"You've Been Disciplined": Graduate Academic Writing as Social Practice

Abstract

This essay describes a doctoral-level rhetoric and composition writing assignment that aims to help students transition from their identities as students to their identities as scholars. With an emphasis on academic writing as social practice, the assignment asks graduate students to analyze the intellectual moves scholars make in the context of a specific and detailed conversation in any subfield of English Studies. The essay shares the responses of two graduate students, one specializing in children's literature and one in literary and cultural studies, and argues that the process of joining any disciplinary conversation is complex and deserves explicit instruction.