Examines composition at public Midwestern normal schools, the teacher training institutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Argues that the unique social environment, educational aims, and intellectual traditions of the normal school gave rise to attitudes about composition theory, methods, teachers, and students that are…

Examines the sentence-based pedagogies that arose in composition during the 1960s and 1970s (the generative rhetoric of Francis Christensen, imitation exercises, and sentence-combining) and attempts to discern why these three pedagogies have been so completely elided within contemporary composition studies. Concludes that this erasure of sentence…

Discusses the life and work of Marian Wharton, a socialist and feminist who helped shape the English curriculum at the People's College in Fort Scott, Kansas. Develops a rich, historical-situated conception of how the rhetorical activities of women and other marginalized people are a complex interweaving of alliance and antagonism, of free choice…

Discusses how freshman English separated from other courses. Considers many different points of view regarding the development of freshman English versus composition and communication. Ponders what composition would be like in the last half century had it incorporated communication. Concludes that when freshman English won the "Turf Wars" over…

Focuses on growth and development of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students at the undergraduate level between 1941 and 1966. Discusses developments and progress made in the profession of teaching ESL students. Shows how teaching ESL in this period inadvertently contributed to the creation of the disciplinary division of labor that continues…

Recounts the activist history of the Conference on College Composition and Communication in working toward a more democratic valuing of language diversity by both teachers and the public. Focuses on two organizational policies of CCCC, the "Students' Right" resolution of 1974 and the "National Language Policy" of 1988, incorporating articles and…

Examines the long and conflicted history of the writing center. Argues that it is paradoxically the very marginality of the writing center that offers its workers the chance to serve not simply in a regulatory or supplemental fashion, but also to begin to form alternative and perhaps even liberatory modes of teaching. (SR)

Offers an account of three "waves" of writing assessment: objective tests, holistic scoring, and portfolios. Scrutinizes these modes of assessment for how they can serve needs beyond the institutional demands of sorting and selecting students, to discover what they can tell educators about writing, teaching, and courses and programs. (SR)

Presents a critical history of a particular composition handbook: the "Harbrace College Handbook." Argues that such handbooks serve two important institutional purposes: articulating what is deemed important subject matter for composition classrooms (handbooks write the discipline); and shaping teacher and student subjectivities (disciplining the…

Looks at popular music, particularly punk music, and its troubled place in the composition curriculum for college students. Gives an overview of recent eras and the role popular music has played in college courses. (TB)

Examines the work of Janet Emig, particularly "The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders," as a means of gaining historical insight into the process movement in writing today. (TB)

Provides a historical grounding for debates over writing pedagogy and multiculturalism. Examines responses in composition to events in 1968 in order to develop a framework for comprehending current issues in composition studies. Uses E. Corbett's 1969 article "The Rhetoric of the Closed Fist and the Rhetoric of the Open Hand" as a rhetorical…

Explores how insights of the 1970s are being lost, namely, those about why and how the academy thinks about basic writing and students deemed "illiterate" or "remedial." Examines a discourse that the author calls Basic Writing and how it has marginalized basic writing courses, teachers, and students. (TB)

Reviews what has been learned and accomplished by teachers of writing during the nearly 30 years since the Conference on College Composition and Communication was founded. (DD)

Examines the rule that indefinite pronouns (everyone, anybody, each, someone, nobody) take singular verbs and singular pronouns for agreement. Explores its past, proposes a revision of the rule, and suggests modifications in its application based on analysis of its actual use in English. (SR)