Lenses on Composition Studies

Series Editors

Sheryl I. Fontaine
California State University Fullerton

Steve Westbrook
California State University Fullerton

Series Launch: 23 July 2005
This series has been discontinued. 

View the books in the Lenses series here.

Lenses on Composition Studies offers authors the unique opportunity to write for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students who are new to the discipline of Composition Studies. While the series aims to maintain the rigor and depth of contemporary composition scholarship, it seeks to offer this particular group of students an introduction to key disciplinary issues in accessible prose that does not assume prior advanced knowledge of scholars and theoretical debates. Lenses on Composition Studies will provide to instructors of advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students texts that are both appropriate and inviting for this less experienced but professionally directed audience.

We invite prospective authors to write about any of the topics or “lenses” that define our discipline: writing in the disciplines, peer response, administration, active learning, etc. Using this topic as a lens through which to see the entire discipline, authors present to students the specialist’s understanding of the topic and of the discipline itself using theoretical terminology and historical explanations that beginning students in the field need and can understand. These brief (200-page) books should engage novices to the field with interviews, student voices, collaborative writing, quotes from colleagues in the field, or other devices that similarly lend a “real,” immediate quality to the writing.  Authors are also encouraged to use descriptive headings throughout each chapter, include activities such as journal entry topics, questions for discussions, informal writing prompts, as well as works cited list and a list of works for further reading.

Books in the Series