This collection of essays, culled from presentations at the first Thomas R. Watson Conference in Rhetoric and Composition, examines the development of composition as a profession, focusing on the period between 1963 and 1983 when composition changed in a number of crucial ways. Essays in the collection are: (1) "Composition History and Disciplinarity" (Robert J. Connors); (2) "Veterans' Stories on the Porch" (Lester Faigley); (3) "Paths Not Taken: Recovering History as Alternative Future" (Louise W. Phelps); (4) "Composition Research Agendas in the 1960s and 1970s" (Richard Lloyd-Jones); (5) "Early Work on Composing: Lessons and Illuminations" (Sondra Perl); (6) "The Expressive Menace" (James T. Zebroski); (7) "A Brief History of Writing Assessment in the Late Twentieth Century: The Writer Comes Center Stage" (Kathleen Blake Yancey); (8) "Rereading Feminism's Absence and Presence in Composition" (Kathleen A. Boardman and Joy Ritchie); (9) "Is There Still a Place for Rhetorical Historyin Composition Studies?" (Gerald P. Mulderig); (10) "The Developing Discipline of Composition: From Text Linguistics to Genre Theory" (Amy J. Devitt); (11) "Two Disciplinary Narratives for Non-Standard English in the Classroom: Citation Histories of Shaughnessy's 'Errors and Expectations' and Smitherman's 'Talkin' and Testifyin''" (Shirley K. Rose); (12) "Professionalizing Politics" (Richard Ohmann); (13) "Evocative Gestures in CCCC Chairs' Addresses" (Ellen L. Barton); (14) "Whispers from the Margin: A Class-based Interpretation of the Conflict between High School and College Writing Teachers" (Irvin Peckham); (15) "Professing Rhetoric and Composition: A Personal Odyssey" (Frank J. D'Angelo); (16) "Rethinking Research on Composing: Arguments for a New Research Agenda" (Lee Odell and Christina Lynn Prell); and (17) "Intellectual Bureaucrats: The Future of Employment in the Twilight of the Professions" (Richard E. Miller). Interspersed among the book's sections are oral histories collected during the conference. (NKA)