Central to the future of rhetoric and composition (or writing studies or whatever label we use) is the service mission of composition: to teach students to write. But that term "service" has not and will not serve us well. This essay examines the limitations and dangers of a service mission and explores a different model, that of a franchise, a…

For different reasons, composition studies and creative writing have resisted one another. Despite a historically thin discourse about creative writing within "College Composition and Communication," the relationship now merits attention. The two fields' common interest should link them in a richer, more coherent view of writing for each other,…

This essay argues that a trend in histories of literary and writing studies is to bifurcate the origins of the fields and so engage in those modernist narrative fallacies described by Jean-Francois Lyotard. Such works limit our understanding of past practices and the longstanding connections between disciplinarity and labor. (Contains 2 notes.)

"Accountability" is widely used in discussions about what should be happening in school, but it is not an appropriate guiding concept for assessments designed to improve teaching and learning. This article examines discussions about assessment for internal and external purposes; it then outlines an alternative frame for assessment that has…

This article argues that tracing multimodal-multilingual literacy practices across official and unofficial spaces is key to moving composition into the twenty-first century. Key to this remixing of the field is a situated framework that locates multimodal-multilingual activities in wider genre, cultural, national, and global ecologies. (Contains 3…

As new ways of creating and interpreting texts complicate ideas of how and why writing happens, the field of rhetoric and composition needs to be more conscious of how our institutional responsibilities and scholarly attention to college writing has limited its vision of writing and literacy. It is time to move beyond consolidating our identity as…

This article synthesizes and extends data from some of the most prominent and promising large-scale research projects in writing studies while also presenting results from the authors' own research. By juxtaposing these studies, the authors offer a complex understanding of writing practices at the high school and college level. Future directions…

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…

Using the data collected by the CCCC Committee on the Major, the authors demonstrate how quickly the writing major is growing, map the commonalities among various majors, discuss some of the problems in developing a major, and raise questions about what a writing major should be. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 8 notes.)

This essay interrogates the concept of "clarity" that has become an imperative of effective student writing. I show that clarity is neither axiomatic nor transparent, and that the clear/unclear binary that informs the identification of clarity as a goal of effective student writing is itself unstable precisely because of the ideological baggage…

Contemporary argument increasingly relies on quantitative information and reasoning, yet our profession neglects to view these means of persuasion as central to rhetorical arts. Such omission ironically serves to privilege quantitative arguments as above "mere rhetoric." Changes are needed to our textbooks, writing assignments, and instructor…

We argue that the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, with its dual emphasis on literacy and occupational skills, can serve as a new model for writing classrooms and writing program administrators. We further contend that the "contact zone" classroom should be replaced with community-based "federations." (Contains 9 notes.)

This essay examines women's commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students' rhetorical education and the "available means" upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement addresses…

As writing across the curriculum (WAC) has matured and diversified as a concept and as an organizational structure in U.S. higher education, there has arisen a need for accurate, up-to-date information on the presence and characteristics of WAC and writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) programs. Following on the only previous nationwide survey of…

This article presents a written version of the address the author gave at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) meeting in San Francisco on March 12, 2009. In this address, the author talks about the wonder of writing and discusses how writing has been considered sacred. Reading and writing are associated with inwardness…