Beyond Productivity: Embodied, Situated, and (Un)Balanced Faculty Writing Processes

In Beyond Productivity, a wide range of contributors share honest narratives of the sometimes-impossible conditions that scholars face when completing writing projects. The essays provide backstage views of the authors’ varying approaches to moving forward when the desire to produce wanes, when deciding a project is not working, when working within and around and redefining academic productivity expectations, and when writing with ever-changing bodies that do not always function as expected.

This collection positions scholarly writers’ ways of writing as a form of flexible, evolving knowledge. By exhibiting what is lost and gained through successive rounds of transformation and adaptation over time, the contributors offer a sustainable understanding and practice of process--one that looks beyond productivity as the primary measure of success. Each presents a fluid understanding of the writing process, illustrating its deeply personal nature and revealing how fragmented and disjointed methods and experiences can highlight what is precious about writing.

Beyond Productivity determines anew the use and value of scholarly writing and the processes that produce it, both within and beyond the context of the losses, constraints, and adaptations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kim Hensley Owens is professor of English (Rhetoric, Writing, and DigitalMedia Studies) at Northern Arizona University and coeditor of the journal Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. She is the author of Writing Childbirth: Women’s Rhetorical Agency in Labor and Online, as well as a number of articles and book chapters.

Derek Van Ittersum is professor of English at Kent State University, where he teaches in the Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice graduate program. He is the coauthor of Writing Workflows: Beyond Word Processing, which was awarded the 2018 Sweetland / University of Michigan Press Book Prize.