Review of My Book: Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies
This post is in part shameless self-promotion, but then the history of blogs is such that this is part of the genre.
Recently, Katrina Love Miller (University of Nevada, Reno) wrote a review of my latest book, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Social Just Future. The review is titled, "Working Against Racism: a Review of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies," and it is in the Journal of Writing Assessment. It's a wonderful review, and she nicely captures most of the themes and lines of argument that I attempted in the book. I'm very grateful for Miller's review and for the co-editors of the journal, Diane Kelly-Riley and Carl Whithaus, to assign my book for a review so early. I hope to see more reviews in the coming year or so from other journals.
I won't engage with the review, but let Miller's words and mine in my book stand on their own merits. I'll end this brief post by giving you a taste of where I'm heading in my current project, which is a continuation of the last book. Currently, I'm working on a book-length project that uses political economic theory, particularly those theories' articulations of labor and value to retheorize writing process, which fundamentally includes the assessment of writing -- that is, the circulation of reading and judgment with drafts in the classroom. I believe it's time to rethink writing process and let it articulate more carefully the labor and the circulation of judgment. I've been working with ways to use labor in grading practices in my writing classrooms for years, particularly through grading contracts. But the use and attention to labor in my classrooms has moved beyond just thinking about how to calculate a course grade, but activating student learning and reflection on practices (not drafts), as well as more conscious ways of noticing and considering noncognitive dimensions in students. I'm hoping to have a draft of the book by the end of the next summer.
By the way, if you want to read my current book, but find you can't afford to buy it, you can download a free pdf at WAC Clearinghouse, or you can get a copy at my academia.edu page. I chose Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse because they offered open access to the book. I wanted it accessible. Books are meant to be read by all who have an inclination to do so. Enjoy!
I won't engage with the review, but let Miller's words and mine in my book stand on their own merits. I'll end this brief post by giving you a taste of where I'm heading in my current project, which is a continuation of the last book. Currently, I'm working on a book-length project that uses political economic theory, particularly those theories' articulations of labor and value to retheorize writing process, which fundamentally includes the assessment of writing -- that is, the circulation of reading and judgment with drafts in the classroom. I believe it's time to rethink writing process and let it articulate more carefully the labor and the circulation of judgment. I've been working with ways to use labor in grading practices in my writing classrooms for years, particularly through grading contracts. But the use and attention to labor in my classrooms has moved beyond just thinking about how to calculate a course grade, but activating student learning and reflection on practices (not drafts), as well as more conscious ways of noticing and considering noncognitive dimensions in students. I'm hoping to have a draft of the book by the end of the next summer.
By the way, if you want to read my current book, but find you can't afford to buy it, you can download a free pdf at WAC Clearinghouse, or you can get a copy at my academia.edu page. I chose Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse because they offered open access to the book. I wanted it accessible. Books are meant to be read by all who have an inclination to do so. Enjoy!
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