“Bibliographic Resources and Problems.” An Introduction to Composition Studies. Ed. Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. 72–93.
For Further Reading
Berkenkotter, Carol, Thomas N. Huckin, and John Ackerman. “Conventions, Conversation, and the Writer: Case Study of a Student in a Rhetoric Ph.D. Program.” Research in the Teaching of English 22 (1988): 9–44.
Borgman, Christine L. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure and the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.
Breivik, Patricia Senn, and E. Gordon Gee. Higher Education in the Internet Age: Libraries Creating a Strategic Edge. Westport, CT: American Council of Education, Praeger Series on Higher Education, 2006.
Fister, Barbara. “Connected Communities: Encouraging Dialogue Between Composition and Bibliographic Instruction.” Writing-Across-the-Curriculum and the Academic Library: A Guide for Librarians, Instructors, and Writing Program Directors. Ed. Jean Sheridan. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. 33–51.
Lauer, Janice M., and Andrea Lunsford. “The Place of Rhetoric and Composition Studies in Doctoral Programs.” The Future of Doctoral Studies in English. Ed. Andrea Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin. New York: MLA, 1989. 106–10.
Lindemann, Erika. “Early Bibliographic Work in Composition Studies.” Profession. New York: Modern Language Association, 2002. 151–57.
Lindemann, Erika, and Gary Tate, eds. An Introduction to Composition Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.
Lunsford, Andrea, Helene Moglen, and James F. Slevin. The Future of Doctoral Studies in English. New York: MLA, 1989.
North, Stephen M., Barbara A. Chepaitis, David Coogan, Lale Davidgon, Ron MacLean, Cindy L. Parrish, Jonathan Post, and Beth Weatherby. Refiguring the Ph.D. in English Studies: Writing, Doctoral Education, and the Fusion-Based Curriculum. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000.
Nystand, Martin, Stuart Greene, and Jeffrey Wiemelt. “Where Did Composition Studies Come From? An Intellectual History.” Written Communication 10 (1993): 267–33.
Raspa, Dick, and Dane Ward, eds. The Collaborative Imperative: Librarians and Faculty Working Together in the Information Universe. Chicago: American Library Association, 2000.
Rockman, Ilene F., ed. Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum: Practical Models for Transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.
Scott, Patrick, and Bruce Castner. “Reference Sources for Composition Research: A Practical Survey.” College English 45 (1983): 756–68.
Sheridan, Jean. “What Bibliographic Instruction Librarians Can Learn from Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Instructors.” Writing-Across-the-Curriculum and the Academic Library: A Guide for Librarians, Instructors, and Writing Program Directors. Ed. Jean Sheridan. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. 113–19.
2 Voices in the Parlor: The Construction of Knowledge in Composition Studies
The first chapter of this book opened with an analogy that compared scholarship in an academic discipline to an ongoing conversation taking place in a parlor. Although a parlor seems a more antiquated reference now than it likely did when Kenneth Burke published this analogy in 1941, the notion of a conversation taking place within a designated space is still vital to an understanding of disciplinary knowledge. A conversation taking place in a parlor implies that those inside the room understand and practice conversation differently than do those who are outside the room. One defining element of the conversation in each academic discipline’s parlor is how the discipline creates new knowledge, specifically, which modes of inquiry the discipline values and what the discipline accepts as convincing evidence.
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce you to how knowledge is constructed in composition studies. As a student and newcomer to composition studies, you need to learn about the discipline’s methods of creating and testing knowledge so that as you engage in bibliographic research, you can better assess the significance of each source you find, each voice you encounter in the conversation. Learning more about how knowledge is constructed in composition studies can also prepare you to search for the full spectrum of voices that contribute to knowledge about your research interest so that your bibliographic research is as comprehensive as possible.
The most well-known account of how knowledge is formed in composition studies is the book The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field, written by Stephen North. In this book, North proposes a taxonomy of knowledge in composition studies based on what he calls its “modes of inquiry—the whole series of steps an inquirer follows in making a contribution to a field of knowledge” (1). North argues that the modes of inquiry used in composition studies comprise three major “methodological communities” (1): scholars, researchers, and practitioners. Though The Making of Knowledge in Composition was published in 1987, it remains a core text in many graduate composition studies programs because it continues to serve as a helpful introduction to how knowledge is constructed in the discipline. Using the framework provided by North’s book, let us now examine further each of these core modes of inquiry in composition studies: scholarship, empirical research, and practice. The following sections provide a definition, some examples, and advice for locating each.
Scholarship
Definition of Scholarship
The most traditional mode of knowledge in composition studies is scholarship. North defines scholarship as a mode of inquiry that is text-based and that relies on dialectic, which he defines as “the seeking of knowledge via the deliberate confrontation of opposing points of view” (60). North identifies three major types of knowledge-makers who produce scholarship in composition studies: historians, philosophers, and critics. He describes them more fully as “those who seek knowledge about how rhetoric has been understood and practiced in the past [the historians]; or who try to get at the theoretical underpinning of rhetorical activity [the philosophers]; or whose approach to textual interpretation has a rhetorical basis [the critics]” (64). Although he says that many of the people he designates as scholars would self-identify as rhetoricians, he does not use that term in his own taxonomy of knowledge-makers in the discipline.
Examples of Scholarship
Examples of scholarship can be found for any issue in composition studies; here, the topic of writing across the curriculum (often identified by the acronym WAC) will be used to provide some concrete examples of the how scholarship contributes to knowledge in composition studies. One example of historical scholarship about writing across the curriculum is “The History of the WAC Movement,” an early chapter in Bazerman et al.’s Reference Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum (2005). This chapter provides a concise history that describes the origins of writing instruction in colleges and universities in the late nineteenth century, cites some initial arguments for writing across the curriculum that emerged in the 1930s, and then traces how political and social changes that impacted college enrollments in later decades, along with educational reform movements in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, led to the recognition of a need to teach writing skills in multiple disciplines. The chapter then identifies when formal writing-across-the-curriculum programs were institutionalized and concludes by discussing the initiation of journals, conferences, and web resources that provided further support for the development of WAC knowledge and practice.
McLeod and Soven’s book Composing a Community: A History of Writing Across the Curriculum (2006) is also a history of WAC, but as a collection of twelve essays by different authors, it is both more selective and more detailed in its historical approach. Here, readers will find histories of particular emphases
