Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition ― Global Interrogations, Local Interventions

In Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition, editors Bruce Horner and Karen Kopelson gather leading scholars and new voices in the field of rhetoric and composition to offer a dynamic new perspective on English as it is used today. This provocative volume explores the myriad ways in which English is constantly redefined, revised, and redirected through specific, located acts of writing, rhetoric, teaching, and learning. Contributors provide insightful contributions to the study of English from both national and international perspectives, revealing the language as a fluid and constantly changing manner of expression that challenges established notions.

In part one, “Reworking Language,” writers call into question the idea of language as a static, stable entity. In part two, “Locations and Migrations: Global/Local Interrogations,” contributors explore the impact of writing and teaching English in both in the United States and abroad, from Arkansas and Oklahoma to China, Jamaica, and Lebanon. Part three, “Pedagogical/Institutional Interventions,” addresses English in institutional settings and the implications for future pedagogical work. Each essay in this revolutionary volume substantiates two key premises for the rethinking of English: first, that languages are susceptible to constant change through the very acts of writing, teaching, and learning, and second, that this reworking occurs as it moves between various temporal and spatial locations.

Throughout the volume, the variety and flexibility of English across the globe are both advocated and revealed, rejecting dominant Anglophone perspectives and instead placing language in cross-cultural contexts. Brimming with informative and thought-provoking insights, Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition breathes new life into the field and provides direction for scholars and teachers looking to the future of English.

Bruce Horner is an endowed chair in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville and the author of a number of award-winning and widely-cited books and articles addressing the politics of language and labor in the teaching of composition. These include Cross-Language Relations in Composition (SIU Press), co-edited with Min-Zhan Lu and Paul Kei Matsuda, winner of the 2012 College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award; Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique, winner of the 2001 W. Ross Winterowd Award for the Most Outstanding Book in Composition Theory; and “English Only and U.S. College Composition,” (co-authored with John Trimbur), winner of the 2002 College Composition and Communication Richard Braddock Award.

Karen Kopelson is an associate professor of English, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and director of Graduate Studies in English at the University of Louisville. She is the award-winning author of a number of articles exploring the performance or discursive constitution of identities and difference. These include “(Dis)Integrating the Gay/Queer Binary: ‘Reconstructed Identity Politics’ for a Performative Pedagogy” (College English, 2002); “Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, the Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance” (winner of the 2004 College Composition and Communication Richard Braddock Award); “Tripping Over Our Tropes: Of ‘Passing’ and Postmodern Subjectivity” (winner of the 2005 James L. Kinneavy Award for best essay in JAC), as well as more recent articles in these journals and others examining discourses of addiction, medicine, and rhetoric and composition’s own disciplinarity.