Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing

Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures — what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing" — often by addressing explicitly the tensions between them. Design Discourse offers insights into the high-stakes decisions made by program designers as they seek to "function at the intersection of the practical and the abstract, the human and the technical."

About the Editors

David Franke teaches and is past director of the professional writing program at SUNY Cortland. He founded and directs the Seven Valleys Writing Project at SUNY Cortland, a site of the National Writing Project. Alex Reid teaches at the University at Buffalo. His book, The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition, received honorable mention for the W. Ross Winterowd Award for Best Book in Composition Theory (2007), and his blog, Digital Digs (alex-reid.net), received the John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog award for contributions to the field of rhetoric and composition (2008). Anthony Di Renzo teaches business and technical writing at Ithaca College, where he developed a Professional Writing concentration for its B.A. in Writing. His scholarship concentrates on the historical relationship between professional writing and literature.

Publication Information: Franke, David, Reid, Alex, and Di Renzo, Anthony (Eds.). (2010). Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing. Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. Available at wac.colostate.edu/books/designdiscourse/

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

Contact Information:
David Franke: David.Franke@cortland.edu
Alex Reid: areid@buffalo.edu
Anthony Di Renzo: direnzo@ithaca.edu

Table of Contents

In PDF Format     In ePub Format

Front Matter

Preface, David Franke

Composing

The Great Instauration: Restoring Professional and Technical Writing to the Humanities, Anthony Di Renzo

Starts, False Starts, and Getting Started: (Mis)understanding the Naming of a Professional Writing Minor, Michael Knieval, Kelly Belanger, Colin Keeney, Julianne Couch, and Christine Stebbins

Composing a Proposal for a Professional / Technical Writing Program, W. Gary Griswold

Disciplinary Identities: Professional Writing, Rhetorical Studies, and Rethinking "English", Brent Henze, Wendy Sharer, and Janice Tovey

Revising

Smart Growth of Professional Writing Programs: Controlling Sprawl in Departmental Landscapes, Diana Ashe and Colleen A. Reilly

Curriculum, Genre and Resistance: Revising Identity in a Professional Writing Community, David Franke

Composing and Revising the Professional Writing Program at Ohio Northern University: A Case Study, Jonathan Pitts

Minors, Certificates, Engineering

Certificate Programs in Technical Writing: Through Sophistic Eyes, Jim Nugent

Shippensburg University's Technical / Professional Communications Minor: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Carla Kungl and S. Dev Hathaway

Reinventing Audience through Distance, Jude Edminster and Andrew Mara

Introducing a Technical Writing Communication Course into a Canadian School of Engineering, Anne Parker

English and Engineering, Pedagogy and Politics, Brian D. Ballentine

Futures

The Third Way: PTW and the Liberal Arts in the New Knowledge Society, Anthony Di Renzo

The Write Brain: Professional Writing in the Post-Knowledge Economy, Alex Reid

Post-Scripts by Veteran Program Designers

A Techné for Citizens: Service-Learning, Conversation, and Community, James Dubinsky

Models of Professional Writing / Technical Writing Administration: Reflections of a Serial Administrator at Syracuse University, Carol Lipson

Perspectives on Writing

Series Editor: Susan H. McLeod, University of California, Santa Barbara

This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It is also available in print at Parlor Press.