Kay Halasek's areas of scholarly publication include rhetorical theory and composition theory, history and pedagogy. She is author of the CCCC Outstanding Book Award-winning A Pedagogy of Possibility, co-editor of Landmark Essays on Basic Writing and co-author of two writing textbooks. She has published articles in College English, Written Communication, Composition Studies, The WPA Journal, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, and The Journal of General Education.

Her recent publications focus on writing program administration and eLearning, particularly massive distance education in MOOCs. Her current work-in-progress, Metaphors We Teach By: Reflections on Writing Pedagogy in the Age of Big Teaching, turns a critical eye toward entrenched and undertheorized classroom practices, examining their problematic implications for student learning and proposing new approaches and understandings.

Selected Publications

• Graziano, Leigh, Kay Halasek, Susan Miller-Cochran, Frank Napolitano, and Natalie Szymanski. “A Return to Portland: Making Work Visible through the Ecologies of Writing Program Administration.” Writing Program Administration, v. 43, no. 2, pp. 131-151, 2020.
• Clinnin, Kaitlin, Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, and Cynthia Selfe. “Meeting Students Where They Are: Practicing Responsive Pedagogy.” Writing for Engagement: Responsive Practice for Social Action. Eds. Mary P. Sheridan, Megan Bardolph, Megan Faver Hartline, and Drew Holladay. Lexington Press, pp. 225-238, 2020.
• “Habitus, Disposition, and Disruption in MOOCs: Developing Responsive Pedagogy at Scale.” Writing for Engagement: Responsive Practice for Social Action. Eds. Mary P. Sheridan, Megan Bardolph, Megan Faver Hartline, and Drew Holladay Lexington Press, 2018, pp. 209-224.
• “Flipping Professional Development: Engaging Instructor Needs and Changing the Visibility of WPA Work.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2018, v. 18, no. 3, pp. 483-509.
• “Moving from One and Done to a Culture of Collaboration: Revising Professional Development for TAs.” WPA Journal, 2015, v. 39, n. 1, pp. 32-53.
• “A View from a MOOC: How MOOCs Encourage Us to Reexamine Pedagogical Doxa.” The Invasion of the MOOCS. Eds. Steven Krause and Charlie Lowe. Parlor Press, 2014.
• “‘Long I Followed Happy Guides’: Peace, Justice, and the Cultural Scene of English Studies.” Women Rhetoricians between the Wars. Eds. Anne George, Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zeppernick. Feminisms and Rhetorics Series. Eds. Cheryl Glenn and Shirley Wilson Logan. Carbondale: SIU Press, 2013.
• “Theorizing Plagiarism in the University.” College English, 2011, v. 73, n. 5, pp. 548-568.
• “An Enriching Methodology: Bakhtin’s ‘Dialogic Origin and Dialogic Pedagogy of Grammar’ and the Teaching of Writing.” Written Communication, 2005, v. 22, n. 3, pp. 355-362.
• A Pedagogy of Possibility: Bakhtinian Perspectives on Composition Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.