Over the last twenty years, space and place have become increasingly common tropes in composition studies, resonating with the recognition of the social construction of writing and identity. Bridging the divide between composition practice and spatial theory, Rhonda Grego and Nancy Thompson’s Teaching/Writing in Thirdspaces: The Studio Approach articulates an “institutionally aware” methodology called the writing studio, one that seeks a “third space” location outside the usual educational and disciplinary binaries. The writing studio is an “alongside” environment where student writers compose, discuss, and critique their work in a non-classroom setting in order to examine how their own positioning inside and outside the academy influences what, how, and why they write. Grego and Thompson’s book brings to composition a much needed awareness of third spaces, a concept borrowed from postmodern geographer and urban planer Edward Soja.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric