this or that subject, it is imperative that you read what is currently being said about the subject, discover what the positions are and who is taking what position, and in general, acquire a sense of the larger conversation. (21)
In quoting both Burke and Olson at length, I invite you to imagine the scholarship of composition studies as a lively conversation that is well underway. Is this a conversation you would like to listen to and perhaps eventually join? If so, this book will aid you by providing directions for finding the composition studies’ parlor, that is, the books, journals, and other sites where the scholarly conversations of this discipline are taking place. In writing this guide, I hope to both ease and speed your entry into this scholarly conversation.
For Writing and Discussion
1. If the scholarship of composition studies can be aptly described as a conversation taking place in a parlor, what experiences have led you to the doorway of this parlor? Why are you interested in stepping inside to hear the conversation?
2. Suppose that you are interested in reading more about composition studies but can’t now imagine that you might join the conversation by publishing in the future. What value might you still find in simply listening to the conversation for a while?
The Need for Student-Centered Introductions to Composition Studies
Guides written specifically to introduce advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students to the discipline of composition studies, such as this text, are only now beginning to be published. One reason is because composition studies emerged as a discipline relatively recently. In his article “Composition History and Disciplinarity,” Robert Connors states that “we can trace the possibility of the field of composition studies” (8) from the New Rhetoric of the 1960s, but that “the founding decade of the disciplinarity of composition studies” (8) was the 1970s, the decade when much serious scholarship in rhetoric and composition began to be published and when the first rhetoric doctoral programs in English departments were formed. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s, writes Connors, that composition studies experienced the “full-blown growth of disciplinarity” (10).
Since then, the composition studies parlor has become increasingly populated with students. According to surveys published periodically in the journal Rhetoric Review (see Chapman and Tate; Brown et al.), there were 38 composition doctoral programs in 1986 and 72 such programs when the survey was updated in 1993, a near doubling of programs in just seven years. Though the number of doctoral programs declined slightly to 65 by the next survey of programs, conducted in 1999, the total enrollment of students in composition doctoral programs had increased by ten percent, up to 1,276. The first survey of MA programs in composition studies, conducted in 2004, identified 55 programs, yet the authors of this survey admit the likelihood that many MA programs in rhetoric and composition were not represented in this survey.
As student enrollments in composition studies programs have grown, so too have compositionists’ discussions about how to best prepare students for entry to the discipline. For example, Louise Wetherbee Phelps has argued for the development of a graduate writing pedagogy, one that faculty can use “in teaching graduate students as prospective scholars how to engage in a postmodern rhetoric” (67). Janice Lauer has raised questions about whether students should be expected to become active members of the profession, even to publish, while they are still in graduate school. Karen Peirce and Theresa Enos have expressed concern that faculty who teach in graduate composition programs share little consensus about graduate curricula, including what kinds of writing assignments are required and what textbooks are used.
The issue of how best to facilitate students entering the conversation of composition studies is addressed most recently and comprehensively in the 2006 book Culture Shock and the Practice of Profession: Training the New Wave in Rhetoric & Composition, edited by Virginia Anderson and Susan Romano. In one essay from this volume, “Inviting Students into Composition Studies with a New Instructional Genre,” Sheryl Fontaine and Susan Hunter critique the “immersion approach to instruction” (198) that has been a mainstay of composition studies programs, whereby “students are expected to jump into the middle of the stream of expert-level discussions and, through a sink-or-swim process, come to understand the various arguments and their relation to one another” (198). Fontaine and Hunter argue that this approach, which may have questionable merit in any discipline, is particularly unsuitable for composition studies because nearly all students entering graduate composition programs have had little or no introduction to the discipline as undergraduates. Thus, students have no “knowledge-building schema” (203), no ready framework for judging the relative importance of what they read or context for interpreting the issues at stake. Fontaine and Hunter then build a case for a new instructional genre in composition studies, books that are written specifically for students entering the discipline, that “acknowledge [students’] position at the threshold of disciplinary knowledge and would actually prepare them to become expert learners in the field of Composition” (203). Such texts, say Fontaine and Hunter, should aim to teach students “the behaviors and practices of the discipline” (206) and should present “theoretical or practical concepts and methods of inquiry that could cross courses” (207), reflecting a “curricula whose rhythms draw on habits of mind much more than the replication of expert knowledge” (207).
To meet the need for texts in this new instructional genre, Parlor Press created the Lenses on Composition Studies series, and this is the first text to be published in the series. As a student beginning your training in composition studies, you’re crossing the threshold into the disciplinary parlor at an especially opportune time. As scholars in the discipline, we welcome you. We hope to make you more comfortable while you listen for a while, so when you’re ready you may join us in the conversation.
For Writing and Discussion
1. As a student beginning to learn about composition studies, what do (or did) you find challenging about reading scholarship in the discipline?
2. Prior to picking up this book, what, if anything, has helped to ease your entry to the composition studies parlor?
The Need for Bibliographic Instruction in Academia
In addition to answering a call for more student-centered introductions to composition studies, this book also answers a call from academic librarians for bibliographic instruction to be integrated into courses in the disciplines. Bibliographic instruction emerged as a distinct field for academic librarians, coincidentally, during the same period that composition studies was developing as a discipline (Fister, “Common Ground”). According to librarian Larry Hardesty, the modern period of attention to bibliographic instruction began in 1969 and “by the early 1970s, bibliographic instruction had emerged as an authentic movement” (340). In 1983, a scholarly journal devoted to the field was initiated, entitled Research Strategies. Shortly afterwards, bibliographic instruction became a priority of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), which is the major professional organization of academic libraries and is a division of the American Library Association (ALA). In 1987, the ACRL developed its first “Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instruction.” As library resources became more prevalent online, librarians began to replace the term “bibliographic instruction” with the more comprehensive term “information literacy.” The ACRL then issued two additional documents meant to advance such instruction: “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” approved in 2000, and “Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians,” approved in 2001 as a revision of the ACRL’s earlier model statement of objectives for bibliographic instruction.
Bibliographic instruction, especially when defined more broadly as information literacy, trains students to do much more than locate relevant sources. The skills that comprise information literacy are best delineated in the following excerpt from the ACRL’s document “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education”:
An
