College Composition and Communication Jun 2022

Archiving Our Own: The Digital Archive of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas at Austin, 1975–1995

Mark Garrett Longaker ; Nate Kreuter ; Stephen Kwame Dadugblor ; Hannah Foltz ; Tristin Brynn Hooker ; Martha Sue Karnes ; Bethany Caye Radcliff ; KJ Schaeffner ; Kiara Walker

Abstract

As the discipline of rhetoric and composition engages archival studies, we must not only theorize and narrate primary-source research, but also build archival exhibits. Describing our effort to construct a digital exhibit of primary source material relevant to the history of writing instruction at the University of Texas at Austin 1975–1995 (RhetCompUTX, rhetcomputx.dwrl.utexas.edu), we explain how this project speaks to current historiographic debates about the status and the shape of the discipline. We argue that, to make the shift towards an institutional-material perspective, historians and scholars in rhetoric and composition will need to build our own archives of primary-source material, archives that feature four types of items: items relevant to classroom practice, items documenting the institutional circumstances, items recording the disciplinary conversation, and items capturing the political situation. RhetCompUTX not only features all four types of items, but also encourages the user to see the relations among these layers of practice. By describing this exhibit, by summarizing its argument, and by explaining how we described and assembled its items, we encourage other researchers to build similar archival exhibits and to move towards institutional-material historiography.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2022-06-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc202232018
Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (13)

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    Turning Archives into Data: Archival Rhetorics and Digital Literacy in the Comp…
    College Composition and Communication
  2. Rawson (2018)
    The Rhetorical Power of Archival Description: Classifying Images of Gender Tran…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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    Pathways to Freedom: From the Archives to the Street
    College Composition and Communication
  4. Ritter (2018)
    With “Increased Dignity and Importance”: Re-Historicizing Charles Roberts and t…
    College Composition and Communication
  5. Rice (2017)
    The Rhetorical Aesthetics of More: On Archival Magnitude
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
Show all 13 →
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    Prototypical Reading: Volume, Desire, Anxiety
    College Composition and Communication
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    College Composition and Communication
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    College Composition and Communication
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    College Composition and Communication
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    College Composition and Communication
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    College Composition and Communication
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Also cites 14 works outside this index ↓
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     ↗
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CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →

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