College Composition and Communication Feb 2026

Crying Censorship Wolf: Prefiguring Contemporary Realities through Disciplinary History

Holly Hassel ; Kate L. Pantelides

Abstract

US higher education faces mounting political pressure and censorship, resulting in threats to our institutional missions and challenges to academic freedom. In this article, we trace two moments in disciplinary history that examine (mis)understandings of how censorship functions: efforts to roll back the Guidelines for Nonsexist Use of Language in NCTE Publications (now Statement on Gender and Language ) and Students’ Right to Their Own Language , both approved by NCTE in the mid-1970s. We draw from the feminist theories of Kate Manne and bell hooks to analyze materials from the NCTE and CCCC archives, documenting the rhetorical and logistical moves employed in these rollback efforts. In doing so, we identify how the exploitation of organizational apparatuses contributed to the subversion of a larger and necessary priority: establishing credible disciplinary boundaries to serve as a bulwark against political encroachment into literacy education. In sorting through these case studies, we offer examination of how misguided censorship accusations can threaten our discipline when actual censorship efforts are enacted by governmental entities.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2026-02-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc2026773404
Open Access
Closed
Topics
race and writing multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Phelps et al. (2010)
    Making the Case for Disciplinarity in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studie…
    College Composition and Communication
  2. Barnard (2010)
    The Ruse of Clarity
    College Composition and Communication
  3. Powers et al. (2007)
    “Anti-American Studies” in the Deep South:
    College Composition and Communication
  4. Sledd (1984)
    James Sledd Responds
    College English
  5. Schulz (1975)
    How Serious Is Sex Bias in Language?
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 1 work outside this index ↓
  1. Malenczyk (2018)
    Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026
    Refusal of Translation: Unsettling Writing Studies ↗
    Hockaday, Jason
    race and writing multilingual writers
  2. Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026
    Literacy Sponsorship, GenAI, and the Entangled Economies of Experiential Learning ↗
    Girdharry, Kristi
    service learning literacy studies multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  3. Rhetoric Review Jan 2026
    <i>Radical Advocate: Ida B. Wells and the Road to Race and Gender Justice</i> ↗
    Matthew Edor
    race and writing multilingual writers
  4. College Composition and Communication Dec 2025
    Contextualizing Reflective Writing for Creating Change: A Cross-Institutional Case Study of First-Year Students’ Reflections ↗
    Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday; Lillian Campbell; Jennifer E. Eidum
    writing program administration qualitative research race and writing multilingual writers
  5. Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2025
    Native Youth Re-Learning Their Language to Story the Future Examining Indigenous Language Revitalization, Relationality, and Temporalities ↗
    Robert Petrone; Adrianna González Ybarra; Nicholas Rink
    qualitative research race and writing multilingual writers