Social Mediations: Writing for Public Spheres in a Digital Age

Rhetoric and composition scholar Donna LeCourt combines theoretical inquiry, qualitative research, and rhetorical analysis to examine what it means to write for the ＂public＂ in an age when the distinctions between public and private have eroded. Public spaces are increasingly privatized, and individual subjectivities have been reconstructed according to market terms. Part critique and part road map, Social Mediations begins with a critical reading of digital public pedagogies, then turns to developing a new theory that can guide a more effective writing pedagogy. LeCourt offers a theory based in embodied relationality that uses information economies to develop public spheres. She highlights how information commodities generate value through circulation, orchestrate relationships among people, and support unequal power structures. By demonstrating how we can use information capital for social change rather than market expansion, writers and readers are encouraged to seek out encounters with cultural and political impact.

Donna LeCourt is professor and chair of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she teaches courses in rhetoric and composition, digital writing, teaching writing, and issues of difference in writing studies. She is the author of Identity Matters: Schooling the Student Body in Academic Discourse and coeditor of Rewriting Success: Constructing Careers and Institutional Change in Rhetoric and Composition.