Genre studies and genre approaches to literacy instruction continue to develop in many regions and from a widening variety of approaches. Genre has provided a key to understanding the varying literacy cultures of regions/ disciplines/ professions and educational settings. Genre in a Changing World/edited by Charles Bazerman/ Adair Bonini/ and Débora Figueiredo/provides a wide-ranging sampler of the remarkable variety of current work. The twenty-four chapters in this volume/ reflecting the work of scholars in Europe/ Australasia/ North and South America/ were selected from more than 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies)/ held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão/ Santa Catarina/ Brazil in August 2007—the largest gathering on genre to that date. The chapters also represent a wide variety of approaches including rhetoric/ Systemic Functional Linguistics/ media and critical cultural studies/ sociology/ phenomenology/ enunciation theory/ the Geneva school of educational sequences/ cognitive psychology/ relevance theory/ sociocultural psychology/ activity theory/ Gestalt psychology/ and schema theory. Sections are devoted to theoretical issues/ studies of genres in the professions/ studies of genre and media/ teaching and learning genre/ and writing across the curriculum. The broad selection of material in this volume displays the full range of contemporary genre studies and sets the ground for a next generation of work.
