摘要：This article offers an overview of a first-year writing course in Aotearoa New
Zealand, Tū Kupu: Writing and Inquiry, which forms part of a core Bachelor of Arts (BA)
curriculum with “citizenship” as a key theme. I situate the course in the context of the
tertiary sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the social and political contexts for teaching
here, analysing how these contexts deeply inform the sense of “the civic” that we engage
in writing instruction. In particular, I account for neoliberal trends in higher education
and the complexities of citizenship, including the multiple and sometimes competing
kinds of belonging, participation, and publics we invoke when we name citizenship as a
teaching focus, and the role of writing in their enactment. My broadest claim is that this
set of complexities is a useful one to illuminate the multifaceted work of writing
instruction in this country. In addition, in three sections, this article works through some
of the institutional and policy demands on writing instruction, the competing accounts of
citizenship that we might engage, and how our assignments, text choices, and workshop
pedagogy model civic engagement and frame writing in terms of inquiry and collectivity,
amid shifting frames and hierarchies of belonging, and questions about the role of the
university.
