Public Writing: Performing Writing Identities Across Contexts

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In light of the increasingly networked ways writing is created, shared, and circulated, what does it mean to write in public now? How do different writing contexts allow for the performance of writerly identities across various public spaces? This session explores the public nature of writing and how writing identities are performed, enacted, and shaped through interactions with various publics, collaborators, and audience members. The research presented takes up, extends, and complicates the notion of “public” in relation to writing studies by exploring how young people compose across multiple contexts, including classrooms, summer programs, live performances, and online reading and writing communities. We aim to offer insights into various dimensions of public writing that constitute composing in the 21st century.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Glynda A. Hull, University of California - Berkeley

Papers

• Showing Myself: Identity and Writing in a Classroom Workshop - Alecia Marie Magnifico, University of New Hampshire

• The Performance of Designing: Improvisation in the Composing Context - Matthew Hall, The College of New Jersey

• Authorship in the Age of Mass Writing: Adolescents’ Social Composing in Online Communities - Amy Stornaiuolo, University of Pennsylvania

• Laura as Writer: Exploring the Identity Positions of an Adolescent Author - Jayne C. Lammers, University of Rochester; Valerie Lieberman Marsh, University of Rochester

• Traversing the “In-Between”: Developing Writing Practices and Literate Identities Across Contexts - Anna Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Discussant

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley