Open Access"You've Been Disciplined": Graduate Academic Writing as Social Practice
Author(s) -
Amy E. Robillard
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
prompt
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2476-0943
DOI - 10.31719/pjaw.v2i1.17
Subject(s) - conversation , discipline , rhetoric , academic writing , context (archaeology) , graduate students , sociology , composition (language) , emphasis (telecommunications) , pedagogy , writing process , process (computing) , psychology , mathematics education , linguistics , computer science , social science , history , communication , telecommunications , philosophy , archaeology , operating system
This essay describes a doctoral-level rhetoric and composition writing assignment that aims to help students transition from their identities as students to their identities as scholars. With an emphasis on academic writing as social practice, the assignment asks graduate students to analyze the intellectual moves scholars make in the context of a specific and detailed conversation in any subfield of English Studies. The essay shares the responses of two graduate students, one specializing in children's literature and one in literary and cultural studies, and argues that the process of joining any disciplinary conversation is complex and deserves explicit instruction.