Origin Stories (or “Disciplinary Determination”)

Prefatory Notes & General Verbosity…

Though we didn’t get into Fish and Bizzell as deeply as I would have liked, they work well as an introduction to this week’s course material, guiding questions, and topic/s for discussion.

• There’s rhetoric, and composition, and rhetoric and composition. What’s the difference? What’s the relationship between the two?
• As writers / teachers of writing / members of academe / citizens of the polis… what are we doing here?
• What should we be doing here?
• How/where/with whom should we do it?

We won’t actually be able to answer those questions definitively (or perhaps, universally,) but we will get some perspectives from history (in general) and from a few scholars (in particular, though they represent overlapping, amorphous groups with blurry, porous boundaries).

About the readings… The first, hosted at Bedford, is a linear, very brief history of R/C starting with the Sophists. The second is a “choose-your-own-organizing-principle” timeline. Depending on your choice, it’s less a strict chronological timeline and more a ideoline, or convoline, or institutioline, or curriculine (none of those words exist, but at least two of them should). Lauer, a mother superior in Comp Theory (formerly elsewhere), is a germinal discussion of the distinctive aspects and boundaries of the field. Lauer says we’re “dappled”–it’s a polite way of saying we’re messy, but that’s not a bad thing.

Trimbur uses what is supposed to be a review of Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary (a book beloved by many, but partially responsible for ending my short stint as an undergraduate education major) as a platform for something much larger and more important. Phelps argues for R/C as a field in a Doctoral Consortium report… in 2004… barely more than a decade ago.

The special double issue of Enculturation is fantastic–the articles are mostly short and fairly accessible. The articles are an excellent example of what people mean when they talk about “the scholarly conversation” happening in our journals. Also, a few of the articles in 5.2 directly respond to ones in 5.1 in a bit of very direct, mostly polite, and occasionally snarky disagreement. It’s good stuff…

Required Readings:

• “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” open_in_new The Bedford Guide for Teachers of Writing. Macmillan Higher Ed.
• “Composition: History & Theory,” open_in_new from Ohio University Department of English.
• Lauer, Janice M. “Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline.” file_download Rhetoric Review 3.1 (1984): pp. 20–29.
• Trimbur, John. “Articulation Theory and the Problem of Determination: A Reading of ‘Lives on the Boundary.’” file_download Journal of Advanced Composition 13.1 (1993): pp. 33–50. (Only pages 33-42 are required.)
• Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. “The Case for Rhetoric & Composition as an Emerging Field: A Report from the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric & Composition.” file_download 31 Oct. 2004.
• (Appendices) file_download A: “Rhetoric and Composition: A Brief History of the Field” and B: “The Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition: A Brief History” (Only the first four pages are required)
• Selections from special double issue of Enculturation titled “Rhetoric/Composition: Intersections / Impasses / Differends.” Read the 5.1 “Editors’ Introduction” open_in_new and read a few articles from issue 5.1. open_in_new Then, read the 5.2 “Editors’ Introduction” open_in_new and read a few from issue 5.2. open_in_new

• Certainly, browse the TOCs for 5.1 and 5.2 and select the articles that sound interesting. But… if you’re looking for recommendations…
• Haynes, “Rhetoric/Slash/Composition”
• Farris, “Where Rhetoric Meets the Road: First-Year Composition”
• Crowley, “Composition Is Not Rhetoric”
• Jarratt, “Rhetoric in Crisis?: The View from Here”
• Muckelbauer, “Returns of the Question” (responds to ideas in 5.1 articles by Farris, Crowley, Jarratt, and Haynes)
• Atwill, “Art and Disciplinarity” (response to 5.1 article by Farris)

Assignments Due:

• Login to the website using your myFAU ID and your Z number as password (with a capital “Z” at the beginning). For example, my username would be jmason32 and my password would be Z09876543.
• After you login, you may be 1) taken to your “admin” area, or 2) you may see nothing happen.
  • If nothing happens, refresh your page. If that doesn’t work, email me.
• Go to “Profile.” Change your display name (if you’d like), change your password, and upload an avatar of your choosing (mandatory!).
• Click around and check out the interface. About that: 1) There’s a lot of stuff you in WP you won’t use. Ignore it if you can. 2) You can’t do anything wrong or mess anything up… I promise!)
• Go to “Posts” and create a new (test) post. Introduce yourself to the class. Use the category tag “introduction (test post)”.
• Comment on someone else’s test post introduction.

In Class:

• Further discussion of course work and expectations
• Explanation of blog post categories, min/max number of posts
• sign up for Weekly Recap duties
• Discuss potential topics for team presentations
• Discussion of reading material
  • Fieldmapping (variations), stakes and stakeholders
  • Political historiographies
• Framing questions for next week

Recommended Reading

Phelps, Louise Wetherbee, and John M. Ackerman. “Making the Case for Disciplinarity in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies: The Visibility Project.” College Composition and Communication 62.1 (2010): pp. 180–215.

Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. “The Historical Formation of Academic Identities: Rhetoric and Composition, Discourse and Writing.” Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie 25.1 (2014).

Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. “The Domain of Composition.” Rhetoric Review 4.2 (1986): pp. 182–195.

Carlton, Susan Brown. “Composition as a Postdisciplinary Formation.” Rhetoric Review 14.1 (1995): pp. 78–87. Print.

Berlin, James. “Revisionary Histories of Rhetoric: Politics, Power, and Plurality.” Writing Histories of Rhetoric. Ed. Victor J. Vitanza. paperback ed. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2013. 112–127.

Crowley, Sharon. “Let Me Get This Straight.” Writing Histories of Rhetoric. Ed. Victor J. Vitanza. paperback ed. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2013. 1–19.

Jarratt, Susan. “New Dispositions for Historical Studies in Rhetoric.” Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work. Ed. Gary A. Olson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. 65–78.

Kellner, Hans. “After the Fall: Reflections on Histories of Rhetoric.” Writing Histories of Rhetoric. Ed. Victor J. Vitanza. paperback ed. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2013. 20–37.

Nystrand, Martin, Stuart Greene, and Jeffrey Wiemelt. “Where Did Composition Studies Come from? An Intellectual History.” Written Communication 10.3 (1993): 267–333.

Parker, William Riley. “Where Do English Departments Come From?” College English 28.5 (1967): 339. CrossRef. Web. 4 Aug. 2015.

Vandenberg, Peter. “Conjunction Function Reduction: A Too-Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition.” Enculturation 5.1 (2003): n. pag. Web. 9 Aug. 2015.