Foreword

� vii �

�

CONTENTS

FOREWORD: A REFLECTION ON LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION,TWENTY YEARS LATER

Winifred Bryan Horner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

1 Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach overThere, Anyway?”Linda S. Bergmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I Institutional Contexts

2 Composition, Literary Studies, and the End(s) ofCivic EducationDominic DelliCarpini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3 Restructuring in Higher Education and theRelationship between Literature and CompositionTimothy J. Doherty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4 Causes and Cures for Our Professional SchizophreniaEdward A. Kearns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

5 Rhetoric, Literature, and the Ruined UniversityEve Wiederhold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

II Departmental Cultures

6 In this Corner . . .Barry M. Maid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

7 Along the DMZ between Composition and LiteratureJohn Heyda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

a08075_fm 1/18/06, 11:59 PM7

Foreword

� viii �

8 Whole English, Whole Teachers: Maintaining theBalance between Rhetorical and Literary ExpertiseDennis Ciesielski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

III Applications in the Classroom

9 Computer-Mediated Communication and theConfluence of Composition and LiteratureKatherine Fischer, Donna Reiss, and Art Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

10 Composing English 102: Reframing Students’Lives through LiteratureEdith M. Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

11 The Missing Voice in the Debate: What StudentsSay about Literature in CompositionMary T. Segall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

AFTERWORD: A COMPLEX AFFIRMATION OF READING AND WRITING

Patricia Harkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

WORKS FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION

Linda S. Bergmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

EDITORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

a08075_fm 1/18/06, 11:59 PM8

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 1 �

�C H A P T E R O N E

T

Introduction: “What Do You FolksTeach over There, Anyway?”

LINDA S. BERGMANN

Purdue University

he title of this introduction reiterates a question I’ve spentnearly an entire career trying to answer, a question asked

(not unkindly) by colleagues across the disciplines as I workedwith various Writing Across the Curriculum projects and pro-grams. It has not been an easy question to answer. Most Englishdepartments have lists of goals or outcomes that state what istaught in composition, many of the more recent of them derivedfrom the Council of Writing Program Administrators OutcomesStatement developed in the mid-1990s (Harrington et al.). Butwhat WPAs profess to do and what actually happens in compo-sition classrooms often vary widely, depending on who is actu-ally teaching the classes. In part, this difference occurs becauseso many composition programs are located in English depart-ments dominated by literary studies, and because so many com-position courses are taught by instructors rooted in literature.The theoretical differences and intra-departmental strife betweencompositionists and literary scholars have resulted in the estab-lishment of separate departments of writing or of rhetoric andcomposition at a number of institutions, several of which areconsidered in this collection. This collection is not, however, givensolely to arguing for separating writing programs from Englishdepartments—although Barry Maid makes a compelling case forthat institutional structure in his chapter. Instead, it examines thepressures the relationship between literary studies and composi-tion put on the teaching of writing. Moreover, it undertakes abroader examination of whether and how the study of literature

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM1

B E R G M A N N

� 2 �

can be compatible with and integrated into composition studies.Because rhetoric and composition has by this time clearly differ-entiated itself as a discipline, it seems an appropriate point atwhich to reconsider the question of how compositionists—asmembers (most of us) of English departments and as teachersand scholars of rhetoric and composition—interface with instruc-tors who teach writing from the substantially different intellec-tual background of literary studies.

The purposes of this collection of essays—over twenty yearsafter Winifred Horner’s Composition and Literature: Bridgingthe Gap—are to reconsider the teaching of literature in composi-tion classes, to examine the extent to which the division betweenliterature and composition affects teaching practices in collegesand universities of various kinds, and to document cases of suc-cess and failure in attempted collaborations between literatureand composition. In some venues, these issues may no longerseem to be questions, since the problems of the relations betweenliterature and composition have been widely discussed for at leasttwo decades. The debate between Erika Lindemann and GaryTate, begun at the Conference on College Composition and Com-munication annual convention and published in College Englishin 1993, generated substantial discussions throughout the pro-fession. Also in the 1990s, James Berlin looked back at the his-tory of rhetoric as a profession, to describe how the separationbetween poetics and rhetoric is tied into at least a century ofacademic politics. Thomas Miller (Formation) and SharonCrowley (Composition) have continued to historicize the con-nections, differences, and collisions between the fields. In thecontext of this history, the present situation of composition andliterature can be seen as a precarious balance of claims for utility,critique, and personal growth.

Although most English departments consider teaching litera-ture their primary focus, the common sense and practice of mostcomposition programs (particularly at large research universi-ties) is to avoid teaching literature in writing courses, maintain-ing the distinction between the two fields. The practice is verydifferent, however, in smaller institutions, where composition isan undergraduate course or two, not a graduate program, andwhere all or most of the literature faculty teach composition—

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM2

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 3 �

often as they think best and as they have always done it. Theseinstitutions can be splendid places in which to learn and to teach,but they offer a different configuration of relationships betweencomposition and literature, and thus complicate the issue of howto separate the two fields—or to keep them productively inter-twining and interacting. So, in spite of the established and grow-ing body of disciplinary knowledge in the field of composition,the issue of its relation with literature is still faced department bydepartment and course by course. Because institutional practicesand situations vary so greatly in the many kinds of institutionsthat teach (and usually require) first-year composition, questionsabout the place of literature in composition courses continue tobe raised.

One implication of this collection is that if composition pro-grams are situated in English departments (as compared to inde-pendent writing programs), those departments need to initiateand sustain ongoing, productive discussions and collaborationsbetween the fields of literature and composition, rather thanmerely serving as sites for exerting disciplinary power. The edi-tors and authors of this book have intended to provide modelsfor such ongoing conversations about the institutional and theo-retical relations between composition and literary studies. More-over, these chapters not only show mutual accommodationbetween composition and literature but also demonstrate howdepartmental and institutional politics can undermine rationaldiscussions about the purposes and practices of compositioncourses and thereby render accommodation impossible. Chap-ters such as those by Timothy Doherty, Barry Maid, and JohnHeyda document what happens when—for any number of rea-sons—such conversations break down. And Dominic DelliCarpinimakes a clear case for a mission of writing as public discoursethat cannot be fulfilled by the teaching of literature as usuallydefined, that is, as imaginative writing valued primarily by aes-thetic criteria.

Composition and/or Literature: The End(s) of Education triesto offer teachers from both sides of the literature/compositiondivide an opportunity to reflect upon pedagogical theory, class-room practices, and the institutional situation of compositioninstruction, as well as to consider whether and how they can

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM3

B E R G M A N N

� 4 �

work together. Thus, we offer a series of accounts of, responsesto, and compromises with the tensions between literature andcomposition, between reading and writing, that have beleagueredEnglish departments for decades. While this description mightsound like we are proposing a clear move toward reconciliationbetween literature and composition—as fields and as faculties—both the editors and authors have seen this collection less as of-fering a prescription for relaxing these tensions, and more assuggesting ways to approach and even use them. The collectionis divided into three sections, emphasizing different (althoughinterconnected) aspects of how literature and composition do,do not, and might work with each other: Institutional Contexts,Departmental Cultures, and Applications in the Classroom. Thefirst section reviews some of the theoretical underpinnings of therift between composition and literature; the next section consid-ers how these differences are set in institutional contexts anddepartmental cultures; and the final section recounts classroomapplications that argue for or exemplify an informed integrationof materials and practices drawn from both literature and com-position. In selecting the essays for this collection, the editorspaid particular attention to pieces that bring to the book the kindof feisty political savvy that often emerges on the Council ofWriting Program Administrators e-mail list. The WPA list oftenvoices an acute sensitivity to the potential applications of an ideaand to the unanticipated consequences of good intentions. Thiskind of awareness tends to be blunted in formal publications,but for this collection we sought chapters that keep that practicalvision strong.

Many of these chapters began as e-mail or face-to-face con-versations among the authors, lamenting the uncomfortable dis-crepancy between composition theory and the practices that takeplace in specific programs or classrooms. Many WPAs have seenliterature returned to composition courses through the back door,by faculty and graduate students primarily trained in and identi-fying with literary studies. It seems apparent that over time tacitchanges by individual faculty members can substantially alter thefocus of a program. For example, despite considerable researcharguing that writing is embedded in larger systems of activityand purpose (Russell; Petraglia), “general writing skills instruc-

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM4

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 5 �

tion” continues to remain the rationale that sustains most re-quired writing courses.1 Literature instructors who have someawareness of composition theory (often expressivist) nonethelesstend to teach what they always have taught. Discipline-specificwriting instruction, other than training students to write litera-ture papers, can simply fade away—without discussion. Even sucha cornerstone of composition theory as the process approach canbe subverted by student resistance, by a lack of commitment orunderstanding by the faculty who teach it, and by institutionaldemands for accountability that require drill in “the basics.”Under these circumstances, a genuine process approach to writ-ing can easily revert to producing note cards and outlines, revi-sion can become grammar drill, and group work can besubordinated to solitary authorship.

This book, then, provides an opportunity to reconsider therelations between composition and literature, in theory and inteaching, and to reframe a discussion that has pretty much de-pended on ideas about how composition should be taught, ratherthan on recognition of the institutional conditions under whichmany composition courses are taught. The influence of literarystudies in composition classrooms, whether it is a problem ornot, can be examined only by being brought into the open. Un-less writing programs separate themselves from English depart-ments (which may or may not be a good idea), it is reasonable toexpect that literature faculty will exert a significant influence overhow they teach composition in their own classrooms. Althoughcomposition faculty have by and large managed to gain and main-tain professional direction over the first-year composition cur-riculum, most English departments are still outnumbered byfaculty and students educated in literary studies, who, as JohnHeyda’s chapter illustrates, may have only a limited understand-ing of what compositionists are asking them to do in their writ-ing courses, or why.2 Thus, even when composition courses andprograms in English departments are designed by compositionists,a great many of the courses are actually taught by faculty andgraduate students steeped in literary studies. The consensus thatmight emerge while a writing program is being created can soondissipate because of the marginal institutional position of muchcomposition instruction. Moreover, because so many writing pro-

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM5

B E R G M A N N

� 6 �

grams rely heavily on temporary faculty (Stygall 379), and be-cause even under the best circumstances students and faculty movefrom institution to institution, current instructors in a programmay not completely understand the reasoning behind course struc-tures and policies, and over time few will remember the (oftenheated) discussions behind those decisions. One of the pointsSharon Crowley makes in Composition in the University con-cerns how little time for composition or pedagogical theory manyadjunct writing teachers have (5), a disengagement exacerbatedby the fact that much composition is taught by underemployedPhDs and by graduate students who have been educated in orwho are currently being educated in literature and literary theoryand see that as their “real work.”

The dichotomy between composition and literature, how-ever, is hardly absolute, because so many instructors teach in bothareas. At many smaller institutions without graduate programs,composition courses are the bread and butter of English depart-ments, and even tenure-line literature faculty teach more writingthan literature in their normal course load. Thus, it is also dis-tressing that effective uses of literature to teach composition sel-dom receive more than local notice within an institution or adepartment, if that much. Because of this failure to communi-cate, the possibilities for a genuine complementary relationshipare not fully explored in many institutions and may be under-mined by factional differences if they are proposed. For example,well over a decade ago James Berlin called for a reintegration ofthe English studies curriculum around critical and cultural stud-ies. More recently, Thomas Miller has posited the practical ne-cessity for department-wide collaboration (“What’s”) in the faceof the decline of numbers of English majors over the past de-cades. The chapter by Katherine Fischer, Donna Reiss, and ArtYoung and the chapter by Edith M. Baker make clear cases forthe value of bringing literature into composition through the frontdoor, openly using it to foster and polish critical thinking andself-reflective writing.

Cooperation and collaboration between composition and lit-erary studies is not easy to achieve because the differences be-tween them are material as well as theoretical. The relationshipbetween these historically connected disciplines is complicated

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM6

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 7 �

by changes in the university, some of which were outlined in BillReadings’s The University in Ruins. Given the financial stressesand external demands made on universities, it is hardly surpris-ing that the tweedy old English department that at least some ofus remember has become contested territory. In all but the mostelite universities, literature faculty can feel (and with some rea-son) threatened, as the job market for literary scholars hasdwindled while the job market for compositionists has expanded.Faced with rising tuition and a fear of not finding jobs, contem-porary students tend to favor courses that offer clear preparationfor future careers. Occasionally literature teachers admit howappalled they are at their students’ apparent lack of experienceand interest in literary studies, a response so heartbreakingly de-scribed in Daniel Green’s “Abandoning the Ruins.” At the sametime, as James Sosnoski points out, there is still considerable pres-sure on faculty at all colleges and universities to adapt their aca-demic expectations to those at elite institutions, which are thenused to measure their success or failure.

For compositionists, granting literature a place in the writ-ing curriculum can seem risky as well, particularly in departmentswhere there has been acrimony between literature and composi-tion, or where compositionists feel they have been treated as sec-ond-class members of the profession. Over the past generation,composition has developed an intellectual base and professionalidentity of its own, rooted in its growing body of compositiontheory, research, and lore. Nonetheless, in many departments,literature faculty not only continue to maintain numerical supe-riority in tenure-track faculty positions but also assert superior-ity over composition faculty on aesthetic, moral, or politicalgrounds, claiming to eschew “service,” to rise above workplaceskills, or to foment opposition to corporate values.3 For example,even Daniel Green assumes that teaching literature—rather thanteaching writing—is the proper work of English professors at hisinstitution. Robert Scholes admits that “most English departmentswould not even accept writing courses as the equal of readingcourses in their curricula, because reading is actually called lit-erature, while writing is just writing” (160). And Richard Enosnotes that because of the “ethos that Scholes has earned in litera-ture,” he has the authority to argue for the reinstatement of rheto-

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM7

B E R G M A N N

� 8 �

ric to a position of importance in English departments (337)—anauthority few literature scholars will recognize in compositionists.A similar ethos can be seen supporting Gerald Graff’s more re-cent demand for writing instruction that enables students to un-derstand and participate in academic discussions. Thomas Miller(Formation) and Sharon Crowley (Composition) call attentionto how class biases result in the privileging of literature, and othercompositionists note how class structure tends to be reenacted indepartmental hierarchies (Fetterly; Harris; Alberti), strengtheningthe dominance of literary studies over composition. Barry Maid’sessay in this collection takes on this class issue to engage his de-fense of separating writing programs from English departments.

A complicating factor in the position of composition facultymay come from the ongoing disagreements among compositionistsabout the goals of first-year composition and the best way toteach it. The first-year composition course has, at various timesand places, worked to implement service learning (Schutz andGere), learning communities (Williams), multicultural studies,genre theory, ethical and philosophical studies, and cultural stud-ies. It has served as a site of the ongoing debate between theexpressivists and the social contructivists, and as the target of theNew Abolitionists, that is, compositionists who argue that thefirst-year composition requirement should be dropped because itis ineffective for students and detrimental to the profession(Petraglia; Crowley, Composition). For several years in the late1990s, a subcommittee of the Council of Writing Program Ad-ministrators worked on a statement to document what “every-one (in the field) knows” to be the goals of first-year composition.This group produced the WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition, which was adopted by the council in 2000.However, although the Outcomes Statement has been used effec-tively in some sixty-eight universities and programs across thecountry, as Patricia Ericsson has established, the outcomes it de-fines are necessarily quite general. The statement was constructedto document broad consensus among writing programs, and toachieve that consensus its creators smoothed over the deep di-vides in the field, particularly the serious rift between expressivistsand social constructivists and the arguments between faculty whoat that time believed that computer applications are central to

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM8

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 9 �

teaching writing and those who believed that writing transcendstechnology (Rhodes et al.).

Given these various pressures on faculty in both literatureand composition, it is hardly surprising that in the classroom, asSharon Crowley (“Around 1971”) and others have noted, com-position theory often tends to melt into current-traditional prac-tices. Literature specialists teaching writing may ignore or subvertthe designs of composition programs, and overworked adjunctsmay not have the time, resources, or power to make much of adent in the practices of their departments—even if they wantedto take on such thankless work. Many literature faculty who teachcomposition adhere to a genially conservative expressivism, a viewof writing that W. Ross Winterowd attributes to the romanticideal of individual inspiration that lingers in the teaching of lit-erature even after the postmodern death of the author. Thisexpressivism shares with literary studies the privileging of textsthat are free from the demands and constraints of the workplace.It is easy to use expressivism to move from a focus on writing toa focus on reading and interpreting, a move that can lead to ques-tionable classroom practices or degenerate into intra-departmentalacrimony if it is not openly discussed among the various groupsteaching composition.

Many of the chapters in Composition and/or Literature: TheEnd(s) of Education have been provoked by Bill Readings’s callin The University in Ruins to rethink our assumptions about theshape and purpose of the university. Eve Wiederhold advocatesbringing literature back into composition in order to counter thereplacement of culture by excellence as the focus of universityeducation; Dominic DelliCarpini and Edward A. Kearns offertheoretical justifications and historical precedents for retainingor returning aesthetic understanding to composition instruction,although they differ greatly in their understanding of how thatvalue should be identified and where it should be placed. Be-cause of the contributors’ experience as teachers and writing pro-gram administrators, however, even the most theoreticallyinformed chapters situate composition theory in particular class-rooms, departments, and institutions that have had to resolve orat least face relations between literature and composition. Thearticles in the first two sections in particular focus on institu-

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM9

B E R G M A N N

� 10 �

tional politics and in the last section on classroom applications,but every essay touches on aspects of theory, institutional poli-tics, and teaching practices.

The experiences of program-builders such as DominicDelliCarpini, Barry Maid, Tim Doherty, and John Heyda bringto the collection a high degree of practical experience in writingprogram administration as they examine the intersections betweentheory and institutional practices. The thoughtful, student- andteacher-oriented contribution of Katherine Fischer, Donna Reiss,and Art Young demonstrates how computer applications to writ-ing about and producing literary texts reflect important presentand future directions of composition studies. In another approachto teaching composition, Edith M. Baker describes a course inwhich reading and writing about literary texts focuses on foster-ing students’ growth as writers as they grow as human beings.Mary T. Segall brings students into the conversation by reportingthe results of a survey of students’ responses to literature in com-position courses. And Dennis Ciesielski argues for the value tocomposition faculty of teaching literature, making the case for a“whole-language” approach to reading and writing for both stu-dents and teachers.

The argument that underlies this collection is that because somany composition courses are taught in English departments (andheavily staffed by literature scholars), the relationships betweenreading and writing, literature and composition, must be con-tinually reexamined and redrawn in order to maintain a vitalcurriculum. Freestanding writing programs may be able to main-tain their coherence because of their separation from literature,but writing programs in English departments are the sites of on-going collaborations and compromises that derive from the ex-pertise of the people who teach in them. When the conversationstops, as John Heyda’s chapter illustrates, a writing curriculumcan very easily revert to an introduction to literature, a coursethat may have some value, but not the value intended by special-ists in writing instruction or writing program administration. Thegoal of this collection, then, is to raise issues that need to bediscussed in an ongoing, recursive conversation and to documentsome of the compromises that have been reached by a variety ofinstitutions over the years during which rhetoric and composi-

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM10

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 11 �

tion has emerged as a discipline. While it may not give a defini-tive answer to the question with which this chapter began, itoffers an opportunity for those of us who care about writinginstruction to raise it once again.

Notes

1. Kathleen Blake Yancey is currently leading a nationwide project toascertain how composition is taught, but the preliminary results werenot yet available at the time this was written.2. Shirley Rose has reminded me that many of the students and facultyin literature who teach composition teach excellent courses based onwhat they have learned and internalized from composition studies overthe years. I must also acknowledge the significant number of currentcompositionists—myself included—who began their careers in literarystudies.3. I would also suggest that the divide between pedagogies of writingand literature may have been instrumental in nurturing Writing Acrossthe Curriculum programs, which promise to give students the profes-sional communication skills they need, while freeing literature facultyfrom having to teach them.

Works Cited

Alberti, John. “Returning to Class: Creating Opportunities forMulticultural Reform at Majority Second-Tier Schools.” CollegeEnglish 63.5 (May 2001): 561–84.

Berlin, James. Rhetorics, Poetics, Cultures: Refiguring College EnglishStudies. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1996.

Crowley, Sharon. “Around 1971: Current-Traditional Rhetoric andProcess Models of Composing.” Composition in the Twenty-firstCentury: Crisis and Change. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker,and Ed White. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1994. 64–74.

———. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Es-says. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998.

Enos, Richard Leo. Review of The Rise and Fall of English: Recon-structing English as a Discipline, by Robert Scholes. Rhetoric Re-view 17.2 (Spring 1999): 337–39.

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM11

B E R G M A N N

� 12 �

Ericsson, Patricia Freitag. Outcomes Use Table. January 2005. http://www.wsu.edu/~ericsson/OS_table.html (accessed 13 February2005).

Fetterly, Judith. “Dreaming the Future of English.” College English 61.6(July 1999): 702–11.

Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Lifeof the Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003.

Green, Daniel. “Opinion: Abandoning the Ruins.” College English 63.3(January 2001): 273–87.

Harrington, Susanmarie, Keith Rhodes, Ruth Overman Fischer, and RitaMalenczyk, eds. The Outcomes Book: Debate and Consensus afterthe WPA Outcomes Statement. Logan: Utah State UP, 2005.

Harris, Joseph. “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss: Class Con-sciousness in Composition.” College Composition and Communi-cation 52.1 (September 2000): 43–68.

Horner, Winifred Bryan, ed. Composition and Literature: Bridging theGap. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

Lindemann, Erika. “Freshman Composition: No Place for Literature.”College English 55.3 (March 1993): 311–16.

Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and BellesLettres in the British Cultural Provinces. Pittsburgh: U of PittsburghP, 1997.

———. “What’s Going On with English Majors? Historical Contextsand National Trends in Undergraduate Curricula.” Conference onCollege Composition and Communications Annual Convention. SanAntonio, TX. March 2004. Updated 20 May 2004. http://www.gened.arizona.edu/tmiller/ccc.htm (accessed 13 February2005).

Petraglia, Joseph, ed. Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruc-tion. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995.

Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,1996.

Rhodes, Keith, Irvin Peckham, Linda S. Bergmann, and William Condon.“The Outcomes Project: The Insiders’ History.” The OutcomesBook: Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement.Ed. Susanmarie Harrington, Keith Rhodes, Ruth Overman Fischer,and Rita Malenczyk. Logan: Utah State UP, 2005.

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM12

Introduction: “What Do You Folks Teach over There, Anyway?”

� 13 �

Russell, David R. “Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An ActivityTheory Analysis.” Written Communication 14 (1997): 504–54.

Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing Englishas a Discipline. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1998.

Schutz, Aaron, and Anne Ruggles Gere. “Service Learning and EnglishStudies.” College English 60.2 (February 1998): 129–49.

Sosnoski, James. Token Professionals and Master Critics: A Critique ofOrthodoxy in Literary Studies. Albany: State U of New York P,1994.

Stygall, Gail. “At the Century’s End: The Job Market in Rhetoric andComposition.” Rhetoric Review 18.2 (Spring 2000): 375–89.

Tate, Gary. “A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition.” CollegeEnglish 55.3 (March 1993): 317–21.

Williams, Ashley. “Integrative Writing and Ways of Knowing AcrossFour Courses.” Fifth National Writing Across the Curriculum Con-ference. Bloomington, IN. 1 June 2001.

Winterowd, W. Ross. The English Department: A Personal and Institu-tional History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1998.

WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition. April 2000. http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html (accessed 21 July2005).

b08075_ch1 1/18/06, 11:58 PM13

Foreword by WinzFed Bpzn Homer Af2erword by Patrkcia Hmkin

A rift between literature and composition has long existed in the field of English studies. As a result of the increasing professionalization of composition, some schools have created composition/rhetoric/writing departments separate from the literature department; in other institutions, the two disciplines have continued to uneasily coexist under the "English Department" banner.

Contributors to this collection revisit the teaching of literature in composition classes, examine the extent to which the division between literature and composi- tion affects reaching practices in colleges and universities, and document cases of success and failure in the collaboration between the two fields.

Divided into three parcs, the volume offers distinct perspectives on the issue of composition and/or literature. The first part, Institutional Contexts, reviews some of the theoretical underpinnings of the rift between composition and literature; Part 2, Departmental Cultures, explores how these differences are set in institutional contexts and departmental cultures; and the final section, Applications in the Classroom, examines classroom approaches that draw on materials and practices from both literature and composition.

Because so many composition courses are taught in English departments, by literature scholars, the relationships between reading and writing, literature and composidon, must be continually reexamined and redrawn in order to maintain a vital curriculum. This book provides an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the twa fields and to reframe the discussion that has largely depended on ideas about how composition should be taught, rather than on recognition of the institutional conditions under which it is taught.

National Council of Teachers of English 11 1 1 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 6 180 1 - 1096 800-369-6283 or 217-328-3870 www.ncte.org ISSN 1073-9637