Research

My scholarship is situated at the intersection of literacy studies, composition/rhetoric, and applied linguistics, where it informs critical approaches to language diversity in writing and writing education. I engage with fields and subfields such as second language writing, community literacy studies, and transnational literacy. My research develops theories about how writing practices move across linguistic and geographic boundaries, using qualitative methods to shift understandings of writing away from multilingual writers’ failings and toward their existing and future literate expertise.

My first monograph, Writing on the Move: Migrant Women and the Value of Literacy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), describes the everyday literacy lives of multilingual migrants and the ways their savvy writing practices are recognized or ignored as they move around the world. My second co-written book, Transfer: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research and Pedagogy (Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, July 2023), shows how writers transfer their writing-related knowledge among contexts or languages more generally. My current book interrogates the question the previous two have left me with: how literate movement—multilingualism, migration, transfer—creates a distinct kind of awareness in writers. I offered one response to this question in my article “Multilingual Writing as Rhetorical Attunement” (College English, 2014), arguing that many multilingual writers are especially “tuned” to difference by virtue of writing among languages in their everyday lives. My in-progress second monograph, Literate Mending: Writing Relations in Immigrant Families, offers empirical grounding for that theory by examining multilingual heritage in immigrant families.

Books

Articles and Essays

Book Chapters

  • Lorimer Leonard, Rebecca. “Writing to Mend Literate Fragmentation.” Writing on the Wall: Writing Education and Resistance to Isolationism. Eds. David Martins, Brooke Schreiber, and Xiaoye You. Utah State University Press, 2023: 89–105.
  • Lorimer Leonard, Rebecca. “Feeling ‘Whole-some’: How Transnational Writing Can Mend Literate Fragmentation.” Teaching and Studying Transnational Composition. Eds. Bruce Horner and Christiane Donahue. Modern Language Association, 2022: 190–206.
  • Bruce, Shanti, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, & Deirdre Vinyard. “Locating Linguistic Justice in Language Identity Surveys.” Linguistic Justice on Campus: Pedagogy and Advocacy for Multilingual Students. Eds. Brooke Schreiber, Eunjeong Lee, Jennifer T. Johnson, and Norah Fahim. Multilingual Matters, 2021: 19–40.
  • Lorimer Leonard, Rebecca. “Managing Writing on the Move.” Mobility Work in Composition. Eds. Megan Faver Hartline, Bruce Horner, Ashanka Kumari, and Laura Matravers. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2021: 67–81.
  • Lorimer Leonard, Rebecca. “Literate Resources and the Value of Language.” Economies of Writing: Revaluations in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Bruce Horner, Brice Nordquist, and Susan Ryan. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2017: 161–171.
  • Lorimer Leonard, Rebecca. “Writing across Languages: Developing Rhetorical Attunement by Negotiating Difference.” Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms. Ed. A. Suresh Canagarajah. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. 162–169.
  • Lorimer, Rebecca. “The Rhetorical Potential of Translation.” Rhetoric: Concord and Controversy. Eds. Antonio de Velasco and Melody Lehn. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 2011. 210-216.

Edited Special Issue

Reviews and Short Essays