For those of you currently negotiating the transition from teaching in Rhetoric to English, and for those of us just beginning to think about this transition, I wanted to offer a Weighty Question (and two CWRL books to help address it):

What kinds of writing should we ask of our students in English courses, and what is the purpose of this writing?

As I was reviewing some of the pedagogy titles in the CWRL library, I came across a couple of essays that address this topic. They don’t provide easy answers or concrete assignments, but you might scope them out if you are asking similar questions:

In Ch. 1 of LEARNING LITERATURE IN AN ERA OF CHANGE, Katherine Fischer asks us to scrutinize our motives for the kinds of writing we assign, especially the standard literary analysis (thesis/support/conclusion). What she means by non-traditional "essai writing" is, of course, maddeningly vague, but the general idea is a paper that’s more tentative and exploratory than thesis-driven and that surrenders the voice of certainty characteristic of a traditional essay.

Ch. 2 of PASSIONS, PEDAGOGIES, AND 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES also considers the essay, or what the author Doug Hesse refers to as "essayistic literacy." Facing an enthusiasm for collaborative and digital assignments, he asks: what is the value of assigning essays? What can the genre do for students' thinking and writing that other types of assignments do not make possible?

Btw, to access our reviews of these titles and other pedagogy books from the CWRL library, check out http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1177871. You’ll need a GoodReads account, but it’s easy to sign up. Alternatively, if you have a Facebook account, you can access the online library through the CWRL’ s Facebook page.

So, has anyone come across other good books/resources on this question? More generally, what kinds of writing have you assigned, and what is your rationale for assigning them? And broader still (apologies if I’m reviving an earlier thread of discussion): what changes in outlook/approach should we expect when making this transition, particularly in crafting paper assignments?