Norbert Elliot

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NewOrleansAChildhood

Norbert Elliot, 2025

New Orleans: A Childhood

Purple Breeze Press, 2025

When Norbert Elliot graduated from his New Orleans Catholic grammar school in 1966, he was determined to claw himself free from his family and the place they called home. Interlacing the history of one of America’s iconic cities with his childhood memories, Elliot explores two hundred and fifty years of intentional cruelty and promised charity. With a focus on disposable lives, his memoir calls into question traditional views of families and places and asks us to imagine the freedom of lives lived on the delicate line between what can, and cannot, be.

Book cover of 'Talking Back, Senior Scholars and Their Colleagues Deliberate the Past, Present, and Future of Writing Studies' by Norbert Elliot and Alice S. Horning

ImprovingOutcomes

Diane Kelly-Riley and Norbert Elliot, eds. 2021

Improving Outcomes: Disciplinary
Writing, Local Assessment, and the Aim of Fairness.

Forward by Anne Ruggles Gere.
New York: Modern Language Association.

“I’m grateful for this collection, hopeful that it will inform new teachers of writing and
new writing program administrators in ways I wished I had been informed when I started
my teaching career, and feel it augments the growing body of work on writing assessment in
multiple contexts.” Neal Lerner, Journal of Writing Analytics

TalkingBack

Norbert Elliot and Alice Horning, eds. 2020.

Talking Back: Senior Scholars and Their
Colleagues Deliberate the Past, Present, and Future of Writing Studies.

Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

“Overall, this edited collection speaks softly to those who have done their time, and
boldly to those entering the field. There will never be another collection in our field like
this, nor could there be. I feel so thankful for this curation of voices before the voices
become echoes.” Heidi M. Williams, Community Literacy Journal

EarlyHolistic

Richard Haswell and Norbert Elliot. 2019.

Early Holistic Scoring of Writing: A Theory,
A History, A Reflection.

Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

“This book will establish writing assessment as terrain occupied by writing studies
scholars. The authors are pioneering a way of viewing history that is important to writing
assessment and its methodologies.” Diane Kelly-Riley, University of Idaho

WritingAssessment1

Mya Poe, Asao B. Inoue, and Norbert Elliot, eds. 2018.

Writing Assessment, Social
Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity. Perspectives on Writing.

Fort Collins,
Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado.

“Instead of (re-)discovering and (re-)building equitable assessment principles and
structures through isolated initiatives at particular classrooms or institutions, program
administrators, curriculum developers, and instructors can turn to this book as a cohesive,
comprehensive starting point for reorienting assessment toward student opportunity.”
Holly Shelton, Composition Forum

VeryLikeAWhale

Edward M. White, Norbert Elliot, and Irvin Peckham. 2015.

Very Like a Whale: The
Evaluation of Writing Instruction.

Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

Winner of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication Award
for Excellence in Program Assessment
“This book provides a vision of how to work with classroom teachers and other writing
professionals to help them develop assessment programs that will have the power to
transform their classrooms, their schools, their districts, and perhaps even their
provincial/state and national education systems.” David Slomp, Assessing Writing.

High Def Book Cover of VeryLikeAWhale by Norbert Elliot and Edward M White and Irvin Peckham

HenryChauncey

Norbert Elliot. 2014

Henry Chauncey – An American Life.

New York: Peter Lang.

“Readers of this book will find the essence of good biography: the life, the work, and the
times intersect so well that each illuminates the other. Linking the man and his career to
a particular era—and then writing the story gracefully—is what makes the biographer’s
job hard to achieve but fun to read. This book should find a grateful audience beyond
my fellow historians.” Robert L. Hampel, University of Delaware

WritingAssessment2

Norbert Elliot and Les Perelman, eds. 2012.

Writing Assessment in the 21st Century:
Essays in Honor of Edward M. White

Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press

“As any book honoring an exemplary scholar like Ed White should be, this robust
volume is notable in the breadth of its coverage, the depth of its insights, and the
rigor of its methods.” Chris Blankenship, Journal of Teaching Writing

I am Professor Emeritus of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology. I collaborate with colleagues in writing studies and related fields, and I am co-founder of Purple Breeze Press. Learn more about my work by clicking the button below.

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