The Ends of Disciplinarity

O’Neill, Peggy, Angela Crow, and Larry W. Burton, eds. A Field of Dreams: Independent Writing Programs and the Future of Composition Studies. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2002. Print. (Selected chapters)

For this week, I looked at another book that has been on my shelf for perhaps too long. Initially, I was drawn to A Field of Dreams because of the idea that writing programs may be better able to control their goals (both pedagogical and scholarly ones) and address issues of labor if separated from their traditional homes in English departments. In some instances, this has been the case. But the readings that drew my attention the most here were those that argued for more cautious, realistic approaches to separation and ones that raised more questions about the value of such separations than definitive answers or plans.

Aronson, Anne, and Craig Hansen. “Writing Identity: The Independent Writing Department as a Disciplinary Center.” 50-61.

Inarguably, writing instruction more often than not receives the “service” label—and it has for the past century. Aronson and Hansen claim that this ingrained view of writing instruction and indeed writing studies leaves little room for the discipline to develop. In this chapter, they argue that an independent writing program provides the space the discipline needs to gain status and to move beyond its “service” label.

As is the case in a number of selections in this book, Aronson and Hansen begin with a history of their particular context. They teach at Metropolitan State University (in Minneapolist/St. Paul), a university they say “has a tradition of alternative approaches to education” and a unique student body that consists mostly of nontraditional students (51). The tradition and student body fosters considerable educational experimentation and develop, which led to their independent writing program with a core of “academic writing instruction” as well as “a writing center and programs in creative professional and technical writing” (51). They also note that their program receives quite widespread support, including access to scarce financial resources. In addition, they also work in an established WAC program. They are similar in their labor, relying on adjuncts for most of their lower-division courses and tenure-track faculty for upper-division courses.

In terms of identity, they claim their independent status allows them to develop in four key areas. The first is practice, which they identify as application of skills. Their program and their staff make practice a central part of their work. The second area is art, which they use in both its rhetorical sense (techne) and in its creative sense. In the third area of development, profession, they work to promote professional opportunities and experiences for their students. Finally, they address issues of disciplinary status of writing. By being separate, they feel they are more able to develop a curriculum that could meet both the disciplinary goals they had and the institutional needs rather than only the institutional ends.

While I appreciate these final categorizations of the four areas of work they have embarked on—indeed, they seem to me to provide quite a useful heuristic for curricular work in the field—their descriptions of their program seemed to illustrate a climate unlike that which most faculty would encounter if trying to develop an independent program. They are certainly fortunate in the support they receive and the autonomy they are allowed. This goes to highlight the importance of local contexts for such work. Other authors in this collection mention this, but Aronson and Hansen don’t specifically address this. Their claims seem to suggest that the successes are possible for others if they only establish an individual writing program. The successes perhaps are possible, but a whole range of complicating issues exist, ones that their program seemingly has not encountered--or have encountered with little difficulty. And I wonder if the work they describe here is inherently impossible or less possible in a more “dependent” structure.

Deis, Elizabeth J., Lowell T. Frye, and Katherine J. Wesse. “Independence Fostering Community: The Benefits of an Independent Writing Program at a Small Liberal Arts College.” 75-89.

I was interested in this chapter because, while I teach at a mid-sized public university with increasing research mandates, my department is rather small and fairly close-knit—not unlike a department in a liberal arts college. And the type of work Deis, Frye, and Wesse discuss here seems an appropriate fit to the type of work my department would benefit from. The success of their program, they say, is its “strong commitment to flexibility, communication, and cross-curricular faculty involvement” (75). These characteristics strike me as especially important for a small English department in a larger institution as well. Where I do see a difference, though, is perhaps in their ability to generate a broad sense of shared responsibility for student writing instruction as they have been able to muster at their institution. Because my institution requires two writing courses offered through the English department, as well as professional and technical writing courses, the burden of responsibility falls squarely on the English department. But Deis, Frye, and Wesse discuss at some length how their independent program is able to generate this sense of shared responsibility.

As was the case for Aronson and Hansen, Deis, Frye, and Wesse describe a program with quite broad support. As such, they had a conducive environment for encouraging faculty to assign more writing in their courses and developing acceptance of WAC principles. They worked to establish connections with other faculty members, conducted workshops, and otherwise communicated the goals and needs of the program. They make a point to not that they “have a strategy instead of a program, a strategy centered on persuasion” (78). This pint strikes me as especially key, even for those in larger institutional contexts, reminding me of Marie Paretti’s (see blog entry below) claims about the importance of developing shared goals for writing instruction and the importance of communication to achieve that awareness.

They further detail how this shared sense of responsibility has led to changes to the curriculum, including adding courses and revising proficiency exam procedures. I was a little troubled by their discussion of how they deal with grammar instruction, though. They have adopted a rhetorical approach to grammar instruction, but they also require an exit exam which consists in part of fifty sentences students must edit for grammatical correctness. Such an approach, even when coupled with rhetorical grammar instruction, seems to drive home some of the stereotypes of writing as more superficial and mechanistic. That being said, their emphasis on creating a broader sense of ownership for writing seems to be a worthwhile endeavor, though I can see a number of differences for those in larger institutions. Faculty in larger institutions might begin such work in our own departments; again, I do not see much here that requires an independent program per se, so long as faculty network with other faculty and have the flexibility to make some curricular decisions.

Hindman, Jane E. “Learning as We G(r)o(w): Strategizing the Lessons of a Fledgling Rhetoric and Writing Department.” 107-29.

Hindman’s chapter takes a decidedly less optimistic approach than the previous chapters I have addressed. Hers is a bit of a learn-from-our-mistakes discussion focusing in particular on the labor consequences of independence. In short, she argues, independence does not always yield greater labor equity, nor does it necessarily change the views of composition from those outside the discipline.

She begins by noting the concerns about “boss compositionists,” discussing views from Joseph Harris, James Sledd, and Jeanne Gunner. These authors raised a variety of concerns about the potential for tenure-track rhetoric and composition faculty to settle into the pattern of misusing and abusing contingent faculty to further their own scholarly agendas and ignoring teaching. Hindman’s concern with these claims rests on their shortsightedness. One such problem is the sense that separation becomes the only way to reach the field’s goals. This, she says, is a “diversionary seduction” to the reality that these hierarchies and power structures are pervasive institution-wide. It’s not just “literature” that has created these labor issues. This leads her to argue that to work to change the structures, writing studies must develop its disciplinary status to enact any meaningful change. She uses her program to illustrate what happens when a program does not have that disciplinary status. Once her program split from English and had to develop its own curriculum, the inordinate amount of work led many faculty to leave, resulting in an increasingly less experienced workforce. Administrative, teaching, and service duties also reduced the ability of tenure-track faculty to engage in their required scholarship. She also noted that the programs adjuncts “lost office space […], autonomy […], and […] a certain amount of autonomy” (116). Clearly, separation was not the ideal change they had hoped for, the result of powerful institutional structures and demands that limited what the program could do. She recognizes, then, that while professionalization may play into the corporatization of higher education, it may be the best place to begin, as it develops the status needed to challenge the larger institutional structures that cause these labor problems. And understanding these structures provides us with the necessary tools to enact more meaningful and lasting change.

After some of the more rosy (and perhaps idealistic) portrayals of independent programs, Hindman’s pragmatic discussion is somewhat refreshing. At the least, it reminds us that we already work within a corporatized structure with all its binaries and hierarchies. And while being idealistic may be good for the soul, it often does little to change these corporatized structures within which we operate. By learning about and using those structures, we are much more likely to produce (or at least work toward) our disciplinary goals.

Anson, Chris M. “Who Wants Composition? Reflections on the Rise and Fall of an Independent Writing Program.” 153-69.

Another somewhat pessimistic (maybe realistic is better) look at independent writing programs comes from Chris Anson. In this chapter he looks back at the well-documented dissolution of the independent writing program at the University of Minnesota in the late 1990s. Anson goes into only brief details on this program’s reabsorption into the English department. Instead, of tracing the outcomes, he attempts to look instead at the potential causes of this. Through this reflection, he argues this was an example of the power of money and control and not one of ideology.

Once English took back writing, none of the literature faculty had the least interest in teaching composition or in developing its curriculum. Clearly, something beyond ideology was at work here. As he looks back at the development of English as a discipline, he recognizes a move to make composition an extension of literature by imbuing it with humanistic purpose, which he says misses the main goals of composition. But even this didn’t fully explain the situation. Ultimately, he comes to money as a chief concern. Required composition courses generate considerable revenue. After the split, departments at the University of Minnesota became responsible for their own budgets. Without composition revenues, English had considerably less money than it had grown accustomed to.

Anson then considers why his program could not work as it had before once it was back in the English department. He says such decisions must be local, and given the disdain for all things composition in the English department, his local context suggested continuation as before unlikely. But in broader terms, he recognizes the importance of composition for English. It serves a more practical, tangible end than literary studies are able to serve. However, he argues that literature must recognize that “[i]t is no longer possible to run a writing program as a hobby” (166). Because of the expansion of the field, those with background in rhetoric and composition must be the ones to run its programs. And he calls on those in rhetoric and composition to develop the field’s status through its scholarship, pedagogy, and administration and service.

As in Hindman’s chapter, Anson’s pragmatic view forces us to consider wider issues than simply the ideological and historical connections of English and writing studies. Certainly, these are part of that relationship, but as Anson makes clear, so too are the economic and power issues. If we neglect to consider these latter issues, we may long be at the mercies of other in the university, those who may not share our goals and views. Professionalization will likely go far in addressing these issues, but to a certain extent, some in the university may never fully accept the disciplinary status of writing studies. And those are precisely the people for whom greater understanding of our goals would do little to change their minds. I am left with a question I have yet to develop and answer for: then what?

Yood, Jessica. “Revising the Dream: Graduate Students, Independent Writing Programs, and the Future of English Studies.” 170-85.

So far, the readings I have addressed have focused on those working within independent writing programs. Yood’s chapter turns the focus to those studying in such departments, specifically at the point of transition to independence. As she argues, this focus makes us consider in more postmodern (i.e., multilayered) terms the histories and consequences of independent writing programs. In addition, she uses her and her fellow students’ experiences in such a program to address how these changes and multilayered perspectives redefine how knowledge is made in the field.

First, she begins with the importance of reception theory to her argument. This theory, drawing on social constructivist epistemologies, “contextualizes the experience of systematic change and makes visible the reality that, even as we create separate structures or programs of ‘writing’ nd ‘literature,’ our observations and reflections create a new mix altogether” (171). The importance of this for Yood is reception theory’s ability to examine how all involved in disciplinary change respond to the process and the outcomes.

This leads her into a discussion of her and some of her fellow students’ experiences in the SUNY Stony Brook program as it went through these disciplinary changes, which were especially rapid and often done without the input of those most affected by the changes. Their experiences centered, first, on their role as TAs: they were worried about the possibility of losing their appointments if composition was no longer housed in English. But more significantly, in terms of themselves as scholars through their dissertation work, they discovered that their collaborations yielded fruitful boundary-crossings, despite the pressures to specialize. They read each other’s work, offered their perspectives, and pushed each other to ask deeper, bigger questions. This was perhaps directly because of the changes occurring in their program. This strikes me as perhaps a useful model for disciplinary and interdisciplinary work within and across departments. The end result, and a valuable one for us, is that we “need to focus on the process and the products of disciplinary change” (184). This focus allows us to consider more fully the expanse of the impacts of such changes.

Enos, Theresa. “Keeping (in) Our Places, Keeping Our Two Faces.” 247-52.

Enos’s chapter is the shortest in the collection, but it is also perhaps one of the more useful ones to my purposes. She looks at the connection of rhetoric and composition, or more accurately, at the growing disconnection between the two. This separation follows the theory/practice divide: many position rhetoric as the theory side of the discipline and composition with the practical side. She sees a value in maintaining the connections between the two, though, and she also feels somewhat hesitant about the calls to separate rhetoric and composition from English. She recognizes the problems of the relationship, but, like me, she is uncertain “how or if independence would strengthen or weaken the gains we’ve made in redefining our intellectual work” (248). The concern for her is what she sees as an overemphasis on the practical elements at the expense of rhetoric.

She continues her discussion of independent writing programs by mulling over a series of questions she developed while considering the other pieces in this collection. One of her first questions addresses how the independent programs are defining rhetoric and composition, specifically how the connection of the two is being maintained. Her concern here is that with the loss of rhetoric may come the loss of the knowledge-making goals of the discipline. Furthermore, as these departments break away from English, she fears their focus may become too narrow, resulting in less institutional power and prestige for the discipline. Connected to this, she wonders if this will contribute further to problems of limited funding, promotion and tenure, and labor equity. Additionally, she says we must consider the consequences for graduate studies in the field.

Enos makes no attempts to offer substantial answers to these questions, and I think she is right not to. These questions can only be answered within the context of one’s own circumstances. What her brief chapter clearly offers, though, are issues that need answers before a given department should consider embarking on the path toward independence. I was especially drawn to her initial question about whether the goals of independent wiring programs are only achievable through independence or if these come with costs too steep to warrant proceeding. Certainly some situations are untenable (Anson’s discussion of his situation comes to mind), but I wonder how much of the principles and practices described regarding relationships with other departments are practiced within English departments, especially when the departments may not have the logistical potential to separate.

Miller, Thomas P. “Managing to Make a Difference.” 253-67.

Miller’s chapter promotes what he calls a “bifocal view” of writing program administration: one that calls on us to look both near and far to see and address immediate and long-term issues. And like Enos, he says this view demonstrates the importance of maintaining connections to rhetoric and the connections to scholarly work in independent programs. However, as he does in his 2011 book, The Evolution of College English, he also recognizes that the research system of higher education as it exists serves to marginalize teaching. His solution is to develop a rhetorical position, a rhetorical awareness of the discipline to mediate its scholarly and pedagogical concerns, as well as its private (academic, disciplinary) and public roles.

He first considers the nature of service in writing studies. The struggles, as he deftly puts it, “is to harness the power of providing an essential service without becoming defined as essentially a service provider” (256). This necessitates finding a balance between the theory/practice split. He says we might consider this in a third term: service, but service broadly construed. In this version, service would include the traditional notion of the term as defined in the discipline, but it would also include outreach beyond the academy and within the academy to both explain and negotiate goals—in short, to network the program. A view of service as rhetorical would also mean considering the goals of FYC in more public, civic terms, as rhetoric traditionally focused on both production of discourse and its political (I use the term broadly here) ends.

His next point of focus is to develop the need to consider the power of rhetoric’s emphasis on “the situated, purposeful, and dialectical dynamics of communication” (260). Rhetoric is, then, beyond theory; it includes action as well. More broadly applied in writing programs, rhetoric becomes more about the ability to think carefully and critically and to communicate effectively within a given discourse. But this still leaves the tensions between institutional demands and disciplinary desires. This, too, may be remedied by a more public, civic (read, rhetorical) approach. He notes how the tenure system has not only “devalue[d] much of the owkr we do” (263), but it has also isolated faculty from concerns beyond their immediate disciplinary interests. These shifting focuses and navigations between the tensions are precisely what he means by a “bifocal view.”

As I noted, much of Miller’s work here sets the stage for his later book. But I again find his arguments for maintaining a balance between theory and practice compelling. His use of service (in the broadest sense) and rhetoric (in the civic, discourse-oriented sense) provides to my mind quite a plausible way to engage with and make more productive the tensions within the field. And though, like most of the authors here, he puts these considerations in terms of independent writing programs, his arguments do not find themselves confined there. These are valuable heuristics for writing studies in general. 

The Promises and Pitfalls of Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity

Miscellaneous Readings on Disciplinarity

This week, I read several articles from various journals from the last decade or so (mostly coming from the last five years). These works paint a varied picture of what disciplinarity and even interdisciplinarity can offer English as a whole and writing studies in particular.

Bazerman, Charles. “The Disciplined Interdisciplinarity of Writing Studies.”  Research in the Teaching of English 46.1 (2011): 8-21. Print.

In this article, Bazerman, a well-known advocate of interdisciplinarity, traces how he developed his sense of interdisciplinarity and the benefits of this work. He argues for interdisciplinarity as a means to develop both the “home” discipline (writing studies, in his case) and the “outside” discipline. Interdisciplinarity is a way, in his mind, to develop a fuller understanding of ideas and problems inside and outside the discipline, or, as he says, “the path that finds discipline in our questions and goals, allowing us to draw on the resources of many disciplines” (8). And such a path is perhaps necessary in writing and literacy studies given the complexity of literacy.

By focusing too much on one particular path, we may limit the scope of our research, causing a narrowness of exploration. This he says is a common occurrence resulting from disciplinarity. A field establishes its objects of study, its methods, its core knowledge; while necessary to the development of a discipline, this serves to isolate that discipline from others and to create suspicion of the methods and knowledge from outside the discipline. At this point, Bazerman turns to his own career as a way to illustrate the sort of interdisciplinary work he is advocating. He used sociology and sociocultural theories to examine writing practices. But Bazerman does not call simply for a borrowing of methods or ideas. Instead, he sees this as an integrative process. He immersed himself in the discourse and discussions of the field, not satisfied to dabble with a few theories. What he found through this more involved practice were the deep complexities of writing practices wrought by sociocultural forces within disciplines. In addition, he found himself caught up in four different kinds of “puzzles”: examining problems from other disciplines, maintaining focus on his discipline’s issues and concerns, applying outside knowledge to writing studies systematically, and integrating these internal and external perspectives productively. These puzzles helped him see new areas for inquiry and growth in his home discipline as well as those from outside it. Though he says such work should be accepted and applied more broadly, he cautions us in the end not to assume this breaks down disciplinary walls or eliminates disciplines. The goal must be to learn from disciplines, to apply that knowledge to our own disciplines, and not to pretend that this work removes our distinctions.

What Bazerman promotes here is less an ideological view of interdisciplinarity than a practical one. Embedded in this practicality, though, is the idea that we must push against the modernist conceptions of disciplines as compartmentalized. This leads to a goal of enhancing the knowledge of the fields involved and to break the narrowness fostered by disciplinarity. Furthermore, it seems to me that such a goal is something we might work toward within the field of English (or at least within our own departments), as a way toward Thomas Miller’s call for more integrated approaches to literacy learning in English.

Kopelson, Karen. “Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition.” CCC 59.4 (2008): 750-80. Print.

Kopelson’s article examines the disciplinary status of composition studies, drawing on both scholarship about the field and survey responses from graduate students and faculty in the field. Now that some of the “newness” of the discipline has worn off, she urges us to reconsider some key issues in the field, including the “pedagogical imperative,” the sense of the theory/practice divide, and the need to develop greater interdisciplinarity. Her end goal in this is for the field to emerge “as an interdisciplinary, knowledge-making field of study” (753).

Her first area of interest is in field’s emphasis on teaching. Her survey results indicated that many doctoral students in the field felt considerable pressure to focus on pedagogical issues in their dissertations (regardless of the depth of their theoretical focus), their coursework, and their preparations for job searches. Such pressures, Kopelson claims, limit the types of questions that emerging scholars feel they can appropriately address. In terms of the theory/practice divide, Kopelson attempts to reframe the theory/practice debate as more a division of the use of theory. On one hand are those who develop theory (“do” theory); on the other hand are those who apply theory (“use” theory). “Doing” theory, she says is not about practicality, and a theory can only become practical when someone takes it from its more theoretical contexts. She also suggests that the notion of praxis does not resolve the binary as it still puts theory into direct relationship with practice. Instead, she argues that we need to view theory as an end in itself. Such a view may enable the field to develop more theories of its own instead of relying on outside fields to provide its theories. While this seems to suggest a somewhat isolationist view, Kopelson pushes instead for greater interdisciplinarity but as more of a two-way street: Composition studies should begin exporting its knowledge to other disciplines instead of only using their ideas. What she concludes from these discussions is that the field is too caught up in defining itself and its domains of knowledge and too much time on self-reflection. Instead, she argues that we engage in more critical, theoretical work.

Interestingly, Kopelson seems to be reinforcing some of divisions she wants to reframe here. I agree that the field suffers from a dearth of its own theories. However, that is perhaps if we purely define theory as something disciplinary unique and specific. Even then, drawing on theories from other fields and applying them in the rigorous and systematic ways promoted by someone like Charles Bazerman can be “doing” theory. Put in a new context, the theory can take on a new tenor and become in some ways a new theory. I also feel, like Thomas Miller, that attempts to distance ourselves from teaching, from the practical side of our discipline, has a cost for us. We should not neglect theoretical work at all; however, we should also work to apply the intellectual rigor to pedagogy.

Paretti, Marie. “Interdisciplinarity as a Lens for Theorizing Language/Content Partnerships.” Across the Disciplines 8.3 (2011): n. pag. WAC Clearinghouse.  Web. 30 Jul. 2012.

Paretti takes up interdisciplinarity as a way to improve the teaching of writing throughout the university. Though this is certainly not a new concept in WAC circles, Paretti uses this discussion to argue for deeper integrations of language and content to create a more meaningful and productive relationship between language and content faculty for the betterment of pedagogy.

To do so, she begins with the relatively common beliefs of content faculty who feel writing is not their domain, despite the fact that they often require writing (and usually discipline-specific writing) of their students. But this need for discipline-specific writing skills leave writing instructors in a tough position of either trying to abstract general principles from an unmanageable number of disciplines or to become nearly experts in a limited scope of disciplinary discourses. Additionally, writing instructors often look past the use of content in writing instruction. Both groups, then, attempt to separate content and language. To respond to this, she suggests that language and content faculty must work together, “making disciplinary epistemologies explicit and helping [students] navigate these epistemologies as they develop disciplinary identities” (n. pag.).

Of significance for this purpose is the distinction between multidisciplinarity—disciplines working together, but each only going as far as its specific discipline’s focus will allow—and interdisciplinarity—a more integrative model. Clearly, the latter approach is closer to Paretti’s goals as it “operates around the shared goals that reside at the intersection of disciplinary boundaries” (n. pag.). By recognizing and valuing the shared goals instead of promoting one discipline’s goals as more important than another’s, faculty are better able to communicate and negotiate their goals with one another.

To translate this into pedagogical terms, she combines these ideas with situated cognition (to make explicit the influence of different spheres of knowledge on certain practices, e.g., writing) and metacognition (to help students recognize concepts that can be applied to different contexts). By coming together, content faculty can promote situated cognition while language faculty can promote metacognitive skills. Combined with this, though, must be the recognition that the relationship between content and language faculty is one of equality, or else one side’s views and goals will dominate those of the others. Again, this calls for clear communication and negotiation of goals is necessary.

Certainly, such interdisciplinary work has considerable potential for teaching writing at a more advanced level, once students are more aware of their discipline and its discourses. However, I was a little put off by some of the generalities here in terms of enacting this interdisciplinarity. Undoubtedly, faculty share the goal of educating students, but simply invoking ideas of interdisciplinarity and negotiation of goals in such contexts may not be enough to overcome the separations and the power of disciplinarity. One can hope that the larger goals of education trump smaller disciplinary goals, but set ingrained agendas can be hard to overcome. Perhaps the next step is to explore more fully specific and systematic ways to generate the kinds of goals content can agree upon.

Balzhiser, Deborah, and Susan H. McLeod. “The Undergraduate Writing Major: What Is It? What Should It Be?” CCC 61.3 (2010): 415-33. Print.

Balzhiser and McLeod want to explore here the different iterations the writing major has taken as it is developing across the country. In doing so, they are addressing a key issue for the disciplinary status of writing studies, namely to define general curricular goals associated with the discipline. Doing so, they argue, will allow the discipline to better define itself and its areas of study. This butts up against some inconsistencies they discovered.

The key issue they address is that the writing major takes two different forms. While they immediately claim that having two types of major is not problematic in itself, the structures of these majors and their curricula are structured do give them pause. The first type of major is what they call the liberal arts model. This model’s “curriculum shows an integration of creative, literary, and professional writing” (419). However, as their examinations of catalogue descriptions demonstrates, a number of programs following this model construct “literature majors with writing courses tacked on as an afterthought” (422). The second model is a professional/rhetorical writing model. The emphasis here is certainly more on writing, but the differences between these two models and curricular inconsistencies suggest a sort of incoherence in the goals and curricula across the majority of major programs as they existed at the time of this study. Furthermore, “literature centric” views present in many departments contribute to this incoherence, as do fears of a new program taking students away from an existing program (423-24). The authors argue that to remedy these problems the discipline needs to begin to establish goals and learning objectives that may be applied as appropriate to local contexts. In addition, they argue for consistent curricular requirements including at minimum gateway, methods, and capstone courses.

The recommendations here would do much to add greater coherence to the discipline and strengthen its rising major. One concern that I have though, is that, while they do mention how the literature corners of English and forces outside English can influence the development of the major, they do not mention much in the way of addressing such factors. Instead they turn their attentions to more “in-house” issues of curriculum, which are certainly necessary. However, by not addressing those significant outside forces that can stop a new program from developing, the inside issues may simply become philosophical exercises.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” CCC 56.4 (2005): 654-87. Print.

Fulkerson examines the developments within writing studies as a field between the 1990s and the mid-2000s. By investigating what he sees as the dominant epistemologies, he argues that the discipline is losing unity and its focus on the teaching of writing. The field as he sees it is split into three factions: the social constructivist camp, the expressivist camp, and the rhetorical camp (which he further subdivides into focuses on argument, genre, and academic discourse).

Fulkerson begins by establishing a schema for his analysis. This takes the form of a chart with four categories that address a particular approach’s view of good writing, its sense of the writing process, its pedagogical approaches, and its underlying epistemology. He then turns this lens on the three camps in writing studies, starting with social constructivism. This view, he claims, overemphasizes issues of race, class, and gender; readings; and what he calls “leftist ideology” at the expense of writing instruction. He claims that these courses are often not really writing courses at all. While expressivist courses may put more explicit emphasis on writing, he argues that this approach, too, fails to maintain coherence and focuses too much on issues of self-exploration. Finally, the rhetoric camp fares a little better in his analysis but still receives a number of critiques, including a lack of explicating expectations for students, an absence of a specific sense of process and relying on imitation (in the case of genre approaches), and the potential for maintaining hierarchies of power and privilege (in the case of academic discourse approaches).

In other words, Fulkerson sees that state of composition in the twenty-first century as incoherent, messy, and even wrong in some instances. But in all of this, Fulkerson remains relatively vague about what he is in fact advocating as the direction of the discipline. He variously hints at the importance of the writing process and the need to emphasize writing in class instruction, but he never really expands on these views. In addition, he claims the approaches he critiques are all quite varied but does not hesitate to generalize about them and their problems, suggesting that these approaches, social constructivism in particular, could not achieve the kinds of ends he would like to see. I don’t pretend that any of these approaches is without its flaws, but these kinds of critiques without possible remedies or new directions seem to be more effective at driving in wedges than yielding productive results.

Murphy, Michael. “New Faculty for a New University: Toward a Full-Time Teaching-Intensive Faculty Track in Composition.” CCC 52.1 (2000): 14-42. Print.

One of the seemingly perpetual issues related to writing studies is the role of contingent faculty within the discipline. Because of the heavy reliance on such faculty to teach lower-division and required writing courses and the conditions they often teach under, one must wonder how the situation affects the status of writing studies as a discipline, particularly in the view of those outside the discipline. Michael Murphy’s article proposes a possible solution that would give qualified and competent writing instructors something akin to tenure without the required research component. Though these faculty would have a greater sense of security, they would still be an economical choice for institutions to staff the large numbers of required writing courses. So instead of looking at the issue of contingent faculty as an ethical one (though it still surely is), Murphy looks at it from an economic standpoint and from the standpoint that the research system of higher education has caused this labor issue. In short, he is trying to come up with a solution that all sides may find beneficial.

Undoubtedly, universities are as much influenced by the economics of the real world, and Murphy says those in higher education cannot pretend to be isolated from broader economic forces. Nor can we ignore other demands of the world outside academia. Such demands include calls for competitive education and more of it. In this sense, giving more stable position to skilled writing instructors responds to this demand for education, but because these faculty will fill the education need, faculty trained as scholars may be able to pursue research, upholding this side of the university’s goals. And since instructors would not have research requirements, they would not need the release time or sabbaticals, making them a more economic choice for administrators. On the surface, this seems nearly identical to the labor system currently in place, but Murphy claims these full-time instructors would be able to receive legitimate tenure. In addition, they would receive an adequate but not overwhelming number of courses and more just compensation to ensure they would be able to make a living.

I wholly appreciate what Murphy is doing here. He is looking for a way to treat contingent faculty more equitably while maintaining their economic value to the institution and maintaining the intellectual aspirations of the discipline. I also favored his sense of the intellectual value of teaching for the discipline. Clearly, he is trying to avoid the sorts of hierarchies and their inevitable problems that have troubled the discipline in the past. However, despite the best efforts of such a system to take the teeth out of hierarchies, by dividing faculty as this system does, hierarchies are bound to remain. This is quite a conundrum for the discipline to face, and while Murphy’s proposal may not go far enough, it is a good start toward a practical answer to this riddle.

Thomas Miller, Professionalizing Teaching, and Developing Literacy Studies

Miller, Thomas P. The Evolution of College English: Literacy Studies from the Puritans to the Postmoderns. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011. Print.

Introduction: “Working Past the Profession”

Thomas Miller’s history of the development of English studies in American colleges and universities examines a bit of a different concern than did Crowley’s history. Miller looks, first, a bit more broadly at the field and includes literature, writing, language, and English education in his discussions. But he also notes a relative “incoherence” to the field because of its breadth of subjects (1). Furthermore, these four parts often worked in isolation from, or even in opposition to, one another. His goal with the book is to reshape English studies as literacy studies to bring the four parts of the field into more collaborative and integrative relationships. Like Crowley, he acknowledges that the emphasis on developing disciplinary status caused the field to fracture into hierarchical relationships that would ultimately impede later developments and even the ability of the field to claim relevance in the university and society at large. However, Miller argues that the key problem was not the distilling or rhetoric nor the rise of humanistic belletrism; rather, he says the problem was that those working in the field as it was growing began to view themselves “not as educators but as disciplinary specialists” (5). Research took over teaching and institutional responsibilities as the focus of the field.

As he progresses through his introduction, he sets up the idea that the loss of attention to such a key and pragmatic issue as teaching has undermined the field, taking agency away from teachers and giving it to researchers, resulting in the “deprofessionalization” of teaching (13) as an aim of the discipline. In addition, he notes how his history of the discipline will focus less on what research universities were doing as somehow determining the direction of the field. His focus, instead, will address the changing conceptions of literacy to which the discipline was responding. This will show, he claims, how English studies has ignored some of the key changes in literacy to its detriment in favor of putting all its intellectual eggs into the literary studies basket. 

Of course, his introduction is a brief sketching of the issues he addresses throughout the work, but we can see some clear differences between the history he is trying to develop and the one Crowley presents. At this point, I will say that I find these to not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Perhaps both histories can complement and supplement one another; perhaps both can be right in that together they capture a broader history. However, Miller’s call to a focus on literacy and on teaching speaks to my experiences and my practices, so I may be a little biased in favor of his argument.

Chapter 4: “How the Teaching of Literacy Gave Rise to the Profession of Literature”

Miller finds some common ground with Crowley here. He begins by acknowledging that literature gained disciplinary strength as rhetoric lost its cachet, which created a unique disciplinary situation. As Miller says, “By identifying literature as a higher calling and writing as a basic skill to be tested, the profession made part of its work a mystery and the rest merely methodological” (137). Miller identifies the low status and hard work of writing instruction as key contributing factors to the shift in the discipline’s focus from instruction to research and ultimately to the “temping out” of writing instruction to recent graduates and, later, graduate students (143). In response, composition focused on what was efficient, not always what was most beneficial to students’ learning. This is Miller’s main concern here: these moves all undermined the ability of the field to emphasize its educational role, leading “English [to adopt] a disciplinary economy that reduced its learning capacity and public agency” (151). The problem, then, was not the ascendency of literature’s status; it was the lack of recognition given to the role of teaching in the discipline.

This neglect led to tensions with the Progressive movement that worked to isolate the discipline from the wider culture and reduce some of its relevance. As Progressivism’s pragmatism gained popularity, the discipline, particularly literary studies, positioned itself against that pragmatism. But Progressivism was much more open to interdisciplinarity, to collaboration, and to a number of other values and practices that were gaining more significant value in the wider society. Because of its stance against progressivism, literature, and ultimately English as a discipline, found itself more isolated, and it further marginalized composition by associating it with the practicality of Progressivism and therefore beneath its scope of interest.  As an example of the costs of such isolation, Miller looks briefly at the work of Kenneth Burke and the reception (or lack thereof) he received in literary studies at the time. Burke’s interdisciplinarity and the wider fields of exploration it opened were roundly rejected, as were even general attempts to combine literary studies with education because of these ideological differences with Progressivism.

What strikes me here is that Miller does not only turn to the traditional target of literature and its attempts to gain status as a discipline as the source of composition’s marginalized status. Undoubtedly, literature’s disciplinary quest played a meaningful role in this, but Miller looks further into this, examining how this marginalization stemmed more so from the division of the practical aims of the, especially teaching, from its research. As this played out in the field, he claims that, yes, the discipline did gain status, but it lost or missed a number of opportunities to develop interdisciplinarity and to professionalize teaching. As he discusses in the last chapter and the conclusion, this separation disabled the discipline’s ability to maintain relevance and meet the needs and demand of students and society in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

Chapter 5: “At the Ends of the Profession”

Miller continues to explore the discipline’s anti-pragmatic streak and its consequences through the end twentieth century. Here, as in the previous chapter, he argues that this created a number of missed opportunities and left the field less prepared for the social, economic, and technological changes that pluralized literacy. Again, this was a direct consequence of English’s attempts to improve its disciplinary status. As more research funds became available in the wake of Sputnik and the space race, English wanted to get its share of the money. English had an opportunity to prove its use as a practical discipline but chose to forego that possibility in favor of trying to establish itself as a research discipline. Another opportunity presented itself in the 1960s when many undergraduate students in this period wanted to learn about English and education, but as before, the desire for research grants and the resentment of the “practical” label cost the discipline this opportunity to develop a broader base.

Around this time, the field began to discuss composition more vigorously. No significant changes had occurred in composition since the beginning of the current-traditional paradigm, but now those in the field were beginning to discuss what the subject of composition should be and how to teach it. For a moment, some work connecting composition and creative writing took place, but rhetoric also began to come back into composition, and this severed the ties to creative writing. Then came the conservative movements of the 1980s. Based on the report, A Nation at Risk, people began clamoring for “Back to Basics.” Along with this came calls to maintain cultural norms and values by focusing on the canon and coverage model courses, which pushed directly against the diversity of literacy that was being recognized elsewhere. Yet this was also in the wake of broader cultural awakenings in feminism and multiculturalism, for example. So the traditional courses remained and some new courses came in as well, creating quite a diffuse, even incoherent mix of courses. As a result, teaching once again was relegated to the back rooms while literature and theory occupied the discipline’s front rooms. Rhetoric and composition, too, began to suffer from this theory/practice divide, as scholars turned their attention away from teaching and toward theorizing the discipline.

We cannot blame the discipline for seeking greater status. Indeed without having done so, the discipline may well have floundered in the early years. But Miller astutely points out the field’s missed opportunities to continue to reinvent itself and to make itself not only more appealing but also more relevant as notions of literacy began to diversify. Miller, citing Erwin Steinberg, notes that the research model is quite effective for the sciences, but the humanities have a different agenda and need a different model, one Miller sees as being more “integrative” (214). He is hopeful that such models are beginning to develop in cultural studies and community literacy programs, and in this conclusion, he addresses how else we might develop this integrative model. 

Conclusion: “Why the Pragmatics of Literacy Are Critical”

Miller uses his conclusion to propose potential remedies to the problems he has cited throughout the book. First is to abandon past isolationist attitudes. He claims that “those of us how work in more publicly accessible institutions should consider how literacy studies can provide an integrative framework for harnessing the converging potentials of work with teaching, writing, language, and literature” (220). Second is to accept more pragmatic views of the discipline. In short, he argues for a recasting of English studies as literacy studies.

He points to a few spaces where such work might take place. The first is the general potential for overlap in the field, “where work in the four corners of the field may be brought together to advance cumulative innovations in undergraduate programs of study […]” (233). Small institutions that have not experienced the disciplinary separations and have maintained more emphasis on teaching also provide useful models for integrating the discipline. He also suggests that the discipline develop community and political missions as well, developing service learning and community outreach projects and becoming involved in the political issues that affect us (e.g., “English Only” debates). Engaging in such integrative practices, he argues, will allow the discipline to develop a more coherent sense of purpose and to articulate more clearly and effectively its function and value.

He also says this work must highlight the importance of teaching. Unlike the sciences, research does not do much to fund English; it is teaching that provides the income to sustain the discipline. Recognizing this and attending to the need of teaching is vital to the reinvigoration of the discipline according to Miller. This means, though, that the discipline must address its inequitable labor practices that rely on poorly paid, highly over-worked instructors who have few benefits and even fewer opportunities for advancement. Furthermore, he says the institutional critiques that have developed in the field also need to be translated into plans of action, into pedagogical possibilities. Ultimately, he advocates we work to break down those “hierarchies that have maintained a conservative standpoint on the diversification of literacies” (244). He sees literacy studies as a way to bring the parts of the field back together, to give them a common purpose that covers a wide breadth of issues, values, and epistemologies that create numerous opportunities for collaboration within and outside of the discipline.

Though these are somewhat generic suggestions, I think they must be. To address such issues effectively, one has to work within her or his local institutional contexts. But overall, I feel Miller’s history and his suggestions illuminate the tensions as well as the promise of the field in insightful and intriguing ways. He repositions the agenda of the field toward more practical ends and relentlessly promotes the need to professionalize teaching. Such work may be dubbed “service” work pejoratively; but it seems to me that such work puts us in the service of our students and in the service of our discipline at once. We can meet the needs and demands of our students at the same time we add depth and breadth to the discipline through integrative work.

Crowley's Disciplinary History

Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998. Print.

As I continue to explore the development of and the effects of disciplinarity on composition this week, I was drawn to some histories of English in the university. So I will write about a few chapters from two texts I read this week. One book that has been on my shelf for perhaps a bit too long was Sharon Crowley’s Composition in the University.

Chapter 2: “The Toad in the Garden”

In this chapter, Crowley focuses on the Gary Tate-Erica Lindemann debate (that took place in College English) about the appropriateness of literature in freshman composition courses. What she found most compelling in the debate was Lindemann’s question on what the focus, the subject of freshman composition should be. Crowley examines how those who were responding to Lindemann missed the value of this question and instead expound on the importance of literature’s humanist values. As a result, the responses in the debate maintained the same separations of composition and literature, claiming for literature universal value and therefore higher status than composition. But these responses (she points to one from Leon Knight in particular) ignore pedagogical issues. Other responses claimed that literature, because of its “higher” moral and intellectual value, was saving composition from being a service course only. Still others equated English with literary studies, suggesting composition was somehow outside the discipline. Extending from this, some argued for cutting composition altogether. Crowley points to these arguments as maintaining the disciplinary hierarchies that had marginalized composition for decades and failing to address the real issues generated by Lindemann’s question. Crowley takes on that question and Lindemann’s proposals in the last part of the chapter.

While she liked the question, she did not particularly favor Lindemann’s proposals. Lindemann suggested that composition focus on a broad set of texts and writing practices drawn from various disciplines to help students learn the writing skills/practices they would need to write successfully in their areas of study. While a noble goal, Crowley says this makes the focus of freshman composition too narrow or too broad. As she says, “it must either become so specialized that it becomes difficult to see what would hold it together, or it must become so abstract that the work done there would have little reference to actual academic or professional writing” (28). She is also concerned that this response does not change composition’s status as service work. In the end, she concludes that we may need to consider the universality of the freshman writing course. In other words, she is staging those larger questions we must consider about the discipline: What should the subject matter of composition be the keep the class relevant and intellectually valuable? How should we go about teaching this? And are the problems of composition created by the fact that it is a universal requirement? But these are the kinds of questions that have existed since the beginning of the discipline, which she picks up in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 4: “The Invention of Freshman English”

As the title indicates, this chapter traces the development of freshman composition during the latter half of the nineteenth century, emphasizing particularly the last decades of the 1800s and into the early 1900s. In doing so, she gives much of her attention to the loss of rhetoric (as more classically defined) in this period as well as the marginalization of composition, which she says shaped English studies as a whole. These trends have made change in the discipline ultimately quite difficult.

To claim that rhetoric was “lost” during this development of freshman composition means, of course, that it had to have existed visibly in the curriculum before, and Crowley clearly illustrates the prominence rhetoric held in the classical college, often being a significant part of the college curriculum from beginning to end. The significance given rhetoric fit the purposes of education at the time period prior to the Civil War. These purposes were, quite simply, to create good men with strong civic aptitudes and notions of civic responsibility. Rhetoric was civic rhetoric at this point, but this was to change with the increasing popularity of the works of Campbell, Blair, and Whately, which began to put a more humanisitic and belletristic spin on rhetoric. Another significant change that began altering the curriculum (including the place of rhetoric) was the adoption of the German model of university education that emphasized research over teaching. Because of these shifts, she says English needed to adopt three strategies to develop into a discipline. First, it needed to establish that students had problems in English; those in the field achieved this end by emphasizing issues of purity and correctness—and complaints of students lack on these accounts. Second, the discipline needed to test for these problems. Entrance exams were established and, as tests typically do, they found numerous “deficiencies” that justified the need to teach English. Finally, the discipline needed a course that would address these problems, and thus composition was developed and turned into a more mechanistic course, given the concerns on clarity and correctness.

As she sketches this history, Crowley focuses mostly on the changes that occurred in the larger private and research institutions (Harvard, Yale, etc.). And while these institutions did carry considerable cultural cachet and could (and did) influence curriculum on a broad scale, Crowley does treat these changes as somewhat universal. Furthermore, she establishes a useful disciplinary trajectory of the development of the freshman writing course, but though she claims this chapter argues that composition legitimated the whole field of English studies, she does not realize that argument in this chapter. Instead, she addresses it in the next chapter.

Chapter 5: “Literature and Composition: Not Separate but Certainly Unequal”

Crowley uses this chapter to extend her discussion on the disciplinary development of English studies, this time examining how literature worked its way into composition courses and how the focus of the discipline became literary studies. And again, she ties the marginalization of composition to the decline of rhetoric. As rhetoric fell from prominence and belletrism began to take its place—at least in English departments—the field began to develop a sense that familiarity with “good” literature would be sufficient to teach students how to write well. A sense of elitism pervaded the curriculum of the discipline: literature was reserved for those who proved their propriety; rhetoric (and composition) was for those who needed more “refinement.”

Her discussion of this dichotomy leads into the familiar tale of the development of English A at Harvard and the preponderance of daily themes. Such heavy workloads forced faculty to rely on an efficiency approach that emphasized formal and surface-level concerns. This developed into current traditional rhetoric (CTR). This was a formulaic system that, a la scientific approaches, tried to develop universals that could be applied to writing. Form was privileged over rhetoric, and failures of students to apply the forms correctly suggested character flaws in the students. Through CTR, Crowley claims literature began to creep into composition because faculty could point to literature as exemplifying both effective form and good character. From this point through the 1970s (and even somewhat today), literature provided the main texts for freshman writing courses. Even the communication skills movement in the 1940s and 1950s could not unseat CTR methods and literature from the composition classroom. After this point, though, questions began to arise about the need for composition to have a subject. The humanists again quickly turned the focus back to literature as the appropriate subject for composition. She says that composition was so buffeted about “because of the absolute lack of theoretical innovation in composition” prior to the 1970s (115). The problem, as she describes it here, was perhaps less because of the lack of a desire for composition to advance theoretically as it was the traditional humanists who held positions of power denying any moves toward pragmatics.

In these three chapters, Crowley bases her sense of the history of the development of composition—the freshman writing course in particular—on the status of rhetoric. As rhetoric lost favor, or rather shifted into something closer to literary belletrism, literature began to fill the vacuum left by traditional rhetoric. As it did, composition became associated with rhetoric and therefore fell in value compared to literature. This is the root of the disciplinary inequity for Crowley, but as the next text I will examine argues, the inequity may have another source.

Modernist vs. Postmodernist Interdisciplinarity

Leitch, Vincent B. “Postmodern Interdisciplinarity.” Profession (2000): 124-31. Print.

While this is a brief article without much detail and is perhaps becoming a little dated in some of its views about the lack of institutionally sanctioned interdisciplinarity, it does draw attention to some key obstacles to interdisciplinarity. It focuses on four areas/issues related to interdisciplinarity: “that university professors in North America are disciplinary subjects, that academic interdisciplinarity work does not alter the existing disciplines, that the university is a disciplinary institution in a disciplinary society, and that the conception of interdisciplinarity is currently undergoing significant change” (124).

In his (brief) explorations of these issues, Leitch does offer some good/useful points to consider. One such point is that interdisciplinarity is necessarily bound up with disciplinarity. While this seems obvious, I had not considered the importance of disciplinarity for interdisciplinarity. Part of this is because perhaps I had been considering interdisciplinarity in its modernist form. This form, Leitch argues, attempts to gloss the differences in favor of a near-seamless interdisciplinarity. Such an approach instead of promoting greater creativity and investigative power actually reinforces the modernist view of the narrow and stark structure of the university. Leitch contrasts this with the postmodern view of interdisciplinarity. This view does not try to avoid acknowledging the role of different disciplines in forming an interdisciplinary field of study. Rather, it highlights those different disciplines, valuing the varied contributions to create the whole. Furthermore, Leitch extends this view to the disciplines themselves, recognizing the interdisciplinary nature within what we might call more “traditional” disciplines. He points to the contributions of mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy to the discipline of physics as one example. Yet, Leitch’s other discussions point to the dominance of disciplinarity in the modernist sense, mostly because of the structure of universities and of the wider society that they serve.

As I work on exploring how a rhetoric/composition specialist may need to function as a generalist in a smaller department, the ideas Leitch sketches here will likely be important ones for me to consider. If the institution looks to disciplinarity, how does that complicate how a rhetoric/composition expert can function within those smaller departments? And how does that affect how her/his colleagues and administrators view their work? On the other hand, if interdisciplinarity is becoming more commonplace and accepted, how much of a concern is this anymore? Are smaller departments better at embracing such interdisciplinarity given the nature of the work required of faculty in those departments?

Four Readings from Shumway and Dionne

Shumway, David R., and Craig Dionne, eds. Disciplining English: Alternative Histories, Critical Perspectives. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Print.

Shumway, David R. and Craig Dionne. Introduction. Shumway and Dionne 1-18. Print.

In their introduction to their collection about the development and effects of English disciplinarity, David Shumway and Craig Dionne work on establishing the value of exploring the current functions of English studies that grew out of its history. In doing so, they consider first what they mean by “discipline.” The first view of this term is that of a rating, a valuation based on what a given field produces or studies. Instead, they use “discipline” to refer to a socially constructed set of ideas and practices that establish a field as coherent and engaged in the production of certain types of knowledge. This more open definition allows them to consider English as a discipline in spite of some external views that question whether English and other fields in the humanities do, in fact, produce knowledge (5). They also examine “discipline” in its Foucauldian sense. Viewed in this way, the socially constructed nature of a discipline serves to create a system that determines how has the right to speak and be heard within the discipline as well as a system of surveillance that disciplines its members.

Of concern, though, is that disciplinarity leads to some narrow work within the disciplines. Often, the goal of research becomes more about adding new (and sometimes narrow) information to the field than considering the broader applications of that knowledge. Citing Thomas Gieryn, Shumway and Dionne refer to the “boundary-work” of the disciplines that establishes and maintains the disciplinary divisions between and within disciplines (6). At the same time this work entrenches the borders between disciplines it also serves to establish public confidence in a particular discipline to “perform the service it controls” (6-7). In other words, the sometimes narrow and even esoteric issues of English studies prove to those outside the field that those inside the field are capable of studying and teaching these issues. While this serves to legitimate a discipline, it also serves to fragment it, as different areas of interest and theories begin to establish subdisciplines that may cordon themselves off from the objectives of the larger discipline. As Shumway and Dionne note, this creates “the paradox that within the field of English heterogeneity and hegemony exist simultaneously” (9). In English’s case, the dominant subdiscipline is still literature, despite an influx of theories and practices that would call such hegemony into question, but by examining what they call the “the arbitrary and constructed boundaries that constitute the field,” we might be better able to understand and challenge the questions and concerns created by disciplinarity.

What Shumway and Dionne’s introduction calls upon readers to consider is the ways in which disciplinarity shapes the work we do in the academy but in ways that ask us to be mindful of the consequences of not considering the roots and forces that shape our disciplines. Doing so may provide us with a greater depth of understanding of our own work, and, for my purposes, can bring to light spaces where disciplines and subdisciplines may productively intersect.

Russell, David R. “Institutionalizing English: Rhetoric on the Boundaries.” Shumway and Dionne 39-58. Print.

In David R. Russell’s contribution to Shumway and Dionne’s collection, he examines the divide between literature and composition. This split, which privileged literature as the research side of English and relegated composition to a service role, was essential in developing English as a discipline. Moreover, Russell argues that this marginalization actually served to strengthen English as a discipline. Composition gave English a presence in the other disciplines across the university. The problem Russell addresses here, though, is how this disciplinarity created the illusion that a discipline was self-developed and self-sustaining, despite its dependence on and interactions with other disciplines. Such is the nature of the relationship of literature and composition.

Russell briefly traces some of literature’s history, especially its less prestigious times when rhetoric was privileged over the written word. But as research became the dominant focus of universities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, more service-oriented courses began to lose prestige.  During this period, Progressive reforms began to take hold, and these reforms particularly valued the practical.  The humanities, including literature, positioned themselves as the anti-utilitarian disciplines. English quickly separated literature (the elevated, research-oriented side) from composition (the remedial, service-oriented side). Doing so allowed those in literature to develop it as a research subject and establish literary texts as its objects of study. At the same time, the heavy workloads in composition and its mechanistic nature impeded its possible development as a field of inquiry. And even though composition as controlled by English departments connected composition to nearly every other discipline in the university, the fact that composition existed removed writing instruction as a responsibility of the disciplines, including literary study. Thus, composition’s role as a service course allowed English to make its “serious” word the reception and interpretation of texts and not their production.

While Russell recognizes recent efforts to recuperate the interconnections of literature and rhetoric/composition, the discipline of English developed and became established with the hierarchical divisions Russell discusses here—and rather naively so. As Shumway and Dionne’s introduction asks us to consider, Russell’s piece illustrates how disciplinary divides can both rely on and elide interdisciplinarity, and English’s long-standing acceptance of disciplinary divides within it as a discipline has led to a hierarchical structure that is still in place and that, in my opinion, has significant potential to limit the ways we educate students.

Wilson, Elizabeth A. “A Short History of a Border War: Social Science, School Reform, and the Study of Literature.” Shumway and Dionne 59-81. Print.

Wilson’s article extends the arguments raised in Russell’s article. She focuses on the interactions English (especially literature) had with other disciplines as it was attempting to establish its own identity. She argues that because English defined itself as a dealing with universals of humanity, it put itself in direct contrast to social sciences and Progressive education reforms. As such, it opened itself to critiques of elitism and of impracticality. Progressive movements began to call for education that served a broader population and that direct application to students’ everyday lives. This pushed against the perceived elitism and classism implied in literature’s attempts to develop “appropriate” tastes in students. As Wilson notes, the goal of progressive education was “to undermine [liberal education] as a bastion of social privilege and undemocratic ideals” (65).

Since Progressive education reforms were closely connected to the developing social sciences, literary studies began distancing itself from the social sciences. Its emphasis turned to developing the individual and to “humane learning” as opposed to the types of problem-solving scholarship of the social sciences (68). Literature was positioning itself as the explorer of the “human experience” as opposed to “a scientific accumulation of facts” (69). From both staffing and financial perspectives, these moves seemed to cost literature in the shifting focus of the university. From 1920 to 1950, the social sciences were adding faculty while faculty in the humanities (including English) declined. In addition, government and private grants and other financial support grew significantly for social sciences and concurrently declined for the humanities (71-73).  Wilson contrasts the ideological moves made by English with those made by history. Instead of distancing itself from social sciences, history embraced the social sciences and its methods. As a result, history was more able to legitimate itself as a practical field while it distanced itself from literature. Thus, literary studies and other disciplines in the humanities that took similar approaches to Progressivism and the social sciences came out seeming less practical, a little out of touch. Wilson notes that the saving grace of literature was New Criticism. New Criticism distanced itself from social, biographical, political, and/or historical matters. Its emphasis on the text required specialists, allowing literature to maintain some of its position within the university.

In this ideological history sketched by Wilson, we can see a discipline making quite conscious choices about the status it sought for itself. But this maneuvering was not without consequences, and English, particularly the literary side of the discipline, was left to defend its value in an altered university. Though Wilson’s piece addresses this part of the disciplinary history of English in rather general terms, the division of literature from the social sciences also seems to speak to some of the tensions with rhetoric and composition, especially as composition and rhetoric began establishing itself as a discipline and often allied itself ideologically and methodologically with social sciences instead of with the artistic and “culturing” aspects of literature.  

Schilb, John. “Composing Literary Studies in Graduate Courses.” Shumway and Dionne 137-48. Print.

In the final selection from this collection I want to address, John Schilb puts some of the history of English disciplinary divisions into more current and tangible terms. Like the other works in this collection, Schilb’s focuses on issues related to literature, but here he addresses a problem in literary graduate studies that has been caused by the marginalization of composition. Schilb argues that this marginalization left literature faculty ill-prepared to expound on the writing and rhetorical practices associated with their discipline. He develops this concern by examining the rather readily-accepted notion that a discipline, “as a regulative ideal” in the Foucauldian sense, makes use of discourse to initiate members and determine authority and credibility (137). Despite this recognition, he claims little has been done to instill this awareness in literature students.

One reason for this oversight is an already overfull curriculum. He claims the development of various theories and emphases of different periods and different groups of people have done much to inform literary studies but have also served to limit how much class time is available for other discussions, such as those on writing practices. But beyond this, Schilb says are reasons that connect more so to “the average English department’s enduring failure to make composition studies truly integral to its mission” (140). This may lead literature faculty to assume student preparedness for writing in the discipline, to view writing skills as more associated with talent than teachable methods, and to emphasize published texts over students' works-in-progress.  Schilb sees the emphasis of rhetoric and composition faculty on writing and rhetorical practices (from which he claims literature faculty have become distanced) as inviting stronger considerations of disciplinarity and what makes up the discourse of literary studies. Drawing on an example of a literary analysis, he sketches how an instructor might demonstrate the rhetorical moves of the author and thereby teach students how to think more rhetorically about their own writing. But he also argues that literature faculty should not just teach students how to replicate the dominant discourses of literary studies. To this, he adds rhetoric and composition’s recent attention to developing approaches that teach students to use rhetorical conventions and to question their dominance and the consequences of their dominance over other forms of discourse.

What is striking to me about Schilb’s discussion here is the interdisciplinarity it encourages within English departments. While he focuses on graduate work, addressing the rhetorical considerations of discourse is readily applicable to undergraduate courses as well. And this not only better prepares students for work in the field; it also calls upon faculty to work together to institute such practices. If literature faculty are more removed from rhetorical terms and considerations, rhetoric and composition faculty may work with them or hold workshops to help them consider these elements. Faculty may also work together to develop undergraduate courses that address writing in the discourses of various fields within English. Such integrative practices offer the possibility for the productive intersections of disciplines that Shumway and Dionne’s introduction suggested.

A Week's Worth of Articles--What They Suggest about Digital Writing Research in Practice

This week, I emphasized articles from Computers and Composition in my blog, for two reasons. First, as my attention for the past two weeks has been on digital writing research methods, Computers and Composition was an obvious choice for research articles related to this subfield of writing studies. Second, and more important, this journal’s articles often utilize numerous research designs. Having such variety to analyze, I felt, would enable me to address (if rather simplistically and generally) how research in this area adheres to the methodological theories and approaches that I have been examining for the past month. What I have noticed in reading these articles and thinking about their methods is that they utilize traditional research methods in ways appropriate for the complexity of digital writing research.

I want to begin by discussing how some of these articles adhere to more traditional research methods. The studies I selected for this week’s readings covered a variety of research methods, but as an example of how these studies rely on and differ from traditional formulations, I will address Jin and Zhu’s case study approach. The goals of a case study are exploratory in nature, not attempting to develop cause/effect notions but to establish potential variables to explore more fully (Lauer and Asher 23). In addition, case studies tend to rely on either broad or representative samples of populations to study, a variety of sources for data, careful coding and reliability examinations, and “descriptive accounts” to report their findings (Lauer and Asher 25, 26-27, 31, 32). Jin and Zhu are clear that their study is exploratory, especially in terms of discovering potential ways computer-mediated tools affect students’ activity (286). Furthermore, they also demonstrate the use of selective sampling by choosing two students who have different levels of computer skills/knowledge (287-88). However, while Jin and Zhu do address their coding procedures, they do not address reliability issues related to their coding. This lapse does not seem to weaken their study. Their focus on motives and the numerous streams of data they use (video observations, interviews, IM transcripts, etc. [288]) they triangulated to better understand and validate participants’ claims about their motives (289) suggest an effective methodology for making sense of the data they collected.

These studies also adhere to the principles addressed throughout Heidi A. McKee and Danielle Nicole DeVoss’s anthology on digital writing research, especially approaches to theory, ethics, and collecting data effectively. As is clear in McKee and DeVoss’s collection, many scholars in digital writing studies rely on theory as a guiding principle to understand and explore their research topics (e.g., Hilligoss and Williams 232-36;  Kimme Hea 273-74; Romberger 251-54). Jin and Zhu, for example, embrace activity theory to establish and explicate their focus on motivation and how technology can affect these motives (285-86). In addition, some articles in McKee and DeVoss’s text emphasize the complexity of ethical issues related to digital research (see Banks and Elbe; Pandey for a couple of examples). In my readings this week, Stedman’s article addresses most explicitly the complexity of these issues, noting his concerns about the treatment of fan communities by previous researchers, his decisions that being ethical in the eyes of this community meant being explicit about his intentions, and his sense that his IRB permissions did not precisely address the ethical considerations he had to make (110-11, 117). Finally, many of the authors in McKee and DeVoss’s anthology note the need for considerable flexibility in terms of their research methods to adapt to the malleability of digital research (e.g., DePew; Rickly). One particularly representative example of this from my reading this week was Jin and Zhu’s article. Though they did not rely on quantitative methods, they did use multiple approaches to collect their data (see above). Many of these methods (video recording and chat transcripts, for example) allowed them to gain insight into their participants’ motives less obtrusively than traditional observation and possibly even yielded more accurate information.

What these articles demonstrate in terms of research methods, then, is both an attention to the research tradition in maintaining high intellectual standards and a willingness to add to or tweak these practices in response to changing research contexts as a result of computer-mediated technologies. As I have noted previously, such flexibility is important for research in the digital age if it is to be ethical and rigorous, and despite some lapses in methods or analysis (see my entry on Garrison’s article), the research I examined this week seems to illustrate such ethics and rigor.

Works Cited

Banks, Will, and Michelle Eble. “Digital Spaces, Online Environments, and Human Participant Research: Interfacing with Institutional Review Boards.” McKee and DeVoss 27-47. Print.

Garrison, Kevin. “An Empirical Analysis of Using Text-to-Speech Software to Revise First-Year College Students’ Essays.” Computers and Composition 26.4 (2009): 288-301. Print.

Hilligoss, Susan, and Sean Williams. “Composition Meets Visual Communication: New Research Questions.” McKee and DeVoss 229-47. Print.

Jin, Li, and Wei Zhu. “Dynamic Motives in ESL Computer-Mediated Peer Response.” Computers and Composition 27.4 (2010): 284-303. Print.

Kimme Hea, Amy. “Riding the Wave: Articulating a Critical Methodology for Web Research Practices.” McKee and DeVoss 269-86. Print.

Lauer, Janice M., and J. William Asher. Composition Research: Empirical Designs. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.

McKee, Heidi A., and Danielle Nicole DeVoss, eds. Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues. New Dimensions in Computers and Composition. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. Creskill: Hampton, 2007. Print.

Pandey, Iswari. “Researching (with) the Postnational ‘Other’: Ethics, Methodologies, and Qualitative Studies of Digital Literacy.” McKee and DeVoss 107-25. Print.

Romberger, Julia E. “An Ecofeminist Methodology: Studying the Ecological Dimensions of the Digital Environment.” McKee and DeVoss 249-67. Print.

Stedman, Kyle D. “Remix Literacy and Fan Compositions.” Computers and Composition 29.2 (2012): 107-23. Print.