The first chapter is a literature review that overviews the past five decades of transfer research to fully describe the gap my study addresses. In doing so, I demonstrate that transfer research in writing studies has been focused on university contexts, undergraduate student populations, and the cognitive functions that motivate transfer. These contexts, important as they are, only represent a small fraction of the transfer equation. I then overview my survey and site of study, a senior living community in Cincinnati.

The second chapter highlights the experiences of my first participant, Ann, a 76-year-old retired social worker and tenured professor, who used writing to learn techniques to develop her religious identity across her life. The chapter focuses on the memoir she wrote in her late-60s and early-70s while enrolled in an MFA program where, during the writing process, she began to question her religious values and beliefs. Her experience illustrates that personal writing is a vital tool for identity formation and knowledge construction, particularly given that the process of staking her religious identity is one that has taken her "all her life." Her experience also demonstrates how curiosity is a generative emotion for learning transfer.

The third chapter examines my next participant, Michelle, an 80-year-old retired retail advertiser and copywriter. Michelle learned valuable professional writing skills in her job, like identifying how to effectively sell a message to an audience "in three words or less."  In her case, obligation (e.g. writing to get paid) was her primary emotion for writing; however, obligation is a generative affect for her, not a limiting one. Such a finding prompts us to rethink resignation in learning. Today, she continues to use her learned professional skills in her self-sponsored creative writing that aid in her self-growth. Her transfer demonstrates that work-integrated writing and learning can be another primary vehicle for shaping one's identity and disposition towards writing across a life.

The fourth chapter focuses on my final participant, Henry, an 84-year-old retired longshoreman and worplace safety inspector. I examine Henry's civic writings, which began in the 1960s during the escalation of the Vietnam War, and how his learning transfer is a deeply cultural process entangled with larger social structures, ideologies, and forces. This chapter shows that the trajectory of society textures his experiences of learning and writing, and how feelings of fearful hope can guide writing and learning.

The fifth chapter concludes with pedagogical implications. I provide specific methods for how the case study data can be applied to writing pedagogy and teaching-for-transfer frameworks, with an emphasis on helping students see transfer as recursive and affectively-driven across a lifetime.