Ann M. Feldman
Associate Professor in the Department of English and Director of the First Year Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Abstract
The complex relationship between the university and the city provides the context for this chapter, which explores not only the changing nature of scholarship in the metropolitan research university, but how its changing intellectual climate should, in turn, change our conception of writing instruction for students who attend college in the city. It is argued that engaged research — participatory, reciprocal research — depends on an awareness of research as a discursive practice; that is, on how language and rhetoric are used to shape emerging knowledge. When both faculty members and students focus on engagement, their relationship to the city is enhanced, while also enhancing undergraduate education and, in particular, writing instruction.
