Literacy in Composition Studies Oct 2013 RSS

The Legibility of Literacy in Composition's Great Debate: Revisiting "Romantics on Writing" and the History of Composition

Harker, Michael

Abstract

This essay revisits two proposals for the abolition of compulsory freshman English: Thomas Lounsbury’s “Compulsory Composition in Colleges” in 1911 and Oscar James Campbell’s “The Failure of Freshman English” in 1939. It demonstrates how the New Literacy Studies provides a generative theoretical perspective from which to make more visible the assumptions, definitions, and attitudes about literacy that perpetuate the compulsory composition debate.

Journal
Literacy in Composition Studies
Published
2013-10-31
Topics
literacy studies multilingual writers

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