Amy J. Devitt

Amy J. Devitt (born 1955) (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1982) is an American scholar and educator most known for her work in genre studies, writing pedagogy, and professional writing. She is Professor Emerita of English (retired) at the University of Kansas where she taught since 1985, most notably as Chancellor's Club Teaching Professor (2007-2020), Frances Stiles Teaching Professor (2012-2015), and Conger-Gables Teaching Professor (2001-2004). Her teaching awards also include the first Kemper Teaching Fellow and the Byron A. Alexander Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award.

Biography

Education Devitt earned a B.A. in English from Trinity University (Texas) in 1977, an M.A. in English Literature and Composition from University of Kansas in 1979, and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in 1982.

Teaching and professional experience After graduating from the University of Michigan with a Ph.D in English, Devitt worked as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tulsa from 1982-1985. Devitt then joined the English department at the University of Kansas, where she had earned her M.A. in 1985, and taught there until her retirement in 2020. introducing the concept of genre sets, clarifying the reciprocal relationship between formal genre markers and recognition of genre activity, and elaborating the pedagogic implications of genre awareness and antecedent genres. These contributions have been documented by scholars Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff and recognized in the substantial citation of her work.

Professional contributions

Major publications

Books Standardizing Written English: Diffusion in the Case of Scotland 1520-1659 (1989), presents a new perspective on the process of linguistic standardization. It demonstrates, through empirical research and theoretical arguments, how language standards spread over time gradually, with significant variation, and at different rates in different genres. Its particular case study is of English written in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the standard was shifting for socio-political reasons from a Scots-English to Anglo-English set of norms. Variation across genres proved as statistically significant as variation across a century and a half, attributable to the contextual variables underlying different genres. Standardization proves a gradual and highly variable process influenced by social and political contexts. Peter Vandenberg has called this article "germinal" and introducing this new concept of genre to the mainstream composition world.

“Intertextuality in Tax Accounting: Generic, Referential, and Functional” (1991) examines the complex interactions of texts and genres within a community as they function to fulfill the community’s needs and reinforce its values. Based on empirical and contextual analysis of texts and interviews, it reports the results of a study on the writing done by tax accountants, examining how the texts within a professional community define and shape the work of that community. Those genres work together as a genre set to define, construct, and perform the work that needs to be done.