ABSTRACT
Writing in/across the disciplines represents a movement in the study and teaching of academic writing that has emerged, at least in part, as a response to the recognition of three features of academic writing: that it can be a mode of learning; that it varies by discipline (as well as in other ways); and that facility for writing depends on writers’ sustained engagement with it. However, this movement has also emerged as a response to academic institutional pressures and constraints on the teaching of academic writing, including the relatively recent “massification” of higher education in the USA and elsewhere. As a consequence, it is often conflated with specific curricular and staffing arrangements that have developed out of those pressures and constraints, for example writing courses linked with “content” courses, courses designated as “writing-intensive”, and writing consultants to the faculty. In fact, a substantial chunk of the scholarly literature on writing in/across the disciplines is concerned as much with the design of writing pedagogies, curricula, and programmes, the training of the faculty, and the navigation of academic institutional politics as it is with theories and research addressing the production of writing and the kinds of writing that are associated with the academic disciplines.
