Denise Comer, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Writing Studies and Director of First-Year Writing at Duke University, has worked for over fifteen years with writing faculty who hold Ph.D.s from across the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Duke University’s award-winning and nationally recognized Thompson Writing Program (TWP) is founded on the premise that cross-disciplinary conversations about writing improve the teaching of writing and help students learn how to more effectively navigate the varying landscape of academic writing. This shared endeavor of approaching the teaching of first-year writing as an intellectual endeavor based in disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry have helped earn the TWP national recognition with the 2006 CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence and the 2012 U.S. News & World Report, which commended Duke for “making the writing process a priority at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum.” Comer’s scholarship, which has been published in leading journals, explores writing theory and pedagogy. She has two books forthcoming in 2014 from Fountainhead Press: It’s Just a Dissertation: Transforming Your Dissertation from Daunting to Doable to Done (co-authored with Barbara Gina Garrett), and Writing in Transit. An Anthology with Readings from the Disciplines.

As institutions of higher learning make growing numbers of interdisciplinary faculty hires, establish ever more interdisciplinary units, develop interdisciplinary curricula, and pursue growth sectors such as global and online education, the ability to write effectively across disciplinary boundaries is becoming ever more vital, and ever more complex. The rapidly changing and expanding academic climate lends urgency for students, faculty, staff, and administrators not only to learn how to communicate across disciplines, but also to reflect meaningfully on why they might want to do so. Drawing on David Russell’s activity theory and other scholarship on writing transfer, this keynote address will focus on strategies for and benefits of interdisciplinary communication through writing. During the keynote, Comer will sponsor and facilitate audience participation, thereby enacting interdisciplinary conversation among participants so we can together raise questions and think more deeply about shared and distinct values, expectations, and conventions of writing across disciplines.