Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer

Anis Bawarshi develops a case for a genre-studies-based first-year writing
curriculum.  In the courses teachers would introduce students to sampled
genre sets from selected disciplines or professional fields (studying, in
effect, lab reports as a genre, or other professional document types). 
Students would analyze the genres, writing both in them and about them; hence,
composition would have as its impetus a pragmatic extra-disciplinary
awareness of the writing students will do in their major areas of study and, as
well, bona fide content: writing itself (in all its forms, in and beyond the
academy).  As Bawarshi’s project builds an argument for this model, he
reasons that a more comprehensive, nuanced understanding of genre is one
(though perhaps golden) ticket to composition’s status as a discipline and
might also serve us with a compelling justification for the first-year writing
sequence.

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