“Who’s the President?”: Ghostwriting and Shifting Values in Literacy
Deborah Brandt

Drawing on her interviews with professional ghostwriters who work primarily in organizations, Brandt examines what this practice implies about society’s current attitudes toward authorship, written work, and literacy in general. She also examines the ethical arguments that various critics of ghostwriting have made.

“I Pay For All”: The Cultural Contradictions of Learning and Labor at Illinois Industrial University
Holly Middleton

Focusing on students’ responses to an 1876 writing assignment at Illinois Industrial University (which would ultimately become the University of Illinois), Middleton analyzes ideological tensions that occurred as America found itself revising the pastoral image of the farmer in an increasingly industrial age.

Living Inside the Bible (Belt)
Shannon Carter

When evangelical Christian students enter the academy, they often find that its tenets and values conflict with their reliance on the Bible as a source of truth and evidence. A pedagogy of rhetorical dexterity, however, can help construct productive relationships between their religious community of practice and the academy’s.

Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Performing the Rhetorical Freak Show: Disability, Student Writing, and College Admissions
Amy Vidali

Freak show theories developed in disability studies can help us analyze how students with disabilities rhetorically represent these in college admissions essays. In particular, such theories draw attention to the social conditions that affect how disabilities are conceived and treated as well as depicted.

Opinion: The Fetish of Fullness
Saikat Majumdar

In the North American academy, often scholars in the humanities unfortunately continue to privilege longer works over briefer ones—a preference that needs to be critiqued and changed.