TEACHING WRITING AROUND THE WORLD,
to be edited by Chris Thaiss

Submit articles, essays, memoir, collage, fiction, poetry, or work in other genres.

Email submissions to jdboe@ucdavis.edu
0r send two copies to
Writing on the Edge
ATTN: Special Issue
University Writing Program
            One Shields Avenue
UC Davis
Davis CA 95616
 Submissions are due by April 1, 2010. The issue will be published in Fall 2010.

Writing on the Edge (WOE), now in its 19th year, is a UC Davis sponsored journal focused on writing and the teaching of writing. WOE is published twice a year, in fall and spring.

This special issue, the 4th in the history of Writing on the Edge, responds to the growing interest by scholars and teachers in how writing is taught and learned in the many languages and cultures of the world. Like most other U.S-based journals in the teaching of writing, WOE has continued to view our work primarily through the lens of U.S. culture, which, as diverse as it is, only begins to represent the worldwide phenomena of how people learn written expression and how they communicate in and across cultures, despite barriers. In the tradition of this refereed journal, we seek relevant work in a variety of genres, from traditional scholarship and first-person essays to fiction, poetry, collage, and other experimental configurations.

Among the many questions that might spark potential authors are these:

How do the history, geography, politics, and living conditions of the place where you teach inform why, how, and what people write? How can we understand “literacy” and “writing” in this place?

If you are a teacher of English (or a teacher of another subject in English), what connotations do “teaching English” and “writing English” hold for you and for those you work with?

What are the joys and rewards, the dangers and penalties, of language, languages, and the written word where you write and teach?

How have technologies, especially technologies of writing, changed language, literacy, and expression for those you live and teach among?

If you are a teacher of writing, how is your teaching informed by the factors noted in the questions above?  To what extent do you teach “against the grain” of these cultural factors?