In this Symposium focused on MOOCs, this journal carries forward a tradition of attending to the technologies associated with composing and the teaching of composing. In the May 1983 issue of "College Composition and Communication," for example, most of the articles focus on composing and include a mix of inquiries, from Jack Selzer's on the…

Design is a rhetorical activity that requires creative thinking in response to difficult situations. That creative work ultimately builds new relationships and new contexts. Sustainable design can become an approach to composition that alters ways of thinking about writing situations, keeping ethical and contextual factors in focus, and…

Individual agency is necessary for the possibility of rhetoric, and especially for deliberative rhetoric, which enables the composition of what Latour calls a good common world. Drawing on neurophenomenology, this essay defines individual agency as the process through which organisms create meanings through acting into the world and changing their…

2011 marks the Centennial of the National Council of Teachers of English, and to commemorate this milestone, CCC will publish two Symposia, one in this issue of the journal, and a second in June. Here we learn from Erika Lindemann about the founding of both NCTE and CCCC; about how both groups have developed; and, drawing from these histories,…

In the Visibility Project, professional organizations have worked to gain recognition for the disciplinarity of writing and rhetoric studies through representation of the field in the information codes and databases of higher education. We report success in two important cases: recognition as an "emerging field" in the National Research Council's…

This piece continues the work of scholars in the field who look to uncover the ideological and textual practices of our dependence on the construct of "race" through racialized metaphors. Analyzing the rhetoric of race in "College Composition and Communication" and "College English" since 1990, I assert that our categorization of what "race" is…

This historical exploration tracks changes in rules concerning figurative language in nineteenth-century composition-rhetoric textbooks. The century's lessening of millennium-long restriction of the poetic allowed not only creative writing into academia but composition as well, as composition at its beginning was intertwined with creative writing.…

In the interest of better understanding the challenges of enacting new pedagogies in the classroom, the following essay focuses on the role of genre and uptake in the relational negotiation of self-presentation. I argue that to bring our teaching practices in line with our best intentions and most progressive pedagogies we need to be aware not…

This essay examines the writing done at the University of New Hampshire in the period between 1928 and 1942. It argues that while there was extensive writing from personal experience, this writing did not perform the "turn" where the writer claims a new form of self-understanding. It goes on to suggest that work with this largely observational…

Uses a journal format to recall vignettes with a personal slant from the history of Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), National Council of Teachers of English, Two-Year College Association, and Open Admissions at the City University of New York. (SG)

Identifies in the formation of United States college composition courses a tacit policy of English monolingualism based on a chain of reifications of languages and social identity. Shows this policy continuing in assumptions underlying arguments for and against English Only legislation and basic writers. (SG)

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…

Revisits the historical contours of the debate over the need for and role of the required first-year course in writing. Argues for the value of the required course in composition as a pedagogical site with the potential to influence large of numbers of students, and for its importance as a site of struggle within the institutional hierarchy of…

Presents three short essays responding to an earlier article in this journal. Considers graduate programs in English, the job market for the Ph.D. in English, tenure-track positions and other types, and what the new educator's duties will be in these jobs. Discusses the "bleak" job market for these Ph.Ds. (PA)

Argues that teacher-researchers should search for ways to accommodate their writing about college composition to broader, nonacademic audiences to clarify and improve the prospects of literacy in democratic culture. Provides evidence of professional writers who have taken up the cause of speaking publicly, if not always ethically, about college…