Cover: Ways of Reading, 12th Edition by David Bartholomae; Anthony Petrosky; Stacey Waite
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Ways of Reading

An Anthology for WritersTwelfth Edition ©2020 David Bartholomae; Anthony Petrosky; Stacey Waite


Reading and writing is difficult, messy work. Ways of Reading embraces this challenge by inviting students into the process and treating them with respect. Based on the concept that texts should be considered in relation to each other, Ways of Reading fosters academic habits...

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ISBN:9781319253974

ISBN:9781319195809

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Cover: Ways of Reading, 12th Edition by David Bartholomae; Anthony Petrosky; Stacey Waite

Empower students by making the classroom a place of intellectual exploration


Reading and writing is difficult, messy work. Ways of Reading embraces this challenge by inviting students into the process and treating them with respect. Based on the concept that texts should be considered in relation to each other, Ways of Reading fosters academic habits of mind as it carefully walks students through analyzing and writing about complicated ideas. With deeply thought-provoking readings from writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Judith Butler, and Anna Tsing, combined with a supporting structure of sequenced questions for rereading, discussion, and writing, Ways of Reading empowers students to engage with complex material and difficult concepts.

A robust introduction to critical reading, coverage of writing beyond the traditional essay, and assignment sequences all help instructors make the classroom a place of intellectual exploration. This is a book that asks instructors and students to do more — to approach difficulty as multi-dimensional, in conceptual, historical, narrative, and practical aspects. And especially in this edition, with new readings on topics such as white rage, ethical relationships, and sexual violence, this work pays off, preparing students to address (as community members, citizens, and future leaders) the urgent problems that cannot be ignored, and that soon will be theirs alone to solve.

Features


(Re)readable texts that are worth extended work. These texts offer powerful readings of ordinary experiences, by essential voices such as Edward Said, Michel Foucault, and Gloria Anzaldua, as well as Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Solmaz Sharif.
 
Assignment Sequences that position texts as lenses  through which to view other selections and to frame ideas for writing. The sequences offer students intellectual models to work from and inspire engaged writing on topics from autobiography to expertise.
 
Pedagogy that helps students approach—and join in—complex conversations. A significant introductory essay engages with the concept and complexities of critical reading, while substantial headnotes provide both biographical and conceptual context for each selection. Questions following each selection scaffold the process of forming options, guiding students through careful rereading, writing about the text, and making connections between texts.
 
A challenging book like no other—and a proven success. The readings and assignments in Ways of Reading are difficult, but the process is rewarding; thousands of instructors have successfully taught hundreds of thousands of students how to read and write using this method.
 
An approach that complements the interests of graduate students and new PhDs. By bridging the gap between contemporary critical theory and composition, Ways of Reading allows instructors to work with their composition students on pieces they’re excited about.

New to This Edition

Urgent new readings of conceptual and experiential power that demand careful consideration. The eleven new selections range from the intimately personal to the conceptual and global. Authors include Jeff Chang, Jeannine Capo Crucet, Roxane Gay, Aubrey Hirsch, June Jordan, Scaachi Koul, Layli Long Soldier, Jenny Price, Claudia Rankine, Solmaz Sharif, Anna Tsing.

  • Anthropology professor Anna Tsing, in “The Mushroom at the End of the World,” charts the commodity chain of the matsutake mushroom to reveal insights for renewal in an age of late capitalism.
  • Writer and journalist Scaachi Koul, in “Hunting Season,” describes experiences at the intersection between rape culture and surveillance and reflects on their implications.
  • Poet Layli Long Soldier, in “38,” juxtaposes the language of treaties between the US government and indigenous American tribes with historical and current indigenous experiences to craft a response to a congressional resolution of apology to Native Americans.
     

Three new assignment sequences, “Listening In Our Present,” “Examinations of Race and Racism,” and “Beyond the Essay,” push students to consider the form, content, and implications of their writing. These sequences are designed to guide students through the process of thinking about not just the ideas they’ve read about, but how these ideas connect to their broader contexts: Why does one writer choose to write an essay while another chooses a poem? hat is the reciprocal relationship between the past and the present? How can we apply these readings to the urgent problems of our time?

Selections that go beyond the traditional essay reflect today’s diverse world of writing. From poetry by award winning poets like Claudia Rankine to a Roxane Gay listicle, the twelfth edition of Ways of Reading helps students build rhetorical awareness by providing an expansive idea of how to connect with audiences and communicate ideas through a variety of forms.
 
An expanded idea of difficulty that invites students to approach it from many perspectives. This approach helps students conceive of themselves as generative intellectuals, as writers who have the agency and ability to intervene in the conversations that construct our world. This edition brings in voices to lead students to think more deeply the critical questions that have been at the heart of Ways of Reading since its first edition — questions of being, questions of power, questions of education, questions of interpretation and composition.

"With Ways of Reading, the students came alive. They felt a deeper connection to the material because they were given the time and also because these selections defy simple readings.”

-- Katherine Sayre, Grossmont Community College

“The two greatest strengths of Ways of Reading have always been carefully selected, deeply thought-provoking readings coupled together with the supporting structure of sequencing, really effective questions for re-reading, journaling, and discussion.” 

--Noreen OConnor, Kings College

“The thing I like most about the text is that it emphasizes the interpretive power students bring to the table -- the things they already know that they can put into conversation with the text. It doesnt talk down to them.”

-- Andrew Winckles, Adrian College

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Ways of Reading
Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Racial Identities
Alison Bechdel, The Ordinary Devoted Mother
Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, On Rembrandts Woman in Bed, On Carvaggios The Calling of St. Matthew
Gloria Bird, Autobiography as Spectacle
Judith Butler, Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy
Joy Castro, Hungry
*Jeff Chang, Is Diversity for White People?
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
*Jennine Capó Crucet, Going Cowboy
W. E. B. Du Bois, Of the Training of Black Men
Michel Foucault, Panopticism
Atul Gawande, Slow Ideas
*Roxane Gay, How to Be Friends with Another Woman
Susan Griffin, Our Secret
*Aubrey Hirsch, Fragments
*June Jordan, Nobody Mean More to Me than You
*Saachi Koul, Hunting Season
Walker Percy, The Loss of the Creature
Mary Louise Pratt, Arts of the Contact Zone
*Jenny Price, 13 Ways of Seeing Nature in LA
*Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Edward Said, States
*Solmaz Sharif, Poems
*Layli Long Soldier, 38
*Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World
John Edgar Wideman, Our Time
Sequences
SEQUENCE ONE EXPLORING IDENTITY, EXPLORING THE SELF
SEQUENCE TWO THE AIMS OF EDUCATION
SEQUENCE THREE THE ARTS OF THE CONTACT ZONE
SEQUENCE FOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS
SEQUENCE FIVE EXPERTS AND EXPERTISE
*SEQUENCE SIX LISTENING IN OUR PRESENT
*SEQUENCE SEVEN EXAMINATIONS OF RACE AND RACISM 
SEQUENCE EIGHT ON DIFFICULTY
SEQUENCE NINE THE ART OF ARGUMENT
*SEQUENCE TEN Beyond the Essay
Headshot of David Bartholomae

David Bartholomae

DAVID BARTHOLOMAE (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is one of the composition community’s most highly regarded members. Professor of English and the Charles Crow Chair at the University of Pittsburgh, he has published widely on composition, rhetoric, literacy and pedagogy. He is a frequent lecturer to university faculty and writing projects nationwide. He has served as Chair of CCCC, President of the ADE, and on the MLA Executive Council. His awards include the MLA/ADE Francis A. March Award, the CCCC Exemplar Award, the CCCC Braddock Award, Pennsylvania Professor of the Year (2013), a Fulbright fellowship, and the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. With Jean Ferguson Carr, he edits the University of Pittsburgh Series, Composition, Literacy and Culture. His collection of essays, Writing on the Margins: Essays on Composition and Teaching (Bedford/St. Martin’s) won the 2005 MLA Mina Shaughnessy Award. After stepping down as English department chair in 2009, he has been deeply involved with Pitt’s program for Study Abroad.

Headshot of Anthony Petrosky

Anthony Petrosky

Anthony R. Petrosky, the Associate Dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the School of Education and the English Department.  Along with Stephanie McConachie, he codirects the English Language Arts Disciplinary Literacy Project in the Institute for Learning (IFL) at the Learning Research and Development Center.  As a part of this Institute project, he has worked with professional learning and curriculum development in English for school and district leaders in the public schools of Austin, Dallas, Denver, New York City, Fort Worth, Prince George’s County, and Pittsburgh.  McConachie and Petrosky are the coeditors of Content Matters:  A Disciplinary Literacy Approach to Improving Student Learning, a 2010 collection of reports on the IFL Disciplinary Literacy Project, as well as coauthors of chapters in the book.  Petrosky served on the Reading and English Common Core Standards Project for the Chief States School Officers to develop common core reading and English standards for the US.  In conjunction with this project, he also is a member of the Gates Foundation funded Aspects of Text Complexity Project to develop procedures for assessing text complexity for the common core reading and English standards.  He was the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Early Adolescence English Language Arts Assessment Development Lab for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which developed the first national board certification for English teachers.  He has also served as Co-Director of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project.  He was a researcher for the MacArthur Foundation funded Higher Literacies Studies, where he was responsible for conducting and writing case studies on literacy efforts in the Denver, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and the Ruleville and Mound Bayou school districts in the Mississippi Delta.  He is past Chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Committee on Research and a past elected member of the NCTE Research Foundation.  His first collection of poetry, Jurgis Petraskas, published by Louisiana State University Press (LSU), received the Walt Whitman Award from Philip Levine for the Academy of American Poets and a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association.  Petrosky’s second collection of poetry, Red and Yellow Boat, was published by LSU in 1994, and Crazy Love, his third collection, was published by LSU in the fall of 2003. Along with David Bartholomae, Petrosky is the coauthor and coeditor of four books: Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts: Theory and Method for a Reading and Writing Course; The Teaching of Writing; Ways of Reading:  An Anthology for Writers; and History and Ethnography:  Reading and Writing About Others.

Headshot of Stacey Waite

Stacey Waite

Stacey Waite is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln where she teaches courses in Composition and Rhetoric and Gender Studies. Waite has published articles and essays on the teaching of writing in numerous journals and anthologies, including Writing on the Edge, Feminist Teacher, and Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy. Waite was co-editor of The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals 2011 (Parlor Press, 2012). Having worked with both the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, and currently with the Nebraska Writing Project, Waite directs and contributes to many writing programs and projects in her community—among them the Young Writers Camp in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Louder than a Bomb Omaha Youth poetry Festival, and the Summer Institute for Teachers.

With an interest both in critical and creative writing, Waite has published four collections of poems: Choke (winner of the 2004 Frank OHara Prize), Love Poem to Androgyny (winner of the 2006 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition), the lake has no saint (winner of the 2008 Snowbound Prize from Tupelo Press), and Butch Geography (Tupelo Press, 2013). Waite’s poems have been published most recently in The Cream City Review, Bloom, Indiana Review, and Black Warrior Review. Waite is the co-host of the radio podcast Air Schooner produced by Prairie Schooner and is Senior Poetry Editor for Tupelo Quarterly.

Waite has been teaching writing using Ways of Reading since 1999, has worked on the selections and apparatus for the book since 2006, and is now co-editor of the textbook. She has given several invited talks addressing the pedagogy of the textbook and working with teachers of first-year writing to scaffold and shape their semesters using Ways of Reading.

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