I stumbled upon Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate’s (editors) An Introduction to Composition Studies while surfing through the shelves of the library (is surfing the right metaphor?).
In “The Nature of Composition Studies,” Andrea Lunsford writes:
Thus composition studies views composing not as a series of discrete skills or a package of processes to be practiced by as the very way we constitute and know our worlds. As such, composition studies stands are a discipline of central importance in a post-modern era (Schilb and Harkin).
Such a position leads composition studies to look well beyond its own borders and to challenge divisions between disciplines, between genres, and between media. Thus a scholar of composition may draw on anthropology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, literary theory, neurobiology, or other disciplines in studying the creation and dissemination of written texts…. While the challenges of transdiciplinary work loom large… the questions asked by scholars in composition studies demand a constant pushing against disciplinary barriers, a constant invitation to other fields to add insights and help build satisfactory answers to our questions. (9)
Lunsford writes of working across boundaries, including genre boundaries, media boundaries, and the boundaries of the classroom (9-10). She summarizes her characterization of composition studies: “a focus on the constructed or composed quality of all experience, of all texts; the pressing against disciplinary, genre, and media boundaries; the move to connect the academy to other forums in the private and public space” (10).
Fantastic. I look forward to reading the rest of this book. (Perhaps the best part of reading this essay is that after meeting Lunsford last spring, I could totally hear her voice reading this as I read.)
Lunsford, Andrea A. “The Nature of Composition Studies.” An Introduction to Composition Studies. Ed. Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. 3-14.
How does Lunsford’s quote about “pressing against media and disciplinary boundaries” hold up 16 years later? How does it relate to our project?
Did you know that your security code often is a weird combination of symbols at first and that one has to click “back” and then re-enter the comment section to get something one could actually type in? just checking.
If I write a comment in January on a post from November, do you still see it?
Yes, I’ve been meaning to get a new plugin to prevent spam, one that doesn’t screw up with the entry code every once in a while.
And, yes, I have comments emailed to me from my blog software.
I think Lunsford’s views that we need to be interdisciplinary are as pressing now as they were when she wrote this essay. I think, for instance, that OSU’s writing program is a far cry from where it should be headed: towards multiple literacies and modes of production that will help our students communicate in a hyper-literate world. Where do we discussion and create visual media or online media, or even argumentation that will be read and reacted to by people other than the teacher?
Thanks for commenting here and reminding me of this article!
We have started in the right direction with allowing (if not encouraging) the rhetorical analysis on images including online images, and with allowing discussion board, if not, yet, blogs. In Wr 214 Business and WR 327 Tech Writing we also cover online literacies a bit. But I agree that we need to do more. The rhetoric and writing faculty’s desire to hire a tenure line rhetoric professor with specialty in professional writing may help in this regard, as I am an eager but not entirely knowledgeable quasi-leader for the TA’s and adjuncts. (This year is the first that TA’s were required to use Blackboard!)