Writing as Self-Design : Finding Voice and Agency Through Composition

Most composition textbooks begin with skills like thesis writing and paragraph structure. This one begins with a person.

Writing as Self-Design is a transformative textbook in which students examine control of information and discover their agency in meaning-making. Informed by neuroscience, rhetorical theory, digital literacy, and composition pedagogy, this book challenges students to question how meaning is made, filtered, and constrained in the digital age, and to develop their unique voices through composition strategies that reclaim writing as an act of self-design. It is a book which responds to the technological landscape in which we find ourselves.

Rather than convincing students of the value of research and writing, Writing as Self-Design allows them to discover their own emotional value through enhanced agency in inquiry and resistance. Through this textbook, composition becomes a space in which students question information control, the hedonic cycle of passive consumption, and their greater agency in creativity and intentional design. Recognizing the ubiquity of tools like AI, this book encourages critical examination of how and why they are used. Students engage with algorithmic bias, misinformation, datafication, and the influence of platforms like Google, TikTok, and ChatGPT: not just as topics, but as forces that shape the way they think, write, and relate to the world.

The value of Writing as Self-Design will resonate well beyond the classroom, addressing the importance of the critical skills needed to navigate the “total noise” of our media-saturated lives, build personal definitions of success, and rediscover the creative cycle that leads to lasting happiness and fulfilment.