My own doctoral training is in English and I’ve published a monograph, a few articles, and a book of poetry on the life of nineteenth-century social reformer, Sarah Grimke, as well as two edited volumes. Through working with academics in a wide variety of social science and humanistic fields in the last 15 years, I’ve learned much about the writing conventions in those disciplines. But my feedback is not based on disciplinary expertise. That is the role of peer readers. What I contribute is expertise is about writing itself and rhetorical strategies of argumentation and persuasion.
Graduate programs still tend to pay scant, if any, real attention to teaching academics how to write tight, sustained, compelling arguments.