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Composition
Theory Susan Romano |
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Overview
Composition Theory introduces you to the major theories that govern college writing instruction in our times and to the arts of experimenting with these theories in your daily teaching practices. Because both theory and practice respond to broad cultural and intellectual imperatives, we'll attend to the historical conditions that have given rise to current (and often competing) ideas about what writing courses are for and what students should learn in these courses. We'll find that college writing instruction is typically a conservative force working to maintain social order via the transmission of accepted written conventions, yet this conservative tendency is often countered by claims that given course designs in writing instruction contribute to individual freedoms, challenge the status quo, foster community, promote democracy, and enable progress toward social justice. We will take these claims seriously even as we examine them critically. We'll begin by looking at the terms theory, practice and pedagogy through the words of teachers who write about this relationship and by sharing our own experiences as current or future teachers of writing. We'll then investigate the various modes of making knowledge about composing in the academy, e.g., empirical research, ethnography, conversation, lore, theory tapping, and theory building. And then we'll dig into particular theories and their practices. The readings are representative rather than definitive, intended to provoke rich discussion and critical inspection. Ideally, however, at least one or possibly several theories of written language and its teaching will so capture your imagination that you'll want to read deeply about its provenance and its promise. |
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Crosswhite, James. The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the Attractions of Argument. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 2nd ed. Allyn & Bacon, 1999. Ede, Lisa, Ed. On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays. Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. Harris, Joseph. A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996. Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernism and the Subject of Composition. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. Olson, Gary and Lynn Worsham, eds. Race, Rhetoric, and the Postcolonial. SUNY Press, 1999. Porter, James, Patricia Sullivan, and Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professional Writing Online: Users' Handbook, Allyn & Bacon, 2001. (courtesy of publisher) Zebroski, James. Thinking Through Theory: Vygotskian Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing. Boynton/Cook, 1994. Recommended Texts Blakesley, David. Elements of Dramatism. Allyn & Bacon, Corbett, Edward P.J., and Rosa Eberly, The Elements of Reasoning. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. Tate, Rupiper, Schick, A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Oxford University Press, 2001. |
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Attendance
and Participation |
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Grades
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