Multigenre Writing 1

The first time I heard of Tom Romano's multigenre paper was my sophomore year of college. Students were discussing their favorite papers they had ever written, and many of my classmates cited their "multigenre paper from Dr. Romano's class" as their favorite. I didn't know what they were talking about at the time, but when I took my first class from Romano the following year, I was sure to pay attention.

I've been infected with the multigenre bug for 10 years now, and I can tell you, multigenre is not only rewarding to write, it's also rewarding to read. When I assigned multigenre research papers to my college students, I actually looked forward to the day I would take 100 papers home to read. Now who does that with a traditional research paper? Students enjoy the experience too. I knew the assignment was a winner when two of my community college students stopped by my office to find out when I would be finished with their papers. They weren't concerned about the grade--they wanted to share their final drafts with their peer group before everyone left campus for the summer!

A few years ago, I gave a presentation about multigenre at NCTE. One of my co-presenters was Nancy Mack from Wright State University. Nancy was interested in editing a book about multigenre writng at the college level, but when she contacted some publishers, she was told there wasn't a market in higher education for books about multigenre writing.

There are many ways to approach multigenre writing, but I suspect some in higher education resist it because they've seen papers that were too cute. Perhaps they see construction paper sticking out of the sides of a paper and decide it couldn't possibly hold the academic rigor of their research papers.

For my semester paper, I've decided to examine multigenre research papers. Surprisingly, a fair number of the articles I've run across are written by college professors, which negates the book publishers' arguments that there isn't an interest in multigenre at this level. Some of the language to describe multigenre, though, may be part of the problem. In "Learning About Self and Others Through Multigenre Research Projects," Dickson, DeGraff, and Foard (2002) state, "This is not a success story of the uses of multigenre as an alternative to the traditional research paper" (p. 82). When phrased this way, readers new to the multigenre concept may mistakenly believe that multigenre is a way to avoid the research paper rather than present research through multiple lenses.

It's been a few years, so perhaps there is a readiness for multigenre writing at the college/university level. I know education programs have embraced the concept, but what about English, science, history, and art classes? I'll let you know what I discover.