Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy

by Anis S. Bawarshi, Mary Jo Reiff

GENRE: AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY, THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PEDAGOGY provides a critical overview of the rich body of scholarship that has informed a "genre turn" in Rhetoric and Composition, including a range of interdisciplinary perspectives from rhetorical theory, applied linguistics, sociology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and literary theory. The book presents an historical overview of genre; describes key issues and theories that have led to the reconceptualization of genre over the last thirty years; examines current research and lines of development in the study of genre; provides examples of various methodologies for conducting genre research; and explores the possibilities and implications for using genre to teach writing at various levels and within different disciplines. While the book examines various traditions that have shaped the field's understanding of and approaches to genre, what connects these various approaches is a commitment to the idea that genres reflect and coordinate social ways of knowing and acting in the world and thus provide valuable means of researching how texts function in various contexts and teaching students how to act meaningfully in multiple contexts. REFERENCE GUIDES TO RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION SERIES EDITOR, CHARLES BAZERMAN ABOUT THE AUTHORS ANIS BAWARSHI is Associate professor of English and Director of the Expository Writing Program at the University of Washington and author of Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition (2003); Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres (2004; with Amy Devitt and Mary Jo Reiff); A Closer Look: A Writer's Reader (2003; with Sidney I. Dobrin). MARY JO REIFF is Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and author of Approaches to Audience: An Overview of the Major Perspectives (2004), co-author (with Amy Devitt and Anis Bawarshi) of Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres (2004), and co-editor (with Kirsten Benson) of Rhetoric of Inquiry (2009).

Genres: Teaching, Theory, Research

263 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2010

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanna know what genre is? This book will straight-up tell you. Not just one person's definition, but many, and in all sorts of disciplines. I have to admit that this book starts a little slow, in a teeth-gritted description of narrow interpretations of genre, but once it gets to rhetorical genre studies, the prose gets more enthusiastic and the quotes more extensive. Here are some of my favorites:


Bazerman: "Genres are not just forms. Genres are forms of life, ways of being" (59).

"In order to ast in a situation, we must first determine it" (68).

Miller: "For teh critic, genres can serve both as an index to cultural patterns and as tools for exploring the achievements of particular speakers and writers; for the student, genres serve as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community" (72)

Berkenkotter and Huckin: "Our thesis is that genres are inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can be manipulated according to the conditions of use and that genre knowledge is therefor best conceptualized as a form of situatied cognition embedded in disciplinary activities" (78).

Since part of what defines a genre is its placement within a system of genre relations within and between activity systems, genres cannot be defined or taught only through their formal features (103).


If these seem similar, it's because genre has so long been seen as exclusively a formal, external convention that for someone to argue the opposite, they need to approach it from a variety of positions.

This would be a great book for grad students, and I think it'll work into the podcast Mere Rhetoric.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious! A comprehensive guide to genre theory. I tend to like the theory portions of books like this than the pedagogy. but there was a lot to think about and appreciate all the way through.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive history that would be good for a graduate course. It helped me understand better the different fields that have contributed to genre theory (and the different theories of genre that are out there). I was less interested in some of the middle of the book, and I liked the pedagogy section the best (no surprise if you know me).

[Laurel Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, because it attempts to give a wide history of something that prior to this was not written about. So for the sake of background and context of genre, this is the place to start. It may not have a lot of practical classroom applications, but we first have to get a sense of where we have been, before we can decide where we are going to go.

[Katie]

for Genre Theory class