This presentation is an embodied and personal rendition, situated in the author’s South Asian literacies as illustrative of Southern traditions, and integrating his own empirical research and teaching practices for transforming academic writing pedagogies. The presentation highlights the principles of embodiment and relationality as significant for Southern communities, and contrasts them with texts being treated as autonomous, individual, and instrumental in the European tradition.

The difference will be illustrated through the author’s study of scientific research writing to demonstrate how its entextualization involves the distributed practice of diverse social networks, material resources, and semiotic repertoires across expansive space and time.

The findings suggest an ecological writing pedagogy that draws from situated learning and embodied apprenticeship as practiced by Southern communities.