CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: K.18: Arguing the End of Composition Studies “The future and past of composition studies is something that we regularly like to debate,” commented Doug Hesse in his brief introductory remarks. And it is true that this session added to this ongoing debate of what David Smit calls the “r/evolution” of composition instruction. The main premise of Smit’s argument as it is developed in the text, The End of Composition Studies, is that “the post-secondary writing curriculum needs restructuring to more accurately reflect the writing that people do.” This argument echoes Kathleen Yancey’s 2004 CCCC address in which she argues that the future of composition is one in which students learn to write in real-world forms. Smit calls for a strong return to writing across the curriculum pedagogy, discourse communities, and writing in the disciplines. He argued that “there is no such thing as writing; there is only the writing of particular genres in particular contexts.” While this claim is common in WAC/WID literature, Smit extended it by indicating these genres and contexts share very little. Therefore, this lack of shared space for Smit begets the end of composition studies and the beginning of re-envisioned university in which writing is taught “through a series of elective courses and internships taught by members of various discourse communities across the curriculum” and by those “both in and outside the university.” Also similar to the claim in Yancey’s 2004 address (that itself echoed the many arguments made about genre-based and WAC/WID pedagogy), Smit claimed that the future of composition studies as well as graduate study in rhetoric and composition needs to consider how to re-invigorate writing through writing across the curriculum initiatives. In such a future, Smit believed that writing courses must “teach the transfer” to students’ work in the disciplines and, more importantly, to their future work in professional fields. Following Smit, Daniel Royer delivered what he termed “a friendly critique” of Smit’s claims in The End of Composition Studies. Royer began his critique with Smit’s claim that writing should be taught within each “activity context.” Royer argued that this idea ignores what Royer believes is the unique rhetorical nature at the heart of genre theory—in other words, Smit’s definition of genre in The End of Composition Studies is limited. Instead, Royer argued that genre is not just a tool as part of an activity system; genre is social action that has power to create the rhetorical situation and create the writer who in turn creates genre. Further, Royer stated that Smit’s claim that genre as a tool ignores its rhetorical nature, decontextualizes genre, and limits what genre is thus limiting what writing is and how and what should be taught in writing courses. Royer then applied his criticism to the first-year composition course. Royer agreed with Smit that the FYC course is a “rehearsal” course for students’ future academic writing experiences. Royer believed as Smit argued that “genre awareness” should be one aim of a FYC course, as such awareness carries with it the appropriate exigencies. While Royer concurred with Smit in this respect, he criticized Smit in that he fails to articulate how to teach the transfer of genre awareness in FYC courses that are themselves distinctive to the institutions that house them. Royer concluded by arguing that the future of composition is one that gets away from abstractness, that puts real world writing back on the composition radar, and that puts writing at the heart of the four-year university curriculum. Joseph Harris next argued that his concern with Smit’s text is not one of what is taught, but who teaches composition. Harris focused his concern over Smit’s notion for a “writing across the curriculum plus” as a transdisciplinary project. Harris argued that such a curriculum would cause composition studies as a field to be reliant on people other than composition specialists; in other words, composition studies will end up relying on English departments and those in other fields and professions to teach writing—returning composition studies as a field to the longstanding notion that “anyone can teach writing.” Harris doesn’t believe that composition studies needs a revolutionary curriculum design; instead, Harris argued that composition studies needs to extend its reach beyond the FYC course. The future of composition should not be one of credentialing anyone to teach writing, according to Harris, but one of training practitioners in other fields across the disciplines to teach composition, much like the team-taught first-year seminar model that Harris has discussed for many years in which he believes writing is made “real.” Harris then urged the audience to look for ways to extend the influence of writing, to advocate writing—through writing centers, through faculty writing consultants and workshops—to work together to shape the future of composition studies. Despite the background noise provided by the Burkean parlor next door in which the audience often strained to hear the speakers, Smit, Royer, and Harris did in fact add to the debate on the future of the discipline that Yancey and others in the field have engaged in as the field approached then breached the twenty-first century. This future reliant on genre, context, discourse communities, and “writing across the curriculum plus” puts composition studies in a perilous place in terms of its identity, but this future could be a place that strengthens the influence and reach of the field long into the twenty-first century. While this place must account for electronic communication across the curriculum and digital literacy as well, it should be quite interesting to examine the state of the field ten years after “the end of composition studies.” |
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