Explores literacy sponsorship at an academy that schooled young Native American men near Lexington, Kentucky in the early 19th century. Presents case studies based on the correspondence of two advanced students who turned their literacy lessons toward a critique of their living and learning conditions. Notes the students embraced liberatory…

Discusses the beginning of the ascendancy of the language sciences in the past 50 years to become the "queen" of social studies. Focuses on contributions by Mikhail Bakhtin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Noam Chomsky, Erving Goffman, and Michael Halliday. (SC)

Promotes the use of oral evidence in composition historiography to guard against overgeneralization and simplistic reduction of composition history to binary oppositions. Defends oral data against positivistic attacks on its reliability as evidence argues for its evidentiary value. (SR)

Examines technical books for women of the English renaissance as a microcosm for studying connections among the emergence of technical writing as a genre, the rise of literacy, expansion of knowledge and technology, and replacement of orality by textuality as a result of increasing knowledge. (SR)

Outlines the emergence of the field of composition studies as a scholarly research discipline in the 1970s. Argues that the development of composition studies is part of a broader intellectual history affecting linguistics and literary studies. Describes the common themes shared by these different fields of study. (HB)

Explains that analysis of leading ideas in 20th century engineering writing textbooks and other primary sources demonstrates that disciplinary discourse conventions develop from an intricate nexus of human motivations, beliefs, and social activity. Explores currents in American social and intellectual history that explain this complex view of…