Kathleen Blake Yancey is an American rhetoric and composition scholar at Florida State University whose work on reflection, assessment, and multimodal composition has shaped how the field understands writing in digital environments.
Core ideas
- Composition in a new key: in her 2004 CCCC Chair’s Address, Yancey argued that composition must expand beyond alphabetic print literacy to encompass digital, visual, and multimodal composing. Students already compose in multiple modes — the discipline needed to catch up [@yancey2004].
- Reflection as knowledge-making: Yancey’s earlier work established reflection — the practice of writers examining their own composing processes — as a form of knowledge production, not just self-assessment. Writers who reflect on what they do and why develop transferable understanding.
- Writing across contexts: Yancey’s research on transfer showed that writers carry practices across contexts, but transfer isn’t automatic — it requires reflection and metacognitive awareness of how writing situations differ.
Notable works
- “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key” (2004)
- Reflection in the Writing Classroom (1998)
- Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing (2014, with Liane Robertson and Kara Taczak)
Related
- rhetoric and composition — the discipline Yancey’s work shapes
- discourse community — Yancey’s transfer research shows how writing practices move across discourse communities