Considers how teaching John Updike’s short story “A&P” to treat issues of class and gender provides practice in reading for multiple meanings. Discusses students’ responses to the character “Sammy” and considers issues from personal response to reading the text. Notes multiple perspectives and ways of teaching “A&P.”

Given their knowledge of the workings of language, few writing center professionals would doubt that material history is always more complex than the discourse that strives to record it. And most would certainly recognize that historical discourse constructs the past at least as much as it records it. Despite this dilemma, writing center scholars recently have given increased attention to writing center history.

Since the