JAC Volume 12 Issue 2

An Introduction to Composition Studies is a useful introduction to the field of composition. It seeks to welcome the novitiate into the field and give him or her a basic understanding of it, including the relationship between theory and practice, the relationship between rhetoric and composition, the history of composition, and problems of bibliography and research. Most of the essays in the collection will be useful to instructors teaching first-year graduate students trying to get a grasp of the complicated field called composition studies.

The first essay, "The Nature of Composition Studies" by Andrea Lunsford, offers one account of the development of the discipline. Before starting her brief history, Lunsford welcomes newcomers by describing the "inviting" nature of composition and, in particular, her own sense of having been invited: first, by Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, and then by Lynn Troyka and Mina Shaughnessy. She writes, "I think of how open and welcoming they were, of how carefully they listened to my tentative voice, my only partially articulated questions. I think also of their passionate engagement with writing as a subject of theoretical and practical inquiry and their equally passionate engagement with learners. A discipline with these values at its center was one I very much wanted to join--or help create." Lunsford eloquently expresses to the beginning compositionist the thoughts and feelings of most of us who chose to make composition our vocation. But the most important element of Lunsford's brief history is that unlike so many other historians she claims it to be more advantageous to view composition not so much as a direct descendant of ancient rhetoric, but rather as a uniquely American subject that developed here with the democracy-in-education movement. She finds composition to be a revolutionary field, one that "challenges traditional genre boundaries," especially those between literary and nonliterary texts, as well as those between speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

"On 'Rhetoric' and 'Composition'" by John Gage and "Theory and Practice" by Charles Schuster explore the relationships and connections between key terms in the field. Gage concludes that "the phrase rhetoric and composition can be the redundant expression of synonyms; it can express different concepts of relation; it can express concepts that do not belong together; or it can express concepts that cancel each other out." He wonders whether the relationship between rhetoric and composition is subordinate or coordinate. He eventually concludes that the terms are both coordinate and different, but that they belong together. Schuster finds that theory and practice are inseparable and that there will always be some theory in practice and some practice in theory. He examines Foucault's theory of work and how it relates to the definition of an "author," concluding that "the best of recent scholarship in composition studies is similarly not categorizable under the rubric of either theory or practice" but is "positioned on that ambivalent threshold shared by both theory and practice."

The next three essays deal with problems of research that aspiring compositionists must confront. First, there is "Writing the History of Our Discipline," in which Robert Connors explains the difficulties of finding sources, as well as other research problems in developing a history of composition. Connors includes a section on revisionist historiography, in which he comments on the work of James Berlin, Sharon Crowley, and Victor Vitanza, some elements of which he finds troubling. Following Connors are articles that address two key concerns of the novice researcher: bibliographical resources (Patrick Scott) and research methods (Lillian Bridwell-Bowles). Scott claims that the heterogeneity of composition has posed design problems for bibliographers but has made it a bibliographically interesting field. Bridwell-Bowles examines different research methodologies, favoring none and claiming that the concept of a research paradigm will not work in composition; instead, she argues, "perhaps what we need is what Dale Spender has called a theory of 'multidimensional reality,' a theory that will allow us to pick up different lenses when we need to view things in diverse ways."

Lisa Ede's thorough account of the often tumultuous relationship between theory and practice follows. Ede focuses particularly on the freewriting theory of Peter Elbow and the controversy it has generated at times in composition studies. She argues that teachers must be sensitive to the rhetorical situations that their pedagogies create, and that they must recognize "the cultural, political, and ideological forces influencing both them and their students." While Schuster claims that theory and practice do inform one another, Ede demonstrates they must inform one another if composition is to grow as a discipline.

James Slevin's "The Politics of the Profession" is a discussion of what a would-be assistant professor must take into consideration when deciding whether or not to accept a composition position with a university. Slevin argues that politics pervades every element of the compositionist's academic life, including the position he or she takes, the evaluation of his or her performance for promotion and tenure, the curriculum he or she uses, the relative status and importance of his or her discipline. He claims that graduate school does not adequately prepare students for the political battles that are waged in their new positions as tenure-track faculty members.

The collection appropriately concludes with Charles Moran's "A Life in the Profession," the chronicle of a literature professor who eventually took up composition. Moran tells the story of his career, which is in a sense the story of composition as a field. Hired at the University of Massachusetts in 1967 to do his teaching and research in literature, Moran gravitated toward composition. He eventually made the switch at a time when composition was beginning to gain respectability, particularly at Massachusetts where Walker Gibson eventually created an autonomous rhetoric program. Moran's story reads a bit like a fairy tale. Despite its trials and tribulations, its happy ending is clearly meant to give novitiates a good feeling toward the discipline, toward the prospect of becoming a university professor in composition. It is a nice bookend to Lunsford's opening "invitings."

An Introduction to Composition Studies fills an important niche. Certainly, we have other texts that discuss important aspects of the discipline--Elbow's What Is English? and Bullock and Trimbur's The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary, for example. There isn't, however, an introductory text that plainly spells out the basics of what aspiring compositionists need to know in order to get a more rounded view of their field, particularly a view that isn't eclipsed by pedagogy. As the collection make clear, there is much more to composition studies than pedagogy, and attaining this awareness is critical for gradate students. However, because this awareness is so critical, I do not feel that An Introduction goes far enough in informing its readers about the politics of the profession. One does not get a feel for the departmental battles still going on between composition and literature, or the curricular battles still taking place within composition itself. Nor does one get a real understanding of composition's history or its current status within English. These items are touched upon, but only briefly. What is said in the essays is useful; the weakness is what goes unsaid, or what is inadequately covered. It's almost as if the editors asked the writers to cut the most contentious or unpleasant parts of their articles, or at least to mute them. Thus, for graduate students in composition, An Introduction presents a valuable overview; but I would recommend that it be followed by a strong dose of Bullock and Trimbur in order to, as Slevin suggests, help give graduate students the political awareness needed for survival in English departments.