<div> <P style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">In<I> Writing Genres,</I> Amy J. Devitt examines genre from rhetorical, social, linguistic, professional, and historical perspectives and explores genre's educational uses, making this volume the most comprehensive view of genre theory today.</p> <P style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><I>Writing Genres</I> does not limit itself to literary genres or to ideas of genres as formal conventions but additionally provides a theoretical definition of genre as rhetorical, dynamic, and flexible, which allows scholars to examine the role of genres in academic, professional, and social communities. <I></I></P> <P style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><I>Writing Genres</I> demonstrates how genres function within their communities rhetorically and socially, how they develop out of their contexts historically, how genres relate to other types of norms and standards in language, and how genres nonetheless enable creativity. Devitt also advocates a critical genre pedagogy based on these ideas and provides a rationale for first-year writing classes grounded in teaching antecedent genres. <I></I></P> <P style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </P> <P style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><B></B> </P></DIV>