de sus posibles aplicaciones en los estudios de traducción.Palabras clave: historia de la traducción, contexto socio-histórico, investigación de archivo, crítica de fuentes, materiales de archivo, fuentes primariasFecha de recepción: 30/04/2019Fecha de aceptación: 30/06/2019¿Cómo citar este artículo?Středová, K. (2019). Critical archival research in Translation Studies: when a translation scholar becomes an archivist-researcher. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción, 12(2), 500-518. doi: 10.27533/udea.mut.v12n2a08

Reiterative reflection in the library instruction classroom

Purpose This study aims to explore the application of reflective pedagogy within a course-embedded library instruction session (as opposed to a semester-long credit bearing course) as a means to foster transfer learning of research practices. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual essay adapts theories of reflection for transfer learning as found in composition and rhetoric literature to the traditional course-embedded library instruction classroom. Findings The application of reflection as a structured learning construct may have the potential to transform the library instruction classroom into an environment where transfer learning is more likely to take place. Research limitations/implications Most models for transfer learning are based on semester-long courses and do not take into account the abbreviated context of the traditional library instruction event. This presents a challenge to any adaptation of theory, as library instruction is often an event isolated to one or a few sessions. Practical implications This study provides a structure for reflective pedagogy for librarians who desire to engage students in practices that offer the potential of fostering transfer learning. Originality/value Librarians are practicing reflective pedagogies in semester-long information literacy courses, but few have used reflection in traditional instruction sessions beyond the documentation of student learning for assessment purposes. This essay provides a theory that extends reflective pedagogies into the traditional library instruction classroom with the hope of fostering transfer learning.

Presidential Address 2019–Re-visioning Language, Texts, and Theories

I attended my first MLA convention in Chicago, in 1973. A frugal graduate student, I stayed at a nearby YMCA but huddled in the evenings with a friend from graduate school in the Palmer House lobby where we shared, surreptitiously, a flask of bourbon and laments about the awful job market. I could never have imagined that forty-five years later I would be delivering the presidential address. During the years since that Chicago convention, I have worked with the executive director Phyllis Franklin, who invited me and a few others to think with her about how the MLA might accommodate what we then called composition and rhetoric. I have worked with Rosemary Feal, who became the executive director as I joined the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee and who left the MLA shortly after persuading me to stand for election to the office of second vice president. In my participation on task forces, division committees, the Publications Committee, the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee, the Executive Council, and most recently as an officer, I have been continually impressed by the talent, commitment, and resourcefulness of those who work for the MLA. I am grateful to belong to an association with such an excellent staff, and I want to offer special thanks to my friend Paula Krebs, whose first full year as executive director coincided with my term as president. Her keen intelligence, administrative skill, and fierce advocacy for our profession convince me that the MLA is in very good hands.

Emotions: More than a “Feeling”

What are emotions; and how do prospective and practicing teachers’ frame and understand them? How may teachers understand their own identities and those of their students as composed of intersectional dimensions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, language background, abilities, and sexual orientation? What outcomes may occur as a result of these understandings? How may teacher educators respond when faced with these interpretations? Addressing these questions, we interrogate how emotions experienced by teachers influence how we see ourselves—our effectiveness; our relationships with students and families; and the curricula, pedagogies, and assessments we employ. We draw on our own experiences as teacher educators, as well as extant research, to explore answers to these questions. Studies across diverse fields indicate that emotions are more than feelings or uncontrollable responses to situations; rather, they are socially and culturally constructed and agreed upon among people. As teacher educators, what intrigues us most about this research on emotion are the implications it has for creating culturally responsive and socially just teachers—teachers who are able to effectively teach youth who come from racial, cultural, class, and linguistic backgrounds different from their own. We appeal to scholars from various traditions—philosophy, literature, cultural theory, composition and rhetoric, neuroscience, narrative inquiry, and teacher education—to question and elaborate what the term “others” may mean to teachers. Our twin goals are to demonstrate how often prospective and practicing teachers employ dichotomies of race, ethnicity, social class, language background/s, ability, and sexual orientation, among other dimensions of identity, to distinguish themselves from students and their families, and to begin exploring how teacher educators may provide alternatives to such imposed views.

Ezekiel 38–48

Stephen L. Cook offers an accessible translation and interpretation of the final sections of Ezekiel. These chapters, the most challenging texts of scripture, describe the end-time assault of Gog of Magog on Israel and provide an incredible visionary tour of God’s utopian temple. Following the approach of Moshe Greenberg, the author of the preceding Anchor Yale Bible commentaries on Ezekiel, this volume grounds interpretation of the book in an intimate acquaintance with Ezekiel’s source materials, its particular patterns of composition and rhetoric, and the general learned, priestly workings of the Ezekiel school. The commentary honors Greenberg’s legacy by including insights from traditional Jewish commentators, such as Rashi, Kimhi, and Eliezer of Beaugency. In contrast to preceding commentaries, the book devotes special attention to the Zadokite idea of an indwelling, anthropomorphic “body” of God, and the enlivening effect on people and land of that indwelling.