The underlying philosophy of this Website holds that to become effective researchers we need to learn the writing conventions of the academic disciplines–by taking courses, by receiving informed feedback on our written work, by learning and applying disciplinary methods, by sharing our work with others.
We learn by adopting a variety of stances toward the disciplines:
(1) the social stance, by learning from and with others;
(2) the institutional, by taking classes and learning the “roles” of the academy;
(3) the textual stance, by learning from written models and conventions; and
(4) the field stance, where you engage and exchange ideas as someone knowledgeable about the conventions of a particular academic discipline.
(The work of rhetoricians Richard Beach and Susan Hynds is acknowledged here.)
This site provides a sampling of all four stances. It is our hope that, by making your way through the site, you’ll gain an enhanced insight into what it means to conduct research and write differently for different academic audiences.
My thanks to my writing students, who over the years have contributed to the insights presented here.
Will Garrett-Petts, Professor of English, TRU.