Charles Bazerman

Charles Bazerman of UC Santa Barbara's Gevirtz School, Department of Education

Charles Bazerman – Chair of the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research – will preside over Writing Across Research Borders III, the triennial meeting of the organization in Paris during February.

Following on writing research conferences in 2008 at UC Santa Barbara, and in 2011 at George Mason University in Washington, DC, this conference in Paris brings together the many writing researchers from around the world, drawing on all disciplines, and focused on all aspects of writing at all levels of development and in all segments of society. This conference will be not only an event allowing for dissemination of knowledge established by writing research, but also a space to promote encounters among different approaches to writing, and among different writing research communities.

Charles Bazerman will already be in Europe with the title chercheur d’excellence (Researcher of Excellence) at the Université de Lorraie at Metz, attached to the Centre de recherche sur les mediations – communication, langue, art, culture. He will give lectures at Metz and consult with faculty during the winter quarter 2014. During this period he has also been invited to give talks and consult in Geneva, Paris, and Beirut.

Charles Bazerman is a Professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School. His book Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science examines the history and current forms of scientific research writing. In The Languages of Edison’s Light he examines how technical discourses and projects intersect with many other discourses of civic, economic, and cultural life. His recent volumes A Rhetoric of Literate Action and A Theory of Literate Action put together his understanding of writing developed over the last forty years. Other books and articles consider aspects of academic and professional writing, writing across the curriculum, the role of writing in social organization, the lifespan development of writing skills, and the relation between writing and cognitive development.

He has also written many textbooks for teaching university reading and writing and the relation between them. He has edited the Handbook of Research on Writing and numerous other research collections and series. He has been Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and is founder and chair of the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research.