John Trimbur is a specialist in composition and writing studies, with interests in cultural studies of literacy and the politics of language in the United States and South Africa.  He has published widely on writing theory and has won a number of awards, including the Richard Braddock Award for Outstanding Article (2003) for "English Only and U.S. College Composition," the James L. Kinneavy Award (2001) for "Agency and the Death of the Author: A Partial Defense of Modernism," and the College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award (1993) for The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary.

He has also published a collection of essays Service or Solidarity: Composition and the Problem of Expertise (2011) and three textbooks The Call to Write (6th ed. 2013), Reading Culture (8th ed. 2012), and A Short Guide to Writing About Chemistry (2nd ed. 2000) and edited the collection Popular Literacy: Studies in Cultural Practices and Poetics (2001). In July and Auguest 2012, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. 

Chemistry book jacket Popular Literacy Reading Culture book jacket The Call to Write book jacket The Politics of Writing book jacket

About

Education

B.A., Stanford University
M.A., State University of New York, Buffalo
Ph.D., State University of New York, Buffalo

Publications

Popular Literacy: Studies in Cultural Practices and Poetics, editor

2001

Service or Solidarity: Composition and the Problem of Expertise

2011

The Call to Write

2013

Awards & Honors

College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award

1993

James L. Kinneavy Award

2001

Richard Braddock Award for Outstanding Article

2003