Babb & Beare aren't pretending to be neutral—they've taken stances in their classrooms and programs. But as editors, they're holding space for the full spectrum. They spent most of 2025 building a generative AI policy they're already calling "an evolving document."
The editors' introduction to CS 53.2 considered calling itself an AI hallucination. It references Terminator 2, cites a McSweeney's satire, and catalogs every AI construct in science fiction.
Underneath the humor, it's doing something genuinely difficult. 🧵
Researched, drafted, reviewed, revised, edited, and published—by people who believe the field's questions matter.
Which piece are you starting with?
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #WePersistAllTheSame
Six book reviews covering AI and writing, feminist technical communication, systemic bias in STEM, critical language awareness, DJ rhetoric, and multimodal transfer.
Four "Where We Are" essays on teaching writing in this moment. Campus protests, institutional erosion, fire and persistence, and finding the ocean. These are hard reads. They're supposed to be.
Two course designs rethinking FYC from the ground up—one built on critical AI literacy, the other on third places and composing from desire.
Six articles: generative AI as rhetorical memory, Black women's mentorship, an international GTA navigating the classroom, scrap writing as invention, dual enrollment pedagogy, and pandemic-era sustainability.
23 contributors. 19 sections. 1 issue.
The table of contents for Composition Studies 53.2 is here.
Here's what's inside—and who made it. 🧵
These aren't four separate debates. They're a field reckoning with what comes next.
Six articles. Two course designs. Four field-level responses. Read the full issue at compstudiesjournal.com.
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #WePersistAllTheSame
04 — Composition as academic discipline / composition as political obligation.
Four scholars respond to what the field owes the present moment. They don't agree with each other.
03 — Teaching that transforms students / teaching that exhausts the people doing it.
Pandemic workloads, dual enrollment, institutional creep. Several pieces examine where pedagogical commitment crosses into unsustainable labor.
02 — Programs that promise mentorship / scholars who build a career without it.
Five scholars in five programs describe the same structural gap. The pattern isn't anecdotal.
01 — AI as unprecedented disruption / AI as the oldest rhetorical practice in new form.
One article traces generative AI's logic back to classical memoria. The implications for teaching look different from either side of the usual debate.
Issue 53.2 of @CompStudies is built around four tensions the field is sitting with right now. A thread. 🧵
Our editors see photography as a metaphor for composing—framing, organizing, attempting. Dozens of tries before the one that works.
What do you return to in your work—not because you have to, but because you're still looking?
#WePersistAllTheSame #CompositionStudies #RhetComp
"I write with a loving respect and patience for words in the same way I slow down, watch and wait in a kind of sustained engagement with nature."
—Michael J. Day
Day is professor emeritus at NIU. Now retired, he walks the same path twice a day, camera in hand, checking the same hollow tree.
A few times a year—usually in spring—a face appears.
Every cover has a story.
Every issue of Composition Studies starts with a cover. This one started with a walk along the Kishwaukee River.
Meet Michael J. Day, the photographer behind 53.2's "Peekaboo Raccoon." 🧵
Some big changes at Composition Studies.
New submission policy: five-paragraph essays only. New section: Hot Takes. And a lifetime achievement award for Reviewer 2.
Happy April Fools.
53.2 is coming soon—peer review included.
#RhetComp #CompositionStudies
Something's happening at the journal this week. We're not ready to share the details yet—but you'll want to check back on April 1st.
Issue 53.2 is built around three questions: What does AI actually change about writing? Whose experiences in rhet-comp have been silenced? And what does composition owe the political present?
We're starting with the questions. Article highlights coming soon. Which one's yours?
We keep having this conversation. What do we tell our students about GenAI?
On the FEN Blog, Megan McIntyre slows it down—three questions about how GenAI works, what it costs, and when (if ever) it belongs in a writing classroom.
bit.ly/genai-3quest...
That's a wrap on #4C26. Thank you to everyone who connected with us in Cleveland.
Missed the discount? Still running through March 31:
📬 Domestic: $40
🌍 International: $70
🎓 Grad students: $15
Spotlights from 53.2 coming soon.
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #WritingStudies
Last day of #4C26. The ideas from this week's sessions keep following us into the hallway.
What conversation has stuck with you this week?
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #WritingStudies
Getting a sticker never stops being fun. We don't make the rules.
We're at #4C26—find our editors Jacob Babb or Zach Beare, say hello, and one is yours. No subscription required.
Best bet: Editor's Table in the Action Hub. Also spotted near coffee.
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #CCCC2026
The conversations at #4C26 will be good. The ones in our Fall issue might be better.
$10 off any one-year subscription to Composition Studies:
📬 $40 domestic
🌍 $70 international
🎓 $15 grad students
Scan the QR, use code "4C26."
#CompositionStudies #RhetComp #WritingStudies
4C26 is this week, and Composition Studies will be in Cleveland.
Our Fall issue just dropped—generative AI and editing, women of color in grad programs, and a forum on the field right now. Subscriber perk coming tomorrow.
#4C26 #CompositionStudies #RhetComp
This case study shows what shared documents can make possible—not just alignment, but community, visibility, and programmatic change.
Read the full article in Composition Studies 53.1
🔗 bit.ly/CS53-1
A question for your program:
If your outcomes statement vanished tomorrow
• What would actually break?
• Which courses or assessments would feel it first?
• Who on campus would notice—and who wouldn’t?
These two campuses thingified the same document differently.
That’s part of the article’s point: shared outcomes don’t erase difference. They can amplify it, if WPAs treat them as living documents rather than boundary objects.