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Meta-Generic Imaginings: Using Meta-Genre to Explore Imaginings of Doctoral Writing in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences

This chapter explores how doctoral writing is currently imagined in interdisciplinary life sciences doctoral programs (e.g., biophysics, computational biology) and aims to present avenues for how writing might be re-imagined in these contexts. Conceptualizing writing from a rhetorical genre theory perspective, which views writing as social and situated action, I explore meta-genres that dictate how writing is imagined and enacted in interdisciplinary doctoral programs. Using meta-genre analysis to explore how writing is imagined, talked about, conventionalized, and experienced, this chapter traces how deeply engrained and taken-for-granted assumptions about interdisciplinary writing may have significant consequences for doctoral writers. Imaginations of interdisciplinary writing as “translating,” “simplifying,” and “clarifying” that pervade talk about writing exist in contradiction with how writing is experienced by students. This arhetorical talk about writing serves to occlude the complex, situated, and deeply social negotiations interdisciplinary writers must engage in to work across disciplinary boundaries. In pointing out hidden contradictions between dominant imaginings of writing and writers’ experiences, this chapter suggests that meta-genre offers potential to facilitate a rethinking of interdisciplinary writing. As a resource that encourages writers to critically reflect on how they are situated and how this situatedness impacts their writing practices, meta-genre has the potential to be an empowering resource for doctoral writers to peel away writing’s arhetorical façade and engage in meaningful rhetorical activity.