Rhetoric Review Mar 1988

Romantics on writing: Liberal culture and the abolition of composition courses

David R. Russell Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne

Abstract

In the century or so that required freshman composition courses have been in existence, critics have often called for their abolition. Indeed, no other subject of study in the university has been so persistently and bitterly attacked, as historians have often noted (Berlin, Rhetoric; Greenbaum; Parker). I cannot in this space recount the whole history of the attempts to abolish composition courses. Instead I will analyze the arguments that the abolitionists used to attack the courses, and in doing so explore the assumptions which lay behind their opposition-assumptions which continue to fuel the conflicts within English studies: between teachers of literature and of literacy, between exponents of competing theories of the composing process, and, finally, between those who favor and those who oppose wider access to the academic community. Though English departments were founded at the close of the nineteenth century largely to teach writing, and freshman composition has been the most constant part of a shifting elective curriculum ever since, composition courses have rarely been a full part of the university. Dismissed as remedial or preparatory, condemned as ineffective, passed down like old clothes to

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
1988-03-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198809359159
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Open Access
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Topics
rhetorical criticism first-year composition writing pedagogy literacy studies
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Harker (2013)
    The Legibility of Literacy in Composition's Great Debate: Revisiting "Romantics…
    Literacy in Composition Studies

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  35. This study was supported by a grant from the Indiana University‐Purdue University at Fort Wayne Research and …
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