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13. Are We There Yet? The Making of a Discipline in Composition
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13 a R e w e T h e R e y e T ? The Making of a discipline in Composition Kristine Hansen A frequently debated question among composition scholars during the 1980s, 1990s, and even beyond, was whether the field was a discipline or not. For years, many respected figures in the field have spoken of it as such (e.g., Connors 1999; Goggin 2000; Lauer 2006; Phelps 1988; Slevin 2001), but there are some who firmly disagree or at least express doubt (e.g., Crowley 1998; Harris 2005; Haswell 2005; Miller 2003; Smit 2004). Stephen North’s own answer in 1987 was that composition was not a discipline and could become one only if five criteria were met. First, either it must escape the strangulating domination of literary studies in English departments by founding autonomous departments, or it must establish knowledge-making parity with literary studies in English departments by creating, accumulating, and disseminating knowledge “in ways that would meet with academic approval” (1987, 370). North found the latter possibility unlikely, so he thought autonomy was needed, where, he hoped, the second criterion might be met: establishment of “inter-methodological peace” so that the methodological pluralism that brought composition into being might remain its “vital core” (369). In such spaces, he believed, a new discipline might emerge if the final three criteria were to combine and form a methodologically coherent enterprise: first, “heightened methodological consciousness”; second, “a spirit of methodological egalitarianism,” making respectful understanding the norm for all methods of inquiry; and, third, the reestablishment of practice as inquiry—that is, an acceptance and appreciation of what lore is and how it “can usefully interact” with other kinds of knowledge (370–71). In this essay, I use North’s five criteria to judge whether composition might, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of MKC, be called a fully formed discipline, and I evaluate North’s criteria by examining how Are We There Yet? 237 the field has developed and how his own published positions changed since he made his predictions. The evidence to be considered in making this judgment is vast, varied, and always changing. It’s impossible to survey it all, and like anyone looking at the records of the past and present , I interpret the evidence in light of my own experience and biases. I must take the reader down a meandering road, starting with a consideration of composition’s location and status. The end of the journey may be disappointing since I conclude we haven’t arrived yet. aUTo no m o Us d epaRT m enT s o R Knowledge- maK i ng paRi T y i n engli sh At the outset, it’s critical to note that by “Composition,” North meant the teaching of writing. In 1987 he viewed the invention of the term “composition studies” as a “subversion of that practical [pedagogical] tradition,” and he saw the direction in which composition studies was heading as “taking the long way around” to establishing a discipline. As he said, “Training in a discipline ordinarily implies preparation for doing something, and in Composition, that something has been and in practice largely remains teaching writing” (364; italics in original). Interestingly, North did allow that composition was a profession, but one with “relatively limited control over the training, licensing, and review of its members” when compared with professions like law and medicine— which are also disciplines (364). Curiously, however, in MKC North did not comment on the material conditions in which composition programs were supposed to professionalize their members, though it was certainly the case in 1987 that graduate students, part-time teachers, and untenured full-time teachers were sizeable percentages—in some places likely the majority—of the staff teaching composition courses.1 How the few PhD-holding compositionists at that time were supposed to take these lowliest members of the academy and form independent departments was not explained any more than the shape of these departments was outlined. Were they to offer only typical general-education courses in first-year writing, perhaps basic writing, and maybe an advanced writing course or two? Would they offer a major? Would there be undergraduate as well as graduate courses in the teaching of writing? Would there 1. According to data derived from the U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS Fall Staff Survey, in 1989 (two years after the publication of MKC) faculty in all degree-granting institutions were composed of 36.4 percent part-time faculty...