Papers by Michelle LaFrance
Fingerprinting Feminist Methodologies/Methods: An Analysis of Empirical Research Trends in Four Composition Journals between 2007 and 2016*
College Composition & Communication
This study surveyed and analyzed feminist methodologies in four composition journals across ten y... more This study surveyed and analyzed feminist methodologies in four composition journals across ten years. Our findings offer a number of important checks upon methodological and epistemological conversations in composition research, particularly how the methods we choose demonstrate our attention to social justice, the materialities of research practice, and the situatedness of knowledge claims.
The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado eBooks, Aug 16, 2023
The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with th... more The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with the wide ranging approaches characteristic of teaching and scholarship in writing across the curriculum, the series presents works that take divergent perspectives on working as a writer, teaching writing, administering writing programs, and studying writing in its various forms. The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the series editors are committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate and have embraced the use of technology to support open access to scholarly work.
Werk at Play: Exploring the Creative Play of a Graduate Student Writer to Reimagine Graduate Writing in the Humanities
Journal for Expanded Perspectives on Learning
Utah State University Press eBooks, Sep 15, 2022
Using embodied rhetoric, scholars have emphasized the need for reading bodies ethically (Johnson ... more Using embodied rhetoric, scholars have emphasized the need for reading bodies ethically (Johnson et al. 2015). As well, scholars use embodied rhetoric copyrighted material, not for distribution
The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado eBooks, Aug 16, 2023
The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with th... more The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with the wide ranging approaches characteristic of teaching and scholarship in writing across the curriculum, the series presents works that take divergent perspectives on working as a writer, teaching writing, administering writing programs, and studying writing in its various forms. The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the series editors are committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate and have embraced the use of technology to support open access to scholarly work.
The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado Sta... more The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado State University, and supported by the Colorado State University Open Press, it brings together scholarly journals and book series as well as resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. This book is available in digital formats for free download at wac.colostate.edu.
Institutional Ethnography
Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines: Identifying, Teaching, and Supporting, 2020
If there is a better way to become an effective academic writer, many of us don't ever find it. I... more If there is a better way to become an effective academic writer, many of us don't ever find it. In our experience, we become better writers by failing, sometimes abysmally, at the writing tasks set before us. But few scholars have made the importance of learning from failure their primary focus. Our goal in this autoethnographic essay will be to bring implicit assumptions about the productivity of failure to the surface of the discussion about learning to write as a graduate student.
Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences, 2019
Institutional ethnography (IE), a form of critical ethnography introduced to the social sciences ... more Institutional ethnography (IE), a form of critical ethnography introduced to the social sciences in the late 1990s by Canadian sociologist Dorothy J. Smith, poises researchers to uncover how "work" (a concept defined generously) is coconstituted within institutional environments. The IE approach reframes institutional sites as dynamic shape shifters that use texts to mediate, organize, and lend value to the social practices of diverse and knowing individuals. Workplaces and practices can be said to reproduce the broader spheres of influence, prestige, and value that structure society at large. As such, IE seeks out the (often implicit and/ or erased) connections between work processes and institutional discourses, revealing how work is coordinated across time and space. More plainly, the
Preparing Writing Studies Graduate Students within Authentic WAC-Contexts: A Research Methods Course and WAC Program Review Crossover Project as a Critical Site if Situated Learning
The WAC Journal, 2018
Getting Messy: Solving Writing Problems with Creative Play
BRIEF SESSION DESCRIPTION:This workshop will focus on a discussion about the opportunities that c... more BRIEF SESSION DESCRIPTION:This workshop will focus on a discussion about the opportunities that come of including different types of "creative play" in our classrooms.A Specifically, this session will explore ways that A¢â¬Acreative playA¢â¬Â empowers students to solve writing problems, break writerA¢â¬â¢s block, enjoy the writing process, and craft stronger academic writing across disciplines. After a brief introduction to theories of creative play, presenters will offer examples of the types of creative play they have brought to their own classrooms and lead participants in three creative activities. Participants will break into small groups to discuss the possibilities of creative play in their own classrooms and to design their own assignments. Note: A google drive with assignments, activities, and other course plans will also be provided to session participants.__________________________________________________________________FULL ABSTRACT: This session discu...
The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado Sta... more The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado State University, and supported by the Colorado State University Open Press, it brings together scholarly journals and book series as well as resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. This book is available in digital formats for free download at wac.colostate.edu.
Making Visible Labor Issues in Writing across the Curriculum: A Call for Research
As a member of the scholarly community of writing program administrators, I have been well versed... more As a member of the scholarly community of writing program administrators, I have been well versed in the institutional and material contexts of composition and firstyear writing. In the past forty years, as we've moved from a tenure-line to a mostly contingent work force, the literature in the field has engaged in materialist critiques of the "terms of our work" (Horner), theorized the managerialism of the corporate university (Bousquet; Strickland), raised awareness of the material conditions of writing programs (Schell), and discussed the impact of contingency upon pedagogy (Jaeger and Eagen). Assuming the directorship of a writing across the curriculum (WAC) program, however, opened my eyes to a world of contingent-faculty issues that I have not often heard discussed in relation to WAC program work. As adjuncti- fication continues to spread in institutions of higher education, inevitably it troubles the dynamics of WAC programs, as well. But there is almost no resea...
In a 1999 essay reporting a synoptic history of writing center theory and practice, Elizabeth Boq... more In a 1999 essay reporting a synoptic history of writing center theory and practice, Elizabeth Boquet honestly laments her feelings of boredom with writing center scholarship up to that time. Since, it seems, everything has been said and done, she asks the pointed question: “What is being left out of our discussions on teaching writing by our failure to account for the work of the writing center in a critically intellectual manner?” (479). She goes on to suggest that newer, fresher stories wait to be told: “Other stories can be brought to light, stories which write the developments of the contemporary writing center in theoretically sophisticated ways, stories that consider the critical capacities of networking, of linking writing centers with WAC programs, of placing peer tutors in classrooms” (479). If we look to scholarship (stories) on the WAC/writing center connection we will find that strong interdisciplinary connections between writing centers, writing classrooms, and the univ...
Double Helix: A Journal of Critical Thinking and Writing, 2013
Welcome to Double Helix Seattle has its double helix pedestrian bridge. The Fermi National Accele... more Welcome to Double Helix Seattle has its double helix pedestrian bridge. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) outside Chicago has its gold-colored double helix staircase within the Proton Pagoda. Construction has even begun on a double helix skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. And as Robert Smart chronicles in "Double Helix: History and Origins," scholar-teacher Ann E. Berthoff's metaphoric musing on the double helix is the genesis for this journal's name. Thus, it is both fitting and felicitous that the inaugural issue of Double Helix: A Journal of Critical Thinking and Writing should launch in the 60 th anniversary year of Watson and Crick's discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. Double Helix seeks to attract a global readership for the purpose of sharing research and best practices in the use of writing to develop critical thinking skills and disciplinary expertise in higher education. We are interested in advancing the extraordinary work of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing In the Disciplines (WID) ongoing in the United States, as well as highlighting and promoting transferable pedagogies and research interests with appeal well beyond the U.S. Furthermore, we are hopeful that the open access, online venue that makes research freely available to scholars, teachers, and students across the globe will serve to support a wider exchange of knowledge, as well as international and interdisciplinary collaboration.
The trouble with intros to English studies: A case study of negotiating disciplinary writing in a linked gateway course for undergraduate English majors
Institutional Ethnography as Materialist Framework for Writing Program Research and the Faculty-Staff Work Standpoints Project
College Composition and Communication, Sep 1, 2012
Top 25 Tweeters by Number of Tweets Tweeter Re/Tweets @voleuseCK 662 @lecagle 378 @techairos 324 ... more Top 25 Tweeters by Number of Tweets Tweeter Re/Tweets @voleuseCK 662 @lecagle 378 @techairos 324 @kyronae 319 @TheMollyD 285 @Tampa4C 272 @SMUWritCentre 236 @meganfire2 234 @NCTE_CCCC 220 @jhastal 205 @EricSDet 204 @donnarosemary 200 @LeslieLearns 191 @rachelbigeyes 149 @chris_friend 146 @UA_Mr_Harrell 139 @jenlmichaels 137 @TYCAFame 130 @kstedman 129 @JanelAtlas 128 @oncomouse 127 @food4max 124 @DCoad 123 @jznchuk 119 @ashsevans 119 The top tweeters have not always been the same people. In fact, a comparison of the top 10 between 2015 and 2013 shows no overlap. More and more people are getting active on the Twittersphere.
College Composition and Communication, 2016
Indianapolis ResolutionWHEREAS, most post-secondary teachers with primary responsibility for teac... more Indianapolis ResolutionWHEREAS, most post-secondary teachers with primary responsibility for teaching writing are contingent, as are increasing numbers of Writing Program Administrators and Writing Center Directors;WHEREAS, a caste system has emerged in the discipline in which the salaries and working conditions of most post-secondary teachers with primary responsibility for teaching writing remain (and have remained so since the Wyoming Resolution in 1987) fundamentally unfair as judged by any reasonable professional standards (e.g., unfair in excessive teaching loads; unreasonably large class sizes; salary inequities; lack of benefits and professional status; barriers to professional status; and barriers to professional advancement);WHEREAS, the November 2013 revision of the Statement of Principles and Standards for the Post-Secondary Teaching of Writing failed to address labor substantively, removing all specific recommendations for class size and workload, and locating ambiguous...