New: SWR Book: Writing Whiteness by Bethany Davila

[ten grrl]

To my many, many wonderful colleagues in the CCCC community,

It is a bit surreal to write this at this time given the de-chartering of CCCC, but I have to celebrate the amazing work authors have been doing with the SWR book series. There are three SWR books being released in the second half of 2026, and I am really excited for each of them to be out in the world helping shape conversations about the teaching of writing. Earlier this week, I got my editor's copy of the first of those books, so this is, then, the first of three celebratory SWR emails I’m going to send out about our new releases this year. 

Bethany Davila’s Writing Whiteness: Uprooting White Language Supremacy in First-Year Writing Programs takes a careful look at the documents and materials that comprise writing program work and teaching composition – course descriptions, syllabi, assignments, website language, and more – to examine how white language supremacy (WLS) takes root in our work as well as to offer practical, everyday suggestions for how teachers and WPAs can uproot it. Throughout, Davila models her own commitment to linguistic justice and describes strategies for working toward the promise of Students’ Right to Their Own Language and our field’s more recent conversations about racial and linguistic justice in accessible, theoretically-grounded ways.

This book provides a kind of “disruptive reading,” as Davila puts it, that I can use to examine my own writing program work and it models a mode of inquiry for teachers and administrators alike. I want to use it to talk with new graduate instructors in my program, and to think with all of my writing program colleagues about how and where we can create better spaces for multilingual and minoritized students’ composing in our teaching and administrative work.

If you are teaching a writing course this coming year, if you are mentoring graduate instructors or directing a writing program, or if you teach a practicum or composition theory course for graduate students, consider assigning all or part(s) of this book! 

• Chapter 1 offers a thorough overview of where and how white language supremacy can take root;
• Chapters 2 and 3 turn specifically to the texts of writing programs (mission statements, course descriptions) as well as assignments and assessment; 
• Chapter 4 examines forms of (in)action;
• Chapter 5 unpacks a range of actions that teachers and administrators alike can take against WLS. 

You can order the book anywhere books are sold, or request that your library purchase a copy for your writing program colleagues and community.

(Image description: Stephanie is holding Writing Whiteness, a green book featuring an image of an ivy-covered building, against a backdrop of the ivy surrounding her own campus building).

warmly,

Stephanie

Stephanie L. Kerschbaum (she/her/hers)

Professor of English

Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric

Core Faculty, Disability Studies Program

Editor, Studies in Writing and Rhetoric book series (NCTE)

Signs of Disability (2022, NYU Press, available in print and open-access)

University of Washington

A-011F Padelford Hall

Box 354330

Seattle, WA 98195-4330

ker...@uw.edu

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