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February 28, 2005
The pleasure of the book
Tracy and I both got a special delivery today: an advance copy of our book. What a pure pleasure this is! The book is Authorship in Composition Studies. As far as I know, it's the first book in comp/rhet that is about authorship per se. There are a number of fine books that contribute in specialized ways to comp/rhet study of authorship, but this is the first one about it. That's pretty neat. The book is marketed by Wadsworth as a text for advanced undergrad and grad students in comp/rhet, but it's written so that it will be useful for any scholar of comp/rhet wanting an overview of the topic.
That's not all. The book was written entirely by members of the SU doctoral program in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric. I had a remarkable group of students in an advanced doctoral course, and I got this notion that in this course—a course on authorship—each student could investigate issues of authorship in their own area of study. So Paul Butler, who had a J.D. degree before he got his Ph.D. in comp/rhet (and who's now at Montclair State), did a chapter on copyright; Susan Adams (who's finishing her dissertation even as we speak) wrote a chapter on authorship and the body; Amy Robillard (now at Illinois State) did a chapter on the dynamic of students and authors; Jonna Gilfus, who has a background in secondary ed and is now near the finish of her Ph.D., wrote about the figure of the student and the author in comp textbooks; Justin Bain (now at Westminster College in Utah) looked at representations of authorship in the writing center; Mary Queen (also finishing her Ph.D. this year) wrote about authorship and gender; and Damian Baca (now at Michigan State) challenged the Eurocentric notion of the author. Nobody in the class was specializing in technology, so Collin Brooke, who's now the Director of Graduate Studies in our doctoral program, agreed to write a chapter about that aspect of authorship.
It was a delight to develop this book. It was a thrilling way to teach a course and a deeply rewarding way to write a book. I am more proud of this book than any other.
And its cover is—orange and blue! Swear to god, Tracy and I had no idea.
Posted by senioritis at February 28, 2005 07:44 PM
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Comments
Posted by: collin at February 28, 2005 08:13 PM
oops.
Tried to post a cover image and a link to the Amazon page. Order your copies today!
Posted by: collin at February 28, 2005 08:16 PM
Hilariously, the cover image is incorrect! It was put together while the book was in production, and a late production decision was to change the name to Authorship in Composition Studies. Despite our reminders, nobody has remembered to change the image on the Wadsworth website. But at least they got Tracy's name and institutional affiliation right (at last), even though the Wadsworth website has our biographies reversed.
But hey, it's a good book, even if the Wadsworth website folks aren't quite up to speed!
Posted by: senioritis at February 28, 2005 08:39 PM
Congratulations, Becky!
Posted by: Denise at February 28, 2005 10:28 PM