Toward a Sociohistorical Writing Ethnography: Community Writing as History-Making

This article makes the case for studying community writing using sociohistorical writing ethnography, an approach that combines ethnographic and historical research methods to produce “deep theorizing” about present writing activities grounded in felt senses of history. Drawing from a study of a community writing group, the author demonstrates how individuals’ writing practices become entangled with a community’s literacies throughout time, highlighting how this methodology provides deeper insight into this research context.