Beth Leahy

ENGL 540

Proposal Part 1

 

 

Large Scope

When I decided to apply to graduate school, I was mainly interested in focusing on students’ attitudes toward composition today- particularly in non-traditional settings.  What I’m starting to think about, though, is how classroom practices and attitudes had to begin somewhere.  What I’m also starting to discover is that I really like archival research, and I think delving into the history of a program I’m joining officially next fall is a great place to begin exploring some of the questions I have about students and composition.  So, just what did rhetorical education at the University of New Mexico look like at the turn of the century and how did it evolve into the program we know today?  Was formal rhetoric taught, and if so, what methods were used?  How was composition taught at UNM?  How did UNM compare with other flagship state universities in this respect?  What were the students speaking and writing about during this time?  

A Narrower Scope

What were UNM students writing about at the turn of the century?  What inferences can we make about their rhetorical education given primary sources available such as the monthly student newspaper?  Is it possible to piece together limited primary sources to reconstruct a snapshot of this type of curriculum? 

Primary Sources

The Center for Southwest Research has a variety of primary sources that will be useful in this endeavor.  The UNM Archives contain some information about faculty and departments.  Charles E. Hodgin’s personal papers have some handwritten speeches on pedagogy.  The CSWR also has some turn of the century University Catalogs, as well as issues of The Mirage, the monthly student newspaper at the time, from 1899- 1903.  Hodgin’s papers and the school catalog will provide some useful information about what was taught at UNM at the turn of the century.  The faculty information (though it’s scant) could provide more clues on classroom curriculum, specifically if I can link a faculty member to an institution (previous teaching or where they earned their degree) that can help me make inferences about their pedagogy.  Finally, the school newspaper will provide me with tangible evidence of what the students were writing about.  Additionally, the CSWR houses alumni records, and information about the earliest alumni may lead me toward any work they may have had formally published. 

Project Assignments

If I had four assistants at my disposal, I would divvy up some of the work in the following manner:

  1. Assign a student to take a list of the faculty responsible for teaching English at the turn of the century and research where their credentials came from.  From there, the task would then be to see if there is existing scholarship about these institutions that may help us infer what this faculty might use as resources for teaching.  (i.e. professor so and so got their Master’s degree at a school out east that we know used Campbell for all 2nd year students)
  2. Another student would read all of Charles E. Hodgin’s papers and speeches in the CSWR and flag any that contain information about pedagogy, composition, or the student assemblies that Hodgin implemented at UNM
  3. A third student would help out with reading through the secondary sources to determine which would be useful in the endeavor, and assist with close readings of those.
  4. Finally, I’d assign somebody the task of reading through the back issues of The Mirage to help me determine which articles are most useful/interesting to consider for this study

 

The Class Project

            My goal for the remainder of this course would be to do primary source research in the archives at the CSWR.  I’d like to do close readings of the student newspapers, as well as piece together information from the catalog and the UNM records to construct a snapshot of rhetorical education at UNM at the turn of the century.  I’d also like to do a close reading of Gold and possibly use him as a model for making inferences about curriculum based on my archival research.  By the beginning of May I would like to come up with a workable thesis and abstract for a larger project for submission to CCCC.  I’d ultimately like to begin writing, as well, so maybe the finished product for the purposes of this class should be a paper about The Mirage and what it can tell us about rhetoric at UNM. 

 

 

 

Working Bibliography

I’ll update this document in the next day or two, but just to get this out there, here’s a short list of secondary sources from class that may be useful (and I do plan to branch out beyond our course readings):

Connors, Robert. “Textbooks and the Evolution of the Discipline”.  College Composition and Communication. 37.2 (1986): 178-94.

Gold, David. Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947. SIUP, 2008.

Johnson, Nan. Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in North America. SIUP, 1991.

-- Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866-1910. SIUP, 2002.

Also, Clark & Halloran may be useful