Bio: Paul Prior

Paul Prior is an Associate Professor of English and Associate Director of the Center for Writing Studies. He has also served as Director of Graduate Student Writing-Across-the Curriculum Programs in the Center and as Director of the Freshman Composition and Academic Writing Programs in Rhetoric. In a series of situated studies, he has explored connections among writing, reading, talk, and disciplinarity. Selected publications include: Voices in Text, Mind and Society: Sociohistoric Accounts of Discourse Acquisition and Use (Journal of Second Language Writing, 2001); Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998); Literate Activity and Disciplinarity: The Heterogeneous (Re)production of American Studies around a Graduate Seminar (Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1997); Tracing Authoritative and Internally Persuasive Discourses: A Case Study of Response, Revision, and Disciplinary Enculturation (Research in the Teaching of English, 1995); and Revision, and Disciplinarity: A Microhistory of a Dissertation Prospectus in Sociology (Written Communication, 1994). Between 1979 and 1989, Prior taught English as a Second Language in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.