This symposium brings together a range of scholars to consider what economic forces have driven the development of independent writing programs, and how such programs are susceptible to economic conditions and pressures, perhaps even more so than neighboring disciplines in the humanities.

This article explores the emphasis on reading instruction in the classical pedagogical technique of imitatio. It briefly surveys scholarship in literary and composition studies to trace a short history of this pedagogy before turning to contemporary descriptions of reading pedagogy and showing how imitatio interacts with such practices.