Collaborative Writing & Critical Rhetorical Decision-Making in an After-School Spoken Word Poetry Team

While there are many thriving communities of youth writers collaborating as they compose, much of the research on writing focuses on individual authorship, processes, and products. Additionally, although sociocultural theories frame writing as more than a cognitive process, less attention has been paid to how writing is a multimodal act in which meaning emerges from embodied experiences and can be represented in nontextual forms. Drawing from critical sociocultural approaches to writing and theories that position writing as embodied and multimodal, this qualitative case study explores three adolescent writers preparing to perform in a youth spoken word poetry competition. Using data including field notes, interview, and analysis of researcher- and youth-created artifacts, this dissertation will discuss (1) how the focal poets collaboratively authored a group piece reflecting their unique perspectives and identities, including how they took up one another’s voices and negotiated (mis)representations of themselves and each other, and (2) how these poets made critical rhetorical decisions drawing from varied multiliterate resources, including their bodies, in their composing. This study of collaborative and embodied composing addresses an underexplored aspect of youth spoken word communities, and attending to this after-school space on the boundary of in- and out-of-school contributes to deeper understandings of the literacies of youth positioned as “struggling” within school. Finally, implications are explored for educators across in- and out-of-school contexts.