Rhetoric Review

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October 2023

  1. Polyvalent Practices and Heteropraxis as Heuristic: A Survey of Doctoral Examination Processes in Rhetoric and Composition
    Abstract

    While scholarship in rhetoric and composition has deliberated its disciplinary identity, we do not yet have a current account of how pluralistic approaches to curriculum at the doctoral level professionalize graduate students as teachers, researchers, and future faculty.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2023.2269022

October 2015

  1. Beyond the “Foreign” Language Requirement: From a Monolingual to a Translingual Ideology in Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Education
    Abstract

    This article links language requirements in rhetoric and composition graduate programs to a dominant monolingualist ideology in composition studies. It argues that future faculty can be best prepared to conduct disciplinary work in the context of linguistic heterogeneity through a variety of collaborative pedagogical practices that reflect and advance a “translingual” language ideology.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2015.1073560

April 2013

  1. First Semester: Graduate Students, Teaching Writing, and the Challenge of Middle Ground, Jessica Restaino: Conference on College Composition and Communication. Studies in Writing and Rhetoric. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. xv + 141 pages (with Index). $36.00 paperback.
    doi:10.1080/07350198.2013.766859

January 2012

  1. Rhetorical Education for the Nineteenth-Century Pulpit: Austin Phelps and the Influence of Christian Transcendentalism at Andover Theological Seminary
    Abstract

    This archival study examines the rhetorical theory and writing pedagogy of Austin Phelps, an accomplished nineteenth-century preacher and professor of sacred rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary. In disclosing Phelps's contributions to nineteenth-century rhetorical theory and pedagogy at the first graduate seminary in the United States, this article highlights the ways that Phelps's melding of American transcendentalist thought and Christian orthodoxy enabled him to adapt nineteenth-century rhetorical theory and pedagogy in important ways. By demonstrating the extent to which Phelps's discussions of practical rhetorical wisdom and experiential preaching complicate documented trends in rhetorical education at American colleges during the nineteenth century, this research aims to bring out a layer of the curriculum that other histories of writing instruction during the nineteenth century have not thoroughly investigated.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2012.630951

March 2011

  1. Back-Tracking and Forward-Gazing: Marking the Dimensions of Graduate Core Curricula in Rhetoric and Composition
    Abstract

    The discipline of rhetoric and composition is experiencing a change in its core curricula as graduate programs are replacing a traditional set of core courses with a more customizable, elective plan of study that focuses on specializations. Graduate student dissertations predict the flow and direction of the field, determining curricular change. Programs are also being responsive to a trend in the listing of specialist positions in the MLA JIL. The 2000 and 2008 Rhetoric Review surveys of graduate curricula as well as the authors' most recent survey results reveal a change in values from general to more specialist curricula.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2011.552383

December 2010

  1. Situating Ourselves: The Development of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition
    Abstract

    The discipline of rhetoric and composition is often defined by binaries: rhetoric/composition, teaching/practice. Our doctoral programs, however, occupy space at both ends of the spectrum through the simultaneous emphasis on composition pedagogy and rhetorical theory. The changing curricula in doctoral programs offer a unique lens through which to interpret some of the forces that have shaped rhetoric and composition as it has developed in the past fifty years. Examining the curricula highlights how our disciplinary identity has been shaped, at least in part, by our various institutional locations.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2011.530114

September 2010

  1. Opening a Dialogue about Religious Restraint in Graduate Professionalization
    Abstract

    Evangelical-Christian graduate students negotiate identities that separate their religious and academic communities of practice. Drawing on bell hooks's notion that marginalized groups must speak for themselves, this essay argues that evangelical graduate students in composition studies must seek involvement in formal conversations on writing, through journal articles, presentations, and appropriate venues in ways that embody rather than restrain their evangelical identities. In order for these students to seek such involvement, it is imperative that graduate instructors begin a dialogue about the potential ways in which restraint impacts students in our efforts to acculturate them into composition.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2010.510062

September 2009

  1. Rhetorical Cues and Cultural Clues: An Analysis of the Recommendation Letter in English Studies
    Abstract

    Analysis of a collection of contemporary recommendation letters for admission to a PhD program in English studies revealed differences in length, level of specificity, and rhetorical appeals that applied much more strongly to candidates' acceptance status than to gender. Across both status and gender groupings, however, candidates were frequently appraised through economic metaphors, indicating a disciplinary culture that dually approaches graduate students as immediate sources of labor and as the future of the profession. Findings from these letters should promote continued conversation about disciplinary culture and clearer guidelines for those writing and requesting recommendation letters.

    doi:10.1080/07350190903185064

March 2009

  1. Rhetorical Hiccups: Disability Disclosure in Letters of Recommendation
    Abstract

    This article positions letters of recommendation as important and troubling indicators of faculty beliefs about diversity and access in higher education. I focus on the disclosure of disability, both by examining the history of disclosing stigmatized difference and by analyzing five letters of recommendation for an aspiring graduate student with a traumatic brain injury. I suggest that faculty must revise their letter-writing practices and engage in a type of rhetorical forecasting that questions well-intentioned disclosures of difference and imagines how various letters form a composite sketch of a candidate.

    doi:10.1080/07350190902740042
  2. Rogerian Principles and the Writing Classroom: A History of Intention and (Mis)Interpretation
    Abstract

    Abstract During WWII psychologist Carl Rogers introduced a verbal counseling technique that could be utilized by clergy, teachers, and USO workers to help veterans overcome problems of readjustment. Rogers's arhetorical principles were adapted for the writing classroom by Young, Becker, and Pike—an adaptation that later led composition historian James Berlin to misinterpret the implementation of Rogers's principles in his study of a WWII communication program. These misinterpretations of Rogers's original intent have resulted in debate over the rhetorical or arhetorical nature of Rogerian rhetoric and have led to an inaccurate association between Rogerian rhetoric and expressivist and therapeutic writing. Notes 1My thanks to RR reviewers Paul Bator and Janice Lauer for their detailed and helpful revision recommendations, and to my colleagues Robin Veder and Mary Richards for their generous advice on early drafts. 2 Rhetoric and Reality is required reading for many PhD programs in rhetoric and composition and as such has informed, and continues to inform, a majority of scholars in the field. Sharon Crowley cites Rhetoric and Reality as the source for her statement that "[o]ne truly radical communication skills program … was implemented at the University of Denver" (Composition 172). And David Russell refers to Rhetoric and Reality several times in support of his treatment of communications courses and expressivist writing instruction. 3Although Young, Becker, and Pike defer to Anatol Rapoport's Fights, Games and Debates as a foundation for their theory, Rapoport is rarely mentioned as the initiator of either the strategies for or the terms Rogerian argument or Rogerian rhetoric. 4See Halasek; Bator; Hairston; and Ede. 5It is now (many years following the publication of the Rogers and Young et al.'s discussion) possible for Rogers's strategy of "listening" to a reader's point of view to succeed in a synchronous online chat environment, where a writer has a present/absent audience, and the reader is capable of presenting immediate feedback to the writer. 6Young, Becker, and Pike insist that the other two prongs of their Rogerian argument strategy for writers are an alternative to conventional argument, but their proposal of delineating "the area within which he believes the reader's position to be valid" and convincing the reader that he and the writer have "moral qualities (honesty, integrity, and good will)" in common seem little more than a watered-down version of Aristotle's very conventional appeal to ethos (275). 7Rogers did later validate his person-centered approach through the formation of the Carl Rogers Institute for Peace, an organization that helped ease social tensions in such troubled areas as Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Central America. Perhaps it was this successful approach to social and political conflict resolution that initially attracted Young et al. to Rogers's principles and convinced them to attempt an adaptation of those same principles as an alternative to the agonistic type of argument taught in the writing classroom. 8The conventions of the Institute of General Semantics state that the term general semantics is not capitalized. 9In his introductory chapter to Rhetoric and Reality, Berlin does identify the use of general semantics as "a device for propaganda analysis" (10) and does give Denver credit for promoting "cooperative rather then competitive thinking" (101). 10Brigadier General Elliot D. Cooke conducted a study for the War Department in the spring of 1943 and concluded that "nearly as many men were being discharged from the Army as were entering through induction stations" due to "a thing called psychoneurosis" (11). By 1946 at least 40 percent of men receiving pensions for a physical disability were labeled as psychoneurotics, but only 10 percent of that 40 percent had seen combat. 11Archival evidence from the University of Denver reveals that enrollment rose "by 57 percent compared to the pre-war enrollments of 1939" and "the percent of Veterans on campus rose to 60 percent" (Zazzarino). 12Elbow sees the terms expressivist or expressionist as problematic and credits them both as terms of "disapproval" coined by Berlin. In defining the terms as "writing that expresses what I feel, see, think," Elbow concludes that they are "indistinguishable from any other kind of writing" ("Binary Thinking" 20). 13See also Halasek for an insightful analysis of ways in which Elbow's "Believing Game" can be applied to Rogerian principles.

    doi:10.1080/07350190902740034

September 2008

  1. Portrait of the Profession: The 2007 Survey of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition1: Available at
    Abstract

    Abstract Notes 1The 2007 Survey of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition was approved by the New Mexico State University Institutional Review Board on April 18, 2007, Human Subject Application #219 (Exempt Pre). 2Consistent with earlier surveys, we use the term rhetoric and composition as a commonplace to signify the variety of programs profiled, including those that emphasize technical and professional communication or those that offer an English degree with emphasis in rhetoric and composition. 3The 1994 survey included two Canadian programs (Simon Fraser University and University of Waterloo). Neither appear in the 2000 nor the 2007 surveys.

    doi:10.1080/07350190802339234

April 2006

  1. How Seriously Are We Taking Professionalization? A Report on Graduate Curricula in Rhetoric and Composition
    Abstract

    This essay analyzes curricula and textbooks currently used in graduate programs in rhetoric and composition. Drawing on data from a web-based survey of 592 faculty in rhetoric and composition, we raise two main questions: How adequately are graduate students being prepared for their future professional lives, and should professionalization be a primary goal in graduate education?

    doi:10.1207/s15327981rr2502_5

October 2005

  1. Building a Dinosaur from the Bones: Fred Newton Scott and Women's Progressive Era Graduate Work at the University of Michigan
    Abstract

    Abstract This article explores archival information about the University of Michigan's Progressive Era graduate programs as they pertained to the female graduate students in rhetoric. The article explores the reasons why women went to the University of Michigan to study rhetoric, the influences on the program, how the women got there, and how the program influenced their later teaching. Finally, the article notes that the University of Michigan's graduate program in rhetoric merits more exploration.

    doi:10.1207/s15327981rr2404_2

October 2003

  1. Embedded Traditions, Uneven Reform: The Place of the Comprehensive Exam in Composition and Rhetoric PhD Programs
    Abstract

    Abstract Sound doctoral pedagogy, in addition to other forms of professionalization in PhD work, is essential in nurturing future generations of scholars in composition and rhetoric. Using the comprehensive exam as a focal point, this article identifies absences and contradictions in the field's approach to evaluating the competency of doctoral students.

    doi:10.1207/s15327981rr2204_4

January 2003

  1. On Argument, What Some Call "Self-Writing," and Trying To See the Back Side of One's Own Eyeballs
    Abstract

    (Editor's Note: Jim W Corder submitted the following essay to Rhetoric Review in 1996. The essay was accepted for publication but never published because of uncompleted correspondence and manuscript preparation. We decided to typeset and format this essay in order to bring to readers this first posthumous Corder essay, convinced that it is an important addition to his rhetorical canon. Introducing the essay is a contextual note by Keith D. Miller, who like this editor, is a former graduate student of Corder's.)

    doi:10.1207/s15327981rr2201_3

January 2002

  1. Future Perfect: Administrative Work and the Professionalization of Graduate Students
    doi:10.1207/s15327981rr2101_3

October 2001

  1. The Outreach of an Idea
    Abstract

    Having come of age before poststructuralism got its toehold on the university, I had the pleasure of discovering uncertainty at my own pace. Even as late as 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania, the war in Vietnam and the one on Philadelphia's streets had done little to disturb the work going on inside our classrooms where eminent literary historians were still trying to hold their own against the new critics. Yet even then, something else was in the offing. Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism-required reading in our proseminar for new graduate students-provided a strange counterpoint to the close readings we were struggling with in other classes under the influence of faculty subversives. Abandoning the particularity of a given poem to meet the anagogic Frye on loftier heights left us breathless, but we were certain, despite our exhaustion and exhilaration, that Frye's more theoretical speculations were not our main business. Neither were historical schemes that omitted the reading of literature. Our main business was the poem itself. Despite what people say now, it never occurred to us back then that we could get our reading of a given poem exactly right, or that there was only one reading, or that everything we needed to know was there in the poem. We did know, however, that some readings were better than others because they accounted for more of what was there. Our readings had an inherent obligation in them to account for a poem's beauty and to consider that beauty as a way of speculating about the poem's meaning. We acknowledged a hierarchy of value and had a yen for aesthetic pleasures. We were not troubled that we knew too

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2001.9683390

September 2000

  1. Kairosrevisited: An interview with James Kinneavy
    Abstract

    In the spring of 1998, Richard Leo Enos, as chair of the Lorraine Sherley lecture series, invited James Kinneavy and Linda Ferreira-Buckley to speak to the faculty and students at Texas Christian University. As a graduate student working on a dissertation involving kairos and American literature, I saw in Professor Kinneavy's arrival a significant opportunity to clarify some of the ideas I had been considering. In particular, I had read Kinneavy's article on kairos as a Neglected Concept and saw in his ideas a great potential for the integration of literary and rhetorical studies. Nonetheless, I felt Professor Kinneavy had failed to address fully the transcendental aspect of kairos (best articulated by Paul Tillich) that, I felt, was central to the type of interdisciplinary work I was interested in pursuing. When I approached Kinneavy at TCU, then, I was, truth be told, on a naive mission to right a wrong I felt he had committed. Needless to say, I was quickly disabused of my perception. Professor Kinneavy and I began a conversation on the complexities of kairos, and he carefully illustrated the significance of the term to both rhetoric and literature. Most importantly Kinneavy asserted that kairos was transcendent in that it worked across culture lines and that it offered a subtle way of addressing the situations in which rhetoric is born. Indeed, kairos, he argued, actually explained how rhetoric was born. He felt the term expressed how certain cultural movements and conditions united with special moments to create ripe times for the rhetorical act. In this way kairos was a cornerstone for rhetoric. When Professor Kinneavy left TCU, he and I began a dialogue through email and phone that culminated in the interview printed here for the first time. The interview was conducted at his home in Austin, Texas, in August 1998 and was initially meant simply as background research for my dissertation and an article I was writing. My hope for the interview was that Professor Kinneavy would expand upon his idea of kairos and that he would clarify his position in relation to those of other theorists.

    doi:10.1080/07350190009359279

March 2000

  1. The arrival of rhetoric in the twenty‐first century: The 1999 survey of doctoral programs in rhetoric1
    Abstract

    (2000). The arrival of rhetoric in the twenty‐first century: The 1999 survey of doctoral programs in rhetoric. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 233-242.

    doi:10.1080/07350190009359267
  2. Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition
    doi:10.1080/07350190009359268

March 1999

  1. Margaret Cavendish and composition style
    Abstract

    Margaret Cavendish has been getting more attention recently as a controversial, prolific, sometimes brilliant, sometimes unintelligible British writer in latter half of seventeenth century.' I approached Cavendish's writings soon after reading essays in Reclaiming Rhetorica, and I noticed in many of her works an intriguing view of composition style. She advocated consistently that fancy and adornment were appropriate stylistic ingredients in scientific and historical prose. This is especially surprising in that Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Sprat targeted science and history as areas in which fanciful and elaborate writing styles had no place. The rise of moder expository prose, with its idea of mimetic disinterestedness, can, in part, be traced back to these well-known calls for stylistic plainness and purity in seventeenth century. Cavendish, however, was not sympathetic to early moder calls for stylistic plainness. She was well read in natural philosophy and had contact with figures such as Sprat, Hobbes, Walter Charleton, Rene Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's critique of Descartes influenced significantly Cavendish's own antiCartesian, vitalistic view of nature as an intelligent, self-moving, and purposeful entity, not a set of de-animated corpuscles.2 In addition, Cavendish followed closely meetings of Royal Society, and she was well aware of Society's calls for a plain, nearly mathematical style of composition. She attended a meeting in May of 1667, first woman ever to do so, and her attendance drew strong reactions from several members who disapproved of her scientific speculations, her fanciful writing style, and her elaborate clothing as well, as Samuel Pepys notes in his dairy (8:243). Undoubtedly, Cavendish's decision to write scientific and historical prose in elaborate styles was an informed decision, and her style should therefore be seen as a form of dissent directed against her age's escalating positivism. Until recently, Cavendish's writings have been characterized in large part by their excesses, including their proliferating and extravagant stylistic qualities, a characterization that began in her own time. As Henry Perry suggests in his 1918 dissertation on Cavendish, the Duchess's lack of restraint in writing was

    doi:10.1080/07350199909359245

March 1998

  1. Ars Rhetorica en Communitas: Reclaiming the voice of passionate expression in electronic writing
    Abstract

    In this article I intend to share my experiences of teaching writingintensive courses at a large state university with the use of computers.' I want to present my positive experiences to the reader in such a way that will make you want to join me in exploring the myriad of possibilities of teaching with technology: ways that will free us, not constrict us-ways that will enhance learning and dialogue, not provide new ways of shutting down the inquisitive minds of students, but rather of expanding and enhancing all their possibilities and ours. Let me explain at the outset that the technologies I am advocating for teaching writing in writing-intensive literature and folklore courses are largely electronic mail formats and web sites for the distribution of assignments, for syllabi, for student writing, written assignments and peer reviews, and for the position of hypertext archives for class listservs.2 E-mail discussion listserv formats provide an easy way for everyone in the class to communicate automatically with every other member of the class, as well as with the instructor(s).3 Teachers, teaching assistants, tutors, and students can all be subscribed to the discussion listserv; whenever anyone on the list posts a memo addressed to the listserv, all persons subscribed to the list receive a copy of the entry. The listserv owner (generally, the teacher) controls who can be subscribed to the discussion list and who can participate in this electronic forum and how the discussion will operate. For example, in my descriptions below, I will illustrate how every student journal entry or writing assignment goes automatically to the computers of all the other students and myself. However, when I wish to communicate privately with a student or send her or him a graded paper, I can send that message only to that particular student simply by addressing the note to the individual student rather than to the entire list; similarly, when students are doing peer reviews of other students' papers, for privacy, they can post their comments only to the author of a paper, rather than to the entire class. In this paper I am advocating the use of the e-mail discussion list format because I believe in its capacity to better enable students to write well

    doi:10.1080/07350199809389098

March 1995

  1. Agents for change: Undergraduate writing programs in departments of English
    Abstract

    In summer of 1987, Donald Stewart began a survey of English departments, attempting to uncover changes in curriculum that had resulted from changes in discipline. Stewart reported results of his survey in a 1989 CCC article, is an English Major, and What Should It Be? Stewart acknowledged limitations of his study: he was considering only 194 colleges, and only 108 of these actually responded to his request for information beyond catalogue description. Furthermore, many of respondents indicated that their curriculum was constantly being revised. Still, survey provided an important window on English major, particularly with regard to options in creative writing and rhetoric/composition. Stewart found that only 74 of 194 colleges surveyed, or 38%, offered students chance to specialize in some aspect of writing in addition to literature. The majority of English departments surveyed by Stewart (55%) offered only literature emphases, with optional electives from other areas of English. Based on his findings, he made a call for the establishment, in all departments, of options in creative writing, linguistics (where departments of linguistics do not exist), and composition and (193). In our survey of writing concentrations or majors within English departments, we wanted to follow up on Stewart's survey to see if more undergraduates were able to specialize in composition and rhetoric.1 The initial impetus for this survey came from an e-mail discussion among writing program directors about concentrations in writing and rhetoric being offered in their departments. After several writing program directors informally announced new courses and writing concentrations, we thought a review of these changes

    doi:10.1080/07350199509359196

March 1994

  1. Constructing a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition
    Abstract

    (1994). Constructing a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 392-397.

    doi:10.1080/07350199409389044
  2. Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition: A catalog of the profession∗
    Abstract

    (1994). Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition: A catalog of the profession. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 240-389.

    doi:10.1080/07350199409389043

September 1993

  1. Notes: Kenneth Burke at 96
    Abstract

    These notes are my recollections of a trip to see Kenneth Burke on February 19, 1993, in Andover, New Jersey, where Burke has lived for more than 70 years. The visitors were Jack Selzer, who is studying Burke's early work; Charles Mann, a longtime friend of Burke and curator of the Rare Books Room at Penn State's Pattee Library, where a substantial collection of Burke papers is housed; and Rosa Eberly, a graduate student in rhetoric at Penn State. The visitees: Burke and his friend and housekeeper, Ginnie.

    doi:10.1080/07350199309389037

September 1992

  1. Poststructuralism, cultural studies, and the composition classroom: Postmodern theory in practice
    Abstract

    The uses of postmodern theory in rhetoric and composition studies have been the object of considerable abuse of late. Figures of some repute in the field-the likes of Maxine Hairston and Peter Elbow-as well as anonymous voices from the Burkean Parlor section of Rhetoric Review-most recently, TS, graduate student, and KF, voice speaking for a general English teacher audience (192)-have joined the chorus of protest. The charges have included willful obscurity, selfindulgence, elitism, pomposity, intellectual impoverishment, and host of related offenses. Although my name usually appears among the accused, I am sympathetic with those undergoing the difficulties of the first encounter with this discussion. (I exclude Professor Hairston in her irresponsible charge that its recent contributors in College English are low-risk Marxists who write very badly [695] and who should be banned from NCTE publications.) I experienced the same frustration when I first encountered the different but closely related language of rhetoric and composition studies some fifteen years ago. I wondered, for example, if I would ever grasp the complexities of Aristotle or Quintilian or Kenneth Burke or I. A. Richards, not to mention the new language of the writing process. A bit later I was introduced to French poststructuralism, and once again I found myself wandering in strange seas, and this time alone. In reading rhetoric, after all, I had the benefit of numerous commentators to help me along-the work of Kinneavy and Lauer and Corbett and Emig, for example. In reading Foucault and Derrida in the late seventies, on the other hand, I was largely on my own since the commentaries were as difficult as the originals, and those few that were readable were often (as even I could see) wrong. Nonetheless, with the help of informal reading groups made up of colleagues and students, I persisted in my efforts to come to terms with this difficult body of thought. I was then, as now, convinced that both rhetorical studies and postmodern speculation offered strikingly convergent and remarkably compelling visions for conducting my life as teacher and citizen. It is clear to me that rhetoric and composition studies has arrived as serious field of study because it has taken into account the best that has been thought and said about its concerns from the past and the present, and I have found that postmodern work in historical and contemporary rhetorical theory has done much to further this effort.

    doi:10.1080/07350199209388984

September 1990

  1. Overwork/underpay: Labor and status of composition teachers since 1880
    Abstract

    Rhetoric as a college-level discipline entered the nineteenth century as one of the most respected fields in higher education. The teacher of rhetoric at that time was an honored and respected figure, often occupying a chaired position like Edinburgh's Regius Professorship or Harvard's Boylston Chair. When, however, we look at the teacher of rhetoric a mere century later, what a sad change we find. Rhetoric has changed in a hundred years from an academic desideratum to a grim apprenticeship, to be escaped as soon as practicable. Instead of being an esteemed intellectual figure in community and campus, the rhetoric teacher of 1900 is increasingly marginalized, overworked, and ill-paid. Instead of being a senior professor, he, or she, is an instructor or a graduate student. Instead of being sought by students, rhetoric courses are despised and sneered at, and their teachers have fallen from the empyrean of named chairs to the status of permanent underclass teachers: oppressed, badly paid, ill-used, and secretly despised. In this essay I want to examine some of the issues of labor and status that have surrounded the composition underclass, which is with us today in forms that would be all too familiar to the writing teachers of 1900. The creation of the composition underclass cannot be understood without examining an essential change that took place in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was the shift from oral to written discourse within rhetorical training, with its result an incredible rise in the amount of individual academic work that each teacher of rhetoric must do. This overwork, along with the increasing bureaucratization of the universities, allowed the formation of permanent low-status jobs in composition which were not filled by upwardly mobile scholars, who increasingly gravitated to literary work, which was easier, offered a lighter load, and was given more respect.

    doi:10.1080/07350199009388919

March 1987

  1. A survey of doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition∗
    Abstract

    The renewed interest in rhetorical studies during past twenty years has caused many scholars to look back to beginnings of education in English as such programs were developed during latter half of nineteenth century. Most would probably agree with William Riley Parker that it was teaching of freshman composition that quickly entrenched English departments in college and university structure (347), and that freshman program continues to account for size and power of most English departments. But in spite of this, until recently graduate education in English has been focused almost exclusively on literary study. Even as progressive a thinker as Richard Ohmann was at one point moved to write, Literature is our subject matter, and, this being so, an inquiry into state of profession must ask how we stand vis-a'-vis literature (Structure of an Academic Field 359). Although Ohmann subsequently repudiated his statement (English in America 20), such an outlook is revealing of climate existing in most English departments for greater part of twentieth century. By seventies, however, scattered voices began to protest pattern and purpose of graduate training in English. John Gerber argued that traditional literary ignored realities of profession, and that graduate education should be devoted to the acquisition of skills, not merely subject matter (315). He specifically encouraged both M.A. and Ph.D. candidate . . . to make writing, theories of writing, and theories of teaching writing an area of specialization (316). Gerber doubted that such a reform in curriculum would come to pass, and, in fact, traditional literary study has changed little since his article appeared in 1977. But reform has taken place, not by revamping entire curriculum, but by opening up new programs in rhetoric-what is still usually termed option (as opposed to mainstream of literary studies). By 1980 William Covino, Nan Johnson, and Michael Feehan were able to identify twenty graduate programs in English offering a concentration in rhetoric (although some of these programs were

    doi:10.1080/07350198709359143

September 1986

  1. When writing teachers don't write: Speculations about probable causes and possible cures
    Abstract

    If you teach writing, you should write. That elementary but radical insight, probably first voiced by Janet Emig fourteen years ago in her influential monograph, Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders, has become one of the key components of the new paradigm for teaching composition, endorsed by virtually everyone in the profession who consults or publishes about ways to improve the teaching of The reasoning is simple: Teachers who do not engage in the writing process themselves cannot adequately understand the complex dynamics of the process, cannot empathize with their students' problems, and are in no position either to challenge or to endorse the recommendations and admonitions of the textbooks they are using. Nor can they do as many writing teachers suggest and say, Let's just throw away the textbook and work on our writing. The writing teacher who doesn't write is in no more position to diagnose difficulties and offer advice than a soccer coach who has never played soccer. In fact, much of the success of the National Writing Project's workshops for teachers all over the country has come because its leaders have started teachers writing and talking to each other about But just because so many people in the profession now accept the principle and recommend that writing teachers should write doesn't mean that those who believe in the theory find it easy to practice. In fact, if you are one of the new generation of writing teachers who believe strongly that you should write, you may only have made your life more difficult. You are now enlightened, but as a result you may feel guilty and frustrated; guilty because you aren't writing, frustrated because you don't know what to do about it. Probably the first thing you should realize is that you're not unusual. We don't have good data on how many writing teachers don't write, but a few years ago The Chronicle of Higher Education published figures estimating that at least two-thirds of college professors publish nothing after the dissertation. And if you think about the faculty in your department you may realize that few of them seem to be writing, including those who teach composition. So you shouldn't feel as if you are the only sinner and that everyone but you is It's not true. But knowing that you have plenty of company doesn't help your problem.

    doi:10.1080/07350198609359136