Editors: Charles Bazerman and David Russell
The importance of activity-oriented cultural, historical, and
social approaches for understanding how and why people write, the form
their writing takes, and the consequentiality of their texts is becoming
generally evident. These approaches, inspired by Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and
Soviet activity theorists as well by more recent approaches to situated
activity and situated cognition and structurational approaches to social
organization, have raised a range of issues for understanding writing:
human motive, social interaction and text form, production and
circulation, the organization of human endeavors, the production and use
of knowledge, the textual operations of social institutions, and
consciousness developing in participation in these emergent socio-textual
activities.
We are soliciting new, previously unpublished essays that grow out
of substantial empirical and theoretical research projects that will carry
forward out understanding of how writing mediates human interaction, how
writing itself is a form of activity, how writing is shaped in typified
forms or genres and carries out localized action within these typified
forms, and similar issues. We are interested in articles that address all
levels of writing, including emergent writing impulses in young children,
writing in all levels of schooling and professional training, professional
and workplace writing, writing within play and leisure activities, writing
mediating the different spheres of public and private activity, and
writing in all media of production and dissemination, especially including
electronic environments.
While the scope of this collection will be much broader than the
special issue of Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4 (1997) on The Activity of
Writing/The Writing of Activity, that issue may suggest the length, focus,
and weight of the articles we are looking for.
In order to help us evaluate submissions we would like detailed
proposals of five hundred to a thousand words clearly identifying the
empirical basis, theoretical argument, and tentative conclusions of the
proposed chapter. The deadline for proposals will be January 4, 1999.
Completed manuscripts of around 8000 words will be due twelve months later
in January 2000.
Feel free to contact us with preliminary inquiries.
Please submit proposals (in either paper or electronic form) to
Charles Bazerman
English Department
University of California.
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA
bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu
or
David Russell
English Department
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011 USA
drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu