Edited by Paula Carlino
Reading and Writing in the University is edited by Paula Carlino, who is by now a frequently cited, canonical author in Latin American writing studies. The first to introduce the notion of academic literacy to the region, she coined the term alfabetización académica, opening paths for the exchange between Anglophone and Latin American writing studies.
This edited collection brings together the work of several renowned Argentine authors who study writing at the university level. In the first chapter, Carlino argues that the responsibility for higher education writing is shared between students, teachers, and institutions. She urges us to understand that, as complex phenomena, reading and writing should not be taken for granted, and she points out that understanding their peculiarities is critical for the development of comprehensive educational systems. The authors of the following five chapters theorize and reflect on different teaching practices from the perspective of reading and writing as situated social practices, learned in the context in which they take place. In keeping with this approach, four of the five chapters explore experiences of collaboration among academic literacy specialists and faculty across the disciplines. In this sense, this work was foundational in the advancement of WAC principles in the region, arguing that teaching academic literacy does not entail adding extraneous content to the curriculum, but rather constitutes an interdisciplinary pedagogical concern.
