ENGL 568 A: Topics In Composition Studies

Globalization and the accelerating spread of digital media technologies have pushed the issue of language onto the fore of institutional agendas as a central aspect for tackling the change of English as a linguistic medium for education. With the continuing demographic changes among student bodies and the growing numbers of international student enrollments in American institutions of higher education, it is harder now than ever to ignore the professional responsibility of language and writing teachers and scholars to work towards a more responsible understanding of the influence of language difference on composition theory, pedagogy, and program administration.

This graduate seminar will examine the burgeoning scholarship on global English, English as a Lingua Franca, World Englishes, New Literacy Studies, Second Language Writing, and Composition Studies. We will explore possible ways in which this scholarship might be put to effective use, especially in rethinking writing curriculum design and actual classroom practices within larger contexts of institutional language policies and politics. We will discuss some recent critiques of approaches to language in composition instruction and research and theoretical models that contest the underlying monolingual character of U.S. composition based on the tacit English-Only policy in the academy and society at large.

The core issues to be addressed in this seminar include but are not limited to: theories and ideologies of language in the teaching and study of composition; the English monolingual character of U.S. composition teaching and scholarship; theoretical models of cross-language inquiry; the impact of state and national language policies on the teaching and learning of U.S. college writing; the spread of “global” English and the development of World Englishes; and the recent emergence of a translingual paradigm in Composition Studies as well as Applied Linguistics and its implications for the teaching of college composition in the U.S. and elsewhere.


Reading List

Canagarajah, Suresh. Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda. Cross-Language Relations in Composition. Carbondale: SIUP, 2010. Print. Leung, Constant, and Brian V. Street. English a Changing Medium for Education. Bristol: Multlingual Matters, 2012. Print.
Pennycook, Alastair. Language as a Local Practice. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Prendergast, Catherine. Buying into English: Language and Investment in the New Capitalist World. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2008. Print.
Rubdy, Rani and Mario Saraceni. English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles. London: Continuum, 2006. Print. Yildiz, Yasemin. Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Print.