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ENGL 696S: Composition Studies—Emerging Trends and Methods

Instructor: Professor Matthew Abraham Class meeting room: Modern Languages 201 Class meeting time: Wednesday, 4-6:30 p.m. Office: Modern Languages 428 Phone: 520-626-0775; 773-682-9322 Office Hours: Wednesday, 2-4 p.m. and by appointment Description: This course will examine the representative methods composition researchers have utilized to conduct their research from the field’s founding in the early 1960s through to contemporary approaches. Over the last four decades, composition researchers have developed an array of theories for producing knowledge within the discipline of composition studies. A major question for our consideration is: How does composition studies construct knowledge? Coming to understand the frameworks through which this knowledge has been produced will be vital to your professional career. As the course title suggests, we will also study the emerging trends that are transforming how writing studies researchers are approaching the act of creating written discourse. As we survey how the field has imagined, pursued, and revised its guiding research questions and methods, we will also learn about how the teaching of composition and the discipline of rhetoric and composition have been configured historically within the university. These are ambitious

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goals for a course that only last sixteen weeks, but I am committed to giving you the very best foundational knowledge of the field as you begin your doctoral studies Course goals:

1) Learn about the leading methods for conducting composition research through an historical examination;

2) Understand the components of an experimental composition study; 3) Study the disciplinary rise of composition studies; 4) Understand emerging trends within the field of composition studies; 5) Describe the field’s boundaries and current debates about those boundaries.

Key Concepts: Empirical Research Ethnography Feminist Research Practices Racial Methodologies Socially Progressive Research Mixed Methods Research Conducting Case Studies Conducting Survey Research Validity Constructs Reliability Randomization Probability Null Hypothesis Empirical Methods Quantitative v. Qualitative Methods Prediction/Classification Studies Composition Studies and Feminism Composition Studies and Institutional Critique REQUIRED TEXTS: *Hawk, Byron. A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. *Nickolson, Lee and Mary Sheridan, Eds.. Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. *Powell, Katrina and Pamela Takayoshi, Eds. Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsive Research. New York: Hampton Press, 2012. *Shipka, Jodi. Toward a Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.

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*Sirc, Geoffrey. Composition as a Happening. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005. REFERENCE TEXTS (obtain at some point in your RCTE career): Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. Johanek, Cindy. Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000. Kirsh, Gesa and Patricia A. Sullivan, Eds. Methods and Methodology in  Composition Research. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Lauer, Janice and J. William Asher. Composition Research: Empirical Designs. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1989. Massey, Lance and George Gebhardt. The Changing of Knowledge in Composition. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. Miller, Susan. Norton Guide to Composition Studies. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2009. Matsuda, Paul and Kelly Ritter, Eds. Exploring Composition Studies. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. North, Stephen. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. Portsmouth: Boyton-Cook Publishers, 1987. Olsen, Gary, Ed. Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work. Carbondale:  Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. Composition as a Human Science. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1988. Smit, David W. The End of Composition Studies. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Sullivan, Patricia and James Porter. Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Greenwich and London: Ablex, 1997. *Major Assignments:

1) Book review of a rhetoric/composition studies book released in the last three years (see list of possible texts)—due on November 12th;

2) 3 Short Writing Responses (3-5 pages)—due on December 16th; 3) Historical Journal Analysis (CCCs, RTE, College English, Written

Communication)—due December 3rd; 4) Presentation of an article in the bibliography to the class; 5) Final project (seminar paper, mapping project, historical trace project, journal

article draft, etc.)—I would like a proposal for this by October 29th; *Your will receive detailed descriptions of what is expected for these assignments well in advance of any due date.

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We will attempt to obtain a general understanding of these movements in Composition Studies: Cognitive approaches (Flower and Hayes) Expressivist Movement (Elbow, Britton, Moffett, etc.) Process Movement (Tobin, Faigley, Trimbur, etc.) Post-process Movement (Kent, Dobrin, Foster, Rice, Olson, etc.) Theories of Complexity (Hawk, Barnett, Rickert, etc.) General Remarks:

1) Attendance—you are doctoral students. Enough said! 2) Reading—the reading load may seem heavy and overwhelming, but just keep in

mind that I don’t expect you to read everything I have placed on the syllabus. Much of this is for you to reference at a later point, as you build your own bibliography of the field. In other words, don’t fret if you are only able to make a small dent each week in the assigned reading—that is only to be expected!

3) Although you may not see an overarching framework in the beginning as we move from one theme to the next from week to week, you will develop a sense of how the field has framed its guiding questions toward the end of the semester;

4) Use this course to develop the big questions you intend to pursue in RCTE and beyond. As I always tell graduate students, there is no point in you developing a project in this course that does not serve—in some way—your long-term research goals. To that end, think of every assignment that you do in your early course work as positioning you in relation to your prospectus, dissertation, first article, etc.;

5) Begin professionalizing now by attending national conferences, reading the field’s major journals, corresponding with scholars in the field, etc.;

6) Try to build connections between the courses you are taking this semester. How, for example, does this course connect to your emerging trends and methods in rhetoric course?

7) Seek me out as often as much as you like; I’m here to help you! 8) Most all of the RCTE faculty will be visiting our class during the semester. Use

their visits to begin thinking about how your research interests link up with the faculty’s;

9) Try to relax and derive some enjoyment from what you are learning—this is supposed to be a fun and enjoyable process, although it might not always seem that way.

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696-S Class Schedule: Week 1 (August 27th): Introduction

Discuss Fulkerson’s “Composition Studies at the Turn of Twenty-First the Century”; Responses to Fulkerson; Nystrand, et al.’s “Where Did Composition Studies Come From?”: Crowley’s Composition in the University—chapter 1 and 2. Week 2 (September 3rd): Maritza Cardenas (Visitor)

Discuss: Berlin’s “Composition: Major Pedagogical Theories”: Berkenkotter’s “Positivism”; Juzweik, et al’s “Writing in the Twenty-First Century”; Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition—The Practitioners; Crowley’s Composition in the University—chapters 3 and 4; Michael Carter’s “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines”; Hairston’s “Winds of Change”; Larsen’s “Competing Paradigms”: Read Hass, et al’s “Analytic Strategies, Competent Inquiries, and Methodological Tensions in the Study of Writing” in Nicholson and Sheridan and Takayoshi, Tomlinson, and Castillo’s “The Construction of Research Problems and Methods” in Powell and Takayoshi.

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Week 3 (September 10th): Damian Baca (Visitor).

Read Phelps’ “The Domain of Composition” and “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition”: Lauer’s “Dappled Discipline”: Berkenkotter’s “Turf Wars,” Haswell’s “NCTE/CCC War”; Roozen and Lunsford’s “One Story of Many to Be Told”; Burnham’s “Expressive Pedagogy: Practice/Theory, Theory/Practice”; Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition—The Theorists; Faigley’s Fragments of Rationality. Begin Sirc’s Composition as a Happening; read Sheridan’s “Making Ethnography Our Own” in Nicholson and Sheridan and Blythe’s “Composing Activist Research” in Nicholson and Sheridan. Week 4 (September 17th): Adela Licona (Visitor).

Reading: Smagorinsky and Smith’s “The Nature of Knowledge in Composition and Literacy Understanding”: Flowers and Hayes’ “Cognitive Process”: Brand’s “the Why of Cognition”; Bizzell’s “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty”; Faigley’s “Competing Theories of Process”; Fulkerson’s “Process and Post-Process”; Marback’s “Embracing Wicked Design”: McGee’s “Practicing Socially Progressive Research in Powell and Takayoshi; Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition—The Clinicians; Faigley’s Fragments of Rationality; “Marback’s “Embracing Wicked Problems”; Johanek’s Composing Research; (Designing a research study); Continue Sirc’s Composition as a Happening Week 5 (September 24th):

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Archival/historical—Working in the Archives; CCC’s special issue on Research Methodologies, September 2012; Editor’s Intro; “Archival Research in Composition Studies: Reimagining the Historian’s Role” (Ritter); Gold”s “Historigraphy”; Carter and Conrad; Gaillet; read Rawson’s “Archive This” in Nicholson and Sheridan; and Griebel’s “Community-Based Research and the Importance of a Research Stance” in Nicholson and Sheridan Week 6 (October 1st): Ken McAllister (Visitor).

Critical Discourse Analysis— Read “Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric and Composition” (Huckin, Andrus, Clary-Lemon); Barton’s “Resources for Discourse Analysis in Composition Studies”;. Read Inoue’s “Racial Methodologies for Composition Studies” in Nicholson and Sheridan; Complete Sirc Week 7 (October 8th): Tom Miller (Visitor)

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Hermeneutics—Margaret Strain’s “Toward a Hermeneutic Model of Composition History”; Nelms’ “Case for Oral Evidence in Composition Historiography”: Barton “More Methodological Matters”: Belanger and Heaney’s “Critical Pedagogy as Inquiry” in Powell and Takayoshi; Lamos’s “Institutional Critique in Composition Studies” in Nicholson and Sheridan and Powell and Takayoshi’s “Revealing Methodologies” in Powell and Takayoshi. Week 8 (October 15th): Anne-Marie Hall (Visitor).

Start empirical weeks: basic concepts of research design (validity, reliability, operationalization, constructs); quantitative/measurement/experimental/descriptive and inferential statistical analysis; qualitative; longitudinal/ ethnographic. Charney’s “Empiricism is not a Four-Letter Word and “Logocentrism to Ethnocentrism”; Haswell’s “Quantitative Methods in Composition Studies” in Nicholson and Sheridan and “Materializing the Material as a Progressive Method and Methodology” in Takyoshi, et al; selection from Johanek’s Composing Research; Week 9 (October 22nd): John Warnock (Visitor).

Cintron’s “Wearing a Pithy Helmet at a Sly Angle”: “How We Compose” in Smit’s The End of Composition Studies; Lauer and Asher’s Composition Research, “Sampling and Surveys”; Lauer and Asher’s Composition Research, “Measurement”; Takayoshi, et al;; Week 10 (October 29th): Amy Kimme-Hea (Visitor) (Quantitative v. Qualitative Research). “Writing as a Social Practice” in Smit’s The End of Composition Studies; Lauer and Asher’s Composition Research, “Quantitative Descriptive Studies”; Continue Byron Hawk’s Counter-History of Composition;

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Week 11 (November 5th):

MacNealy’s Strategies for Empirical Research, “Overview of Empirical Methodology”; Jacobs’ “Troubling Research” in Powell and Takayoshi; continue reading Byron Hawk’s Counter-History of Composition; Chapter 1 in Shipka’s Toward a Composition Made Whole Week 12 (November 12th): Aimee Mapes (Visitor). MacNealy Strategies for Empirical Research, “Concepts Basic to Quantitative Research”; Perry’s “Critical Validity Inquiry”; Moss’s “Shifting Conceptions of Validity”; Anderson’s “Simple Gifts”: Teston’s “Confidentiality in Research Design” in Powell and Takyoshi; Chapter 2 in Shipka’s Toward a Composition Made Whole Week 13 (November 19th): Chris Tardy (Visitor). Working with Qualitative data; Lunsford’s “Conducting Writing Research Internationally”; Chapter 3 in Shipka’s Toward a Composition Made Whole Week 14 (November 26th): MacNealy Strategies for Empirical Research, “Case study Research”; Lauer and Asher’s Composition Research, “Case Studies”; Week 15 (December 3rd): Workshop on seminar project. Week 16 (December 10th): Wrap up  Designated Final Exam period: December 16th, 3:30-5:30 p.m.—All work due.

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Bibliography Anderson, Paul. “Simple Gifts: Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Person-Based Composition Research.” CCC 49:1 (1998). Barton, Ellen. “Evidentials, Argumentation, and Rhetorical Stance.” College English 55:7 (November 1993). Berlin, James. “Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” College English 44:8 (December 1982). “Further Contributions from the Ethical Turn in Composition/Rhetoric: Analyzing Ethics in Interaction.” CCC 59:4 (June 2008). ---. “More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation.” CCC 51:3 (February 2000). “Resources for Discourse Analysis in Composition Studies.” Style 36:4 (Winter 2002). Bazerman, Charles. “Theories of the Middle Range in Historical in Studies of Writing Practice.” Written Communication 25:3 (2008). Berkenkotter, Carol. “Legacy of Positivism.” JAC 9:1/2 (1989) ---. “Paradigm Debates, Turf Wars, and the Conduct of Sociocognitive Inquiry in Composition.” CCC 42 (May1991). Bishop, Wendy. Ethnographic Writing Research: Writing It Down, Writing It Up, and Reading it. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999. Brand, Alice. “The Why of Cognition: Emotion and the Writing Process.” CCC 38:4 (December 1987). Brereton, John. The Origin of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Brodkey, Linda. “Writing Ethnographic Narratives.” Written Communication 4:1 (January 1987). Carter, Michael. “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing.” CCC 58:3 (February 2007). Charney, Davida. “Empiricism Is Not a Four-Letter Word,” College Composition and Communication 47:4 (1996).

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----. “From Logocentrism to Ethnocentrism: Historicizing Critique of Writing Research.” Technical Communication Quarterly 7:1 (Winter 1998). Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1994. Dobrin, Sidney. Beyond Postprocess. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. ---. Postcomposition. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 2012. Dobrin, Sidney and Stephen Gilbert Brown. Ethnography Unbound: From Theory Shock to Critical Praxis. Durst, Russell K. “Promising Research: An Historical Analysis of Award-Winning Inquiry, 1970-1989.” RTE 26:1 (February 1992). Emig, Janet. “Inquiry and Paradigms.” CCC 33:1 (February 1982). ---. The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders. Urbana: NCTE, 1971. Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. Fishman, Jenn et al. “Performing Writing, Performing Literacy” CCC 57:2 (December 2005). Fleming, David. From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties (1957-1974). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century,” College Composition and Communication, 56:4 (June 2005). ---. “Of Pre- and Post-Process: Reviews and Ruminations.” Composition Studies 29:2 (Fall 2001). Responses to Fulkerson (Harkin, Mejia, Zorn, and Dickson)—CCCs (June 2006). Gaillet, Lynee Lewis. “(Per)forming Archival Research Methodologies” CCC 64:1 (September 2012). Goggin, Maureen. Authoring a Discipline. Scholarly Journals and the Post WWII Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition. New York: Routledge, 2000. ---. “Composing a Discipline: The Role of Scholarly Journals in the Disciplinary Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition Since 1950.” Rhetoric Review 15:2 (1997), pp. 322-348.

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Gold, David. “Mapping Revisionist Historiography.” CCC 64:1 (September 2012). Hairston, Maxine. “Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and Revolution in the Teaching of Writing.” CCC 33 (1982). Haswell, Richard. “NCTE/CCCs War on Scholarship.” Written Communication 22:2 (2005). Hawk, Byron. A Counterhistory of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Huckin, Tom, Jennifer Andrus, Clary-Lemon, Jennifer. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric and Composition.” College Composition and Communication. 64:1 (September 2012). Juzwik et al. “Writing into the Twenty-First Century: An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999 to 2004.” Written Communication 23:4 (2006). Johanek, Cindy. Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition. Logan: University of Utah Press, 2000. Johnson, Burke and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie. “Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come.” Educational Researcher 33:7 (2004), pp. 14-26. Kent, Thomas, Ed. Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Southern Illinois Press, 1999. Kirsch, and Patricia A. Sullivan. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 1992. Kleine, Michael. “Beyond Triangulation: Ethnography, Writing, and Rhetoric.” JAC 10:1 (1990). L’Epplattenier, Barbara E. Opinion: An Argument for Archival Research Methods: Thinking Beyond Methodology. College English 72:1 (September 2009). LaFrance and Nicolas. “Institutional Ethnography as a Materialist Framework for Writing Program Research and the Faculty-Staff Work Standpoints Project” CCCs 64:1 (June 2012). Lather, Patti. Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Lauer, Janice and Asher. Composition Research. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1987.

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MacNealy, Mary Sue. Strategies for Empirical Research in Writing. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Marback, Richard. “Embracing Wicked Problems: The Turn to Design in Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication 61:2 (2009). Massey, Lance and Richard C. Gebhardt. The Changing of Knowledge in Composition: Contemporary Perspectives. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. Mortenson, Peter and Gesa Kirsch. Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Studies in Literacy. Urbana: NCTE, Nickolson, Lee and Sheridan, Mary P. Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. SIU P, 2012. North, Stephen. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Nystrand et al. “Where Did Composition Studies Come From?” Written Communication 10:3 (1993). Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. “The Domain of Composition.” Rhetoric Review 4 (1986). ---. “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition.” College English 53:8 (1991). Rickly, Rebecca. “The Required Research Methods Course as a Scene of a Rhetorical Practice.” Rohan, Liz and Gesa Kirsch. Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 2008. Roozen, Kevin and Karen J. Lunsford. “One Story of Many to Be Told”: Following Empirical Studies of College and Adult Writing through 100 Years of NCTE Journals.” RTE 46:2 (November 2011). Sullivan and Porter. Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Ablex, 1998. Smagorinsky, Peter, Ed. Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Composition. New York and London: Teacher’s College Press, 2006. -----. “The Method Section as Conceptual Epicenter in Constructing Social Science Research Reports.” Written Communication 25:3 (2008). Smagorinsky, Peter and Michael Smith. “The Nature of Knowledge in Composition and

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Literacy Understanding: The Question of Specificity.” Educational Review 62:3 (Fall 1992). Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Schriver, Karen. “Connecting Cognition and Context in Composition,” in Kirsch and Sullivan’s Methods and Methodologies in Composition. Sheridan, Mary P. “Making Ethnography Our Own: Why and How Writing Studies Must Change Core Research Practices” in Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Eds., Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sheridan. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 2012. Shipka, Jody. Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Smit, David. The End of Composition Studies. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 2000. ---. “Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition and the Future of Composition Studies ‘Without Paradigm Hope’” in Massey and Gebhardt’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition. Sirc, Geoffrey. Composition as a Happening. Edwardsville and Carbondale: SIU P, 2002.