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Acknowledgments

As we developed this book, we benefited greatly from the vibrant intellectual community of scholars in Rhetorical Genre Studies, many of whom are featured in this book. We especially thank Chuck Bazerman, the editor of this series and a renowned genre scholar, for his generous feedback and invaluable, expert advice. His careful reading and insightful responses have made this a much better book, helping us to tighten the manuscript and pushing us to consider and to integrate additional perspectives on genre, including international perspectives.

A special thanks to our friend, colleague, and mentor, Amy Devitt, whose seminar in genre theory at the University of Kansas in 1994 initiated and inspired our interest in genre and whose rich body of scholarship on genre and collaborative endeavors with us (conference presentations, articles, and a textbook on genre) have informed and enriched our understanding of genre.

In addition, we have had the good fortune of working with truly exceptional graduate students who have contributed to and deepened our investigations and understanding of genre over the years, with a special thanks to the students in the Spring 2008 genre theory seminar (English 564) at the University of Washington. We are also indebted to our research teams at the University of Tennessee and the University of Washington, without whose collaboration we could not have carried out a large, cross-institutional empirical study of genre learning: Bill Doyle, Cathryn Cabral, Sergio Casillas, Rachel Goldberg, Jennifer Halpin, Megan Kelly, Melanie Kill, Shannon Mondor, and Angela Rounsaville.

We would also like to thank Rebecca Longster for her skilled copy-editing and careful and thorough reading of our manuscript and David Blakesley for his guidance through this project and for his superb editing and production of the book. A special thanks also to Melanie Kill, who generously contributed a comprehensive glossary and annotated bibliography.

Additionally, we are grateful for the institutional support we have received from our department heads, Chuck Maland and Gary Handwerk, as well as our colleagues at the University of Tennessee and University of Washington. Our project was funded in part by the Office of Research Exhibit, Performance, and Publication Expenses (EPPE) Fund, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the John C. Hodges Better English Fund at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, for which we are thankful.

We are especially grateful to our families for their patience and encouragement as we completed this project. For Mary Jo, a special thanks to Dan; and for Anis, a special thanks to Amy, and to Daliah and Aden.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we thank each other. We completed this project while both of us were serving as Writing Program Administrators and directing large programs. But despite the challenges of finding the time and energy to pursue this project, the collaborative process kept us going, creating a shared commitment and intellectual energy that would have been much more difficult to muster on our own. This shared intellectual vision—along with a lot of laughter and good humor—inspired and motivated us to persevere.