Exploring Composition Studies: Sites, Issues, Perspectives

Introduction: How Did We Get Here?

i n t r o d u C t i o n How Did We Get Here? Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei Matsuda Composition studies—an important subset of the larger field of rhetoric and composition—is an intellectual formation that draws insights from various related fields in order to address issues in the teaching of writing . Due to its inherently interdisciplinary nature, composition studies draws its students and prospective scholars from many areas inside and outside English studies. These new members of the composition studies community are often trained to varying degrees in the pedagogy of composition through teaching practica or proseminars. While many of them have been exposed to some of the major theories of the field in addition to other specialized topics in which they or their faculty mentors happen to have interests, others may not have been introduced to the discipline through a broader articulation of how (and why) its members undertake research that is not only pedagogical but also historical, theoretical, and social scientific in nature. Relative newcomers to composition studies who are not familiar with the broad scope of the field— including its allied sites of research such as professional and technical writing, writing-across-the-curriculum programs, writing centers, and writing program administration—may struggle as they try to understand its diverse and growing constituencies and enduring questions in various subareas of composition studies. This collection aims to provide that understanding, through a detailed exploration of the field. As editors, and as teachers, we recognize that such an exploration requires first the presence of a road map. As such, we feel it is helpful here to briefly sketch a modern history of composition studies that might then put the concerns of this book’s thirteen essays in a larger context. While origin stories of composition studies abound, historians of the field seem to agree that there are two branches to the “beginning ” of composition as a subject of interest in the university. The first branch would be the study of the cultural history and practice of rhetoric , which has existed in various permutations from antiquity through 2 ExP LORI N G C OM P OSI T I ON ST U D I ES the present; rhetoric as a field and a practice is critical for many of the undergraduate and graduate programs in composition studies (or composition and rhetoric or rhetoric and composition, depending upon local nomenclature) today. The second branch, arriving in force in the nineteenth century, would be the institutional imperative to inculcate in students the principles of composing—specifically, to create in students the proper markers of taste and, arguably, class, as exhibited in written compositions, usually based on the analysis of literary works. The intertwined beginnings of this field have been articulated, and debated, by a variety of scholars (see, for example, Gage; Andrea Lunsford; Crowley; Connors; Berlin; Susan Miller; and Thomas Miller); we recognize the complex politics and interests surrounding the intermingling of rhetoric with composition, and composition with rhetoric. But for the purpose of this book, we will focus specifically on the scholarship of writing and composing—and, as such, limit our history to a brief discussion of research and inquiry that focuses on composition studies per se. We have, however, included a brief list of recommended comprehensive field histories of rhetoric and composition at the conclusion of this introduction for those who would like to learn more about the ongoing debates over the field’s trajectory and mission. Different historians of the field will position the “start” of composition studies at different points. Some will argue that U.S. college composition was born at Harvard in the 1890s; others will argue that it was not truly born until the beginning of the 1970s. Still others will position the birth of the field at various points in between, including 1911, when the National Council of Teachers of English was formed, or 1949, when the first Conference on College Composition and Communication took place, or 1950, when the journal College Composition and Communication debuted. The date one chooses has much to do with what one insists is being born. Is it the first-year course that one sees as the origin of things? If so, then the 1890s sounds about right—though some forms of writing at the introductory level were offered in colleges several years before this, and extra-institutional writing collectives existed even earlier in the nineteenth century as well. Is it the emergence of a...