Retention and Resistance combines personal student narratives with a critical analysis of the current approach to retention in colleges and universities, and explores how retention can inform a revision of goals for first-year writing teachers.

Retention is a vital issue for institutions, but as these students' stories show, leaving college is often the result of complex and idiosyncratic individual situations that make institutional efforts difficult and ultimately ineffective. An adjustment of institutional and pedagogical objectives is needed to refocus on educating as many students as possible, including those who might leave before graduation.

Much of the pedagogy, curricula, and methodologies of composition studies assume students are preparing for further academic study. Retention and Resistance argues for a new kairotic pedagogy that moves toward an emphasis on the present classroom experience and takes students' varied experiences into account. Infusing the discourse of retention with three individual student voices, Powell explores the obligation of faculty to participate in designing an institution that educates all students, no matter where they are in their educational journey or how far that journey will go.

New directions in thinking about mothering.Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse brings together essays that focus on mothering as an intelligent practice, deliberately reinvented and rearticulated by mothers themselves. The contributors to this watershed volume focus on subjects ranging from mothers in children's picture books and mothers writing blogs to global maternal activism and mothers raising gay sons. Distinguishing itself from much writing about motherhood today, Mothers Who Deliver focuses on forward-looking arguments and new forms of knowledge about the practice of mothering instead of remaining solely within the realm of critique. Together, the essays create a compelling argument about the possibilities of empowered mothering.

Retention and Resistance combines personal student narratives with a critical analysis of the current approach to retention in colleges and universities, and explores how retention can inform a revision of goals for first-year writing teachers.

Retention is a vital issue for institutions, but as these students' stories show, leaving college is often the result of complex and idiosyncratic individual situations that make institutional efforts difficult and ultimately ineffective. An adjustment of institutional and pedagogical objectives is needed to refocus on educating as many students as possible, including those who might leave before graduation.

Much of the pedagogy, curricula, and methodologies of composition studies assume students are preparing for further academic study. Retention and Resistance argues for a new kairotic pedagogy that moves toward an emphasis on the present classroom experience and takes students' varied experiences into account. Infusing the discourse of retention with three individual student voices, Powell explores the obligation of faculty to participate in designing an institution that educates all students, no matter where they are in their educational journey or how far that journey will go.

New directions in thinking about mothering.Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse brings together essays that focus on mothering as an intelligent practice, deliberately reinvented and rearticulated by mothers themselves. The contributors to this watershed volume focus on subjects ranging from mothers in children's picture books and mothers writing blogs to global maternal activism and mothers raising gay sons. Distinguishing itself from much writing about motherhood today, Mothers Who Deliver focuses on forward-looking arguments and new forms of knowledge about the practice of mothering instead of remaining solely within the realm of critique. Together, the essays create a compelling argument about the possibilities of empowered mothering.