Beyond Productivity

Embodied, Situated, and (Un)Balanced Faculty Writing Processes

Kim Hensley Owens, Derek Van Ittersum, Kim Hensley Owens, Derek Van Ittersum

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781646424863, 9781646424856
• eBook ISBN: 9781646424870
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In Beyond Productivity, a wide range of contributors share honest narratives of the sometimes-impossible conditions that scholars face when completing writing projects. The essays provide backstage views of the authors' varying approaches to moving forward when the desire to produce wanes, when deciding a project is not working, when working within and around and redefining academic productivity expectations, and when writing with ever-changing bodies that do not always function as expected. 

This collection positions scholarly writers' ways of writing as a form of flexible, evolving knowledge. By exhibiting what is lost and gained through successive rounds of transformation and adaptation over time, the contributors offer a sustainable understanding and practice of process—one that looks beyond productivity as the primary measure of success. Each presents a fluid understanding of the writing process, illustrating its deeply personal nature and revealing how fragmented and disjointed methods and experiences can highlight what is precious about writing. 

Beyond Productivity determines anew the use and value of scholarly writing and the processes that produce it, both within and beyond the context of the losses, constraints, and adaptations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. 
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Situating Scholarly Writing Processes across Life Contexts
• 2. Sand Creeks and Productivity: A Writer’s Reckoning of Personal and Academic Selves
• 3. Relearning to Write in Crip Time (on the Tenure Clock)
• 4. Process Not Progress (or, Not-Progress is Process): A Narrative Meditation
• 5. When Writing Makes You Sick
• 6. Speak in the Tongue of Your Father: Disentangling “American” Work Ethic and Professional Curiosity
• 7. “Embodied Action” as Precarious Process: Writing Productivity at the Intersection of Crip Self-Care and Academic Contingency
• 8. Showing Up: Una Manera sobre Writing Process
• 9. Writing Queerly: Honoring Fragmented and Embodied Identities in Composition
• 10. Transformative Practices: Black Women Exist Beyond Our Ability to Produce
• 11. Undergraduates and Faculty Writing as Partners
• 12. The School Bus Never Came: How Crisis Shapes Writing Time
• 13. (Intra-)Active Notebooking as Becoming
• 14. Externalized Process and Writing Tools
• Index
• About the Authors