Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition

edited by Patricia Donahue and Gretchen Flesher Moon

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007
Paper: 978-0-8229-5954-0 | eISBN: 978-0-8229-7318-8
Library of Congress Classification PE1405.U6L63 2007
Dewey Decimal Classification 808.042071073

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Local Histories, the contributors seek to challenge the widely held belief that the origin of American composition as a distinguishable discipline can be traced to a small number of elite colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and Michigan in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Through extensive archival research at liberal arts colleges, normal schools, historically black colleges, and junior colleges, the contributors ascertain that many of these practices were actually in use prior to this time and were not the sole province of elite universities. Though not discounting the elites' influence, the findings conclude that composition developed in many locales concurrently.

Individual chapters reflect on student responses to curricula, the influence of particular instructors or pedagogies in the context of compositional history, and the difficulties inherent in archival research. What emerges is an original and significant study of the developmental diversity within the discipline of composition that opens the door to further examination of local histories as guideposts to the origins of composition studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Patricia Donahue is professor of English and director of the college writing program at Lafayette College. She is coauthor of The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty and coeditor of Reclaiming Pedagogy: The Rhetoric of the Classroom.

Gretchen Flesher Moon is professor of English, directs the writing center, and coordinates the college-wide writing program at Willamette University.

REVIEWS

“A stunning achievement--and long overdue. This book does more to dislodge that narrative form from our disciplinary self-consciousness than any other project of its kind.”
—Rhetoric Review

“Represents the best that we know about constructing our histories and refiguring our archive. I heartily applaud the writers and editors, and their work.”
—Writing on the Edge

“The nineteenth century was full of interesting local composition and rhetoric courses, and this volume attempts to construct an 'alternative' history of composition from efforts at small colleges and normal schools, not just at so-called 'major' universities like Harvard, which so far have received most of the attention. The archival work, and a refreshingly different cast of scholars working in new territory make Local Histories a welcome study.”

----John Brereton, Boston Athenaeum

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
(This is not a) Foreword 000
Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori
Acknowledgments 000
1. Locating Composition History 000
Gretchen Flesher Moon
2. Thinking Like That: The Ideal Nineteenth-Century Student Writer 000
Kathleen A. Welsch
3. (The Teaching of) Reading and Writing at Lafayette College 000
Patricia Donahue and Bianca Falbo
4. A Chair "Perpetually Filled by a Female Professor": Rhetoric and Composition Instruction at Nineteenth-Century Butler University 000
Heidemarie Z. Weidner
5. Vida Scudder in the Classroom and in the Archives 000
Julie Garbus
6. Mid-Nineteenth-Century Writing Instruction at Illinois State Normal University: Credentials, Correctness, and the Rise of a Teaching Class 000
Kenneth Lindblom, William Banks, and Risë Quay
7. The Platteville Papers Revisited: Gender and Genre in a Normal School Writing Assignment 000
Kathryn Fitzgerald
8. "Our Life's Work": Rhetorical Preparation and Teacher Training at a Massachusetts State Normal School, 1839¿1929 000
Beth Ann Rothermel
9. Life in the Margins: Student Writing and Curricular Change at Fitchburg Normal, 1895¿1910 000
Patrice K. Gray
10. William Rainey Harper and the Ideology of Service at Junior Colleges 000
William DeGenaro
11. The Progressive Faculty/Student Discourse of 1969¿1970 and the Emergence of Lincoln University's Writing Program 000
Jeffrey L. Hoogeveen
12. Disciplinary Histories: A Meditation on Beginnings 000
Patricia Donahue
Afterword 000
Jean Ferguson Carr
Works Cited, Secondary Sources 000
List of Contributors 000
Index 000

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