Sondra Perl

Sondra Perl is a professor emerita of English at Lehman College and director of the Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the founder and former director of the New York City Writing Project. She writes about the composing process as well as pedagogical approaches to implementing composition theories into writing practices in the classroom.

Biography

Early life Born in Newark, New Jersey, Perl was the oldest of four children: two boys and two girls. Her father, a businessman, owned a fire alarm company, and her mother was a homemaker. After growing up in Millburn, New Jersey and graduating from Millburn High School, Perl moved to Boston to attend the all-female Simmons College. She graduated in 1969 with a degree in art history.

Graduate work Source: The project explored pedagogy as outlined by what is known today as The National Writing Project. She also spearheaded the CUNY Writing Across the Curriculum program, mandated by the CUNY Board of Trustees in 1999. Along with her studies of composition theory & rhetoric, felt sense, embodied knowing, digital composing, new media, creative nonfiction, memoir, Holocaust, and genocide studies, she specializes in autobiography, biography & life-writing; composition theory & rhetoric; digital humanities, textual & media scholarship; and pedagogy. In 2011, she mentored a Ph.D. student project, The Writing Studies Tree, as a faculty advisor. She retired in 2016. Her involvement with The Olga Lengyel Institute yielded her roles as founder and director of the Holocaust Educators Network and creator of the New York City Summer Seminar.

Methods

Recursive writing process Much of Perl's work in composition theory stems from her skepticism toward the idea of the writing process as a linear procedure. Instead, Perl argues that writing is recursive, or that writers refer back to previous stages of the writing process as they progress to later stages of the process. Writers are constantly rereading their work and assessing its representation of their goals for a particular piece of writing. Perl also argues "felt sense," or the feelings and reactions surrounding the writing manifested when the writer rereads the work, inform the writing process in a way that relies on a holistic sense of the writing already present in order to move forward.

Felt sense Felt sense is a sensation used by writers during the writing process that is difficult to measure. It refers to the way the words flow in a piece of writing and the feelings surrounding the reader's reception to that flow. Perl describes felt sense as the physical reactions writers experience to their writing, such as when they pause while reading their work aloud. It may also represent the experience a writer has when they interact with a topic; what comes to mind when the writer encounters a topic embodies this felt sense.

Think-aloud protocol Composition theorist Janet Emig inspired Perl's use of the think-aloud protocol in her composition and pedagogical research. In understanding the composing process and how students write, Perl employed a think-aloud protocol by asking students to speak out loud as they composed. This method of research offers a firsthand explanation of particular behaviors being performed by study participants. It continues to be used by researchers today as a way to understand the nuances of the writing process that may not appear on paper. It often points to recursive behavior as writers continue to reference previous steps or text from their composition.

Selected bibliography

"The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers". Research in the Teaching of English. 13 (4): 317–336. "Understanding Composing". College Composition and Communication. 31 (4): 363. Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. co-authored with Mimi Schwartz; 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Cengage, 2014. On Austrian Soil: Breaking the Cycle of Hate, A Teaching Memoir. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005. Felt Sense: Writing with the Body. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2004. "From Confusion to Compassion: The Transformative Power of Response Journals." In Teaching the Holocaust. Ed. Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes. New York: MLA, 2004. "Dear Peter: A Collage in Several Voices." In Writing with Elbow. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl Fontaine and Charles Moran. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2002, 253–267. "Early Work on Composing: Lessons and Illuminations." In Perspectives on Writing: Theory, Research, Practice. Eds. Beth Boehm, Debra Journet and Mary Rosner. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 83–98. Composing a Pleasurable Life in Women/Writing/Teaching. Ed. Jan Schmidt. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998, 239–253. Through Teachers' Eyes: Portraits of Writing Teachers at Work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986/1998 (with Nancy Wilson). "Facing the Other: The Emergence of Ethics and Selfhood in a Cross-Cultural Writing Classroom." In Narration as Knowledge: Tales of the Teaching Life. Ed. Joseph Trimmer. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997, 173–190. Landmark Essays on Writing Process. Edited volume. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Press, 1994. "Book Review of An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy, Learning, and Opportunity," January 2007, "Reflections on the Writing Process," (with Elaine Avidon), The Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 1981,