Writing has always been connected to technology. Following the formation of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), cultural studies flourished in writing and communications classrooms because of activities related to the nexus between rhetoric and composition, communication theory, emergent technological mediums and cultural politics. The idea that the rise of cultural studies is inextricably connected to rhetoric and composition studies comes directly from praxis: the composition classroom. For as every teacher knows, writing cannot be divorced from culture. According to Robert Connors, beginning in the 1940s, a "communications" movement in general education forged a relationship between Speech and English scholars, helping them to recognize that there was a rhetorical tradition. General categories of study in popular culture--magazines, comic books, film, radio and television--had been discussed at CCCC since the early 1950s. Barriss Mills' ground-breaking article "Writing as Process" (1953) emphasized the use of mass media as a vehicle for stimulus and response, particularly through "propaganda analysis." Further, he acknowledged C. Merton Babcock's notion that the communication process was governed by specific speech communities and by a total socio-cultural context. The trends in the teaching of mass communications and popular arts in composition and communications departments during the 1950s all indicate a shift in teaching methods and research areas that were to take hold in the following decades. (Contains 18 references.) (TB)