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Drawing on her work in public rhetoric, including “Rogue Cops and Health Care,” Wells discusses how public writing instruction can cultivate students’ public agency while also examining limits within the public writing classroom. The dialogue frames what teachers want from public writing now, emphasizing persuasion, efficacy, and the changing nature of public discourse.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-perennial-question-what-do-we-want-from-public-writing-a-conversation-with-susan-wells/598961/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-perennial-question-what-do-we-want-from-public-writing-a-conversation-with-susan-wells/598961.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"jay","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-20","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does Susan Wells focus on regarding public writing instruction?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Wells discusses how teaching public writing and public rhetoric can cultivate students’ public agency and explores what can and cannot be achieved in the classroom.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does Wells describe the shift in what public writing needs across time?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"She contrasts earlier concerns about understanding why public writing is hard and has a history with the current need to understand what makes public writing actually work and persuade.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What perspective does Wells bring to the question of persuasion in public discourse?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"She argues that rhetoric concerns changing real minds through means of persuasion, noting that some forms of persuasion succeed despite expectations, while others fail despite disciplinary guidance.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},598961,1792487768,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":52,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},3985747858866,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","Current Issue  From the Editors  Weblog  Editorial Board  Editorial Policy  Submissions Archives  Accessibility  Search  \nComposition Forum 36, Summer 2017  \nThe Perennial Question—“What Do We Want from Public Writing?”: A Conversation with Susan Wells  \nChristopher Minnix  \nAbstract: In this interview, Susan Wells discusses the teaching of public writing and the work of public rhetoric as they respond to both shifting and recurring political and social contexts. Drawing on insights from her extensive and current work on public rhetoric, including her foundational essay “Rogue Cops and Health Care:  \nWhat Do We Want from Public Writing?,” Wells discusses the possibilities public writing instruction holds for cultivating students’ public agency, while also exploring the boundaries between what can and cannot be accomplished in the public writing classroom.  \nChris: This special issue has been framed by the question you posed in your article “Rogue Cops and Health Care: What Do We Want from Public Writing? I thought that we might begin by thinking about this question at our current moment. As teachers of public rhetoric, what do or perhaps “should” we want from public writing at this time?  \nSusan: Well, I wrote the “Rogue Cops” essay as a composition teacher. I use the word composition, which nobody does anymore, right? Mostly, I was working in and around writing programs and writing across the curriculum programs. I had a lot of goals in that essay. One of the most substantial ones was just to bring Habermas to Composition Studies as I saw them at the time. Because everyone said “Oh Habermas, ideal speech situations, so boring, so impossible.” I wanted to change that.  \nAlso, I wanted to open windows in composition classrooms and raise the possibilities of other kinds of writings besides an academic research paper—a paper that didn't even have subheadings, let alone illustrations, but the form that we would send our students out into the entire world with a limited mastery of. That desire is probably fulfilled more than any single academic desire I have had because that's not what writing classrooms are like anymore—that's not the way we teach, that's not even the way we describe ourselves. I look at the question more as a citizen at this moment. As somebody who's shocked by our current situation, I've become more politically active than I had been at any time since I was in graduate school probably.  \nThere’s a difference between the kinds of knowledge that I thought were needed when “Rogue Cops” was published and the kinds of knowledge that I feel are needed now. Back when I was writing “Rogue Cops,” I thought we needed to understand something about public writing. What we needed to understand was not all that difficult, not all that complex. We needed to understand why public writing was hard, that it had to be constructed, and that it had a history. Those are all pretty basic things. I think everybody understands those things now, and I wasn't the only person saying them.  \nNow we're in a situation where what we really want to know is what makes public writing work. What makes it actually persuasive, as opposed to just counting as reasonable participation in public discourse? Possibly, this is because we feel that, or I feel that, our situation now is much more precarious in many ways. It's not a matter of teaching students how to become reasonable participants, but figuring out how any writing subject, whoever, could enter into a sphere of discourse with people who were not in our immediate circle and hope for some kind of efficacy.  \nIt's a different kind of desire. In a way, it's a less writerly and more rhetorical desire. You know? That basic thing that Aristotle said was that rhetoric deals with the means of persuasion. It doesn't deal with making true statements or even being the best arguer. It means actually changing real minds that are like your mind—imperfect, situated. I would say that is one gigantic change. It","cbCaigmwLKYBxDAw","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigmwLKYBxDAw","pdf",133795,"English","# The Perennial Question—“What Do We Want from Public Writing?”\n## A Conversation with Susan Wells","[{\"question\":\"What does Susan Wells focus on regarding public writing instruction?\",\"answer\":\"Wells discusses how teaching public writing and public rhetoric can cultivate students’ public agency and explores what can and cannot be achieved in the classroom.\"},{\"question\":\"How does Wells describe the shift in what public writing needs across time?\",\"answer\":\"She contrasts earlier concerns about understanding why public writing is hard and has a history with the current need to understand what makes public writing actually work and persuade.\"},{\"question\":\"What perspective does Wells bring to the question of persuasion in public discourse?\",\"answer\":\"She argues that rhetoric concerns changing real minds through means of persuasion, noting that some forms of persuasion succeed despite expectations, while others fail despite disciplinary guidance.\"}]","The Perennial Question - “What Do We Want from Public Writing?” - A Conversation with Susan Wells | PDF",1792087926,15]