The WAC Clearinghouse Bibliography

Welcome to the WAC Clearinghouse Bibliography. The bibliography, developed and presented in collaboration with CompPile, was developed to support teachers across the disciplines who are interested in using writing and speaking in their courses; scholars who are interested in WAC theory and research; and program administrators, designers, and developers who have interests in the latest work in faculty outreach, program design, and assessment.

To view entries in the bibliography, follow the links to the right. If you are a member of the Clearinghouse, you can add, update, or delete any entries you have added to the bibliography.

— Justin Jory
Bibliography Editor

Bibliography Category: WAC History

Haring-Smith, Tori. "Changing Students' Attitudes: Writing Fellows Programs." Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs. Ed. Susan H.. McLeod, and Margot Soven. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1992/2000. 123-131. <http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mcleod_soven/chapter11.pdf>.

A landmark article on Brown's WF program. Available now at Academic.Writing Landmark Publications in Writing Studies.

Mahala, Daniel. "Writing Utopias: Writing Across the Curriculum and the Promise of Reform." College English 53.7 (1991): 773-789.

“Argues that questions implied by Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) have been muted to insulate the tenuous consensus on which WAC is built from the clash of powerful and professional ideological interests in the university. Includes discussion of British expressivism as curricular critique, and the U.S. retreat from institutional critique.” (ERIC)

Maimon, Elaine. "WAC: Past, Present and Future." Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. Ed. . Trans. C. W.. Griffin. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982. -.

“The development of Writing-across-the-Curriculum programs has been an effort to make writing an integral part of the learning process in all courses. This effort reinforced the shift in composition pedagogy from a product to a process orientation because the learning process and the writing process work together. Writing across the Curriculum has also promoted collaborative-learning techniques. Process pedagogy requires many drafts and much feedback, and small groups of students can provide each other with audience feedback that may be even more valuable than the teacher's responses. Writing-across-the-Curriculum programs are helping students find "an authentic voice in the community of educated people." (Bedford Bibliography)

Margot, Soven. "Curriculum-Based Peer Tutors and WAC." WAC for the New Millennium: Strategies for Continuing Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Programs. Ed. Susan H.. McLeod, Eric Miraglia, Margot Soven, and Christopher Thaiss. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2001. 200-232.

Chapter includes samples of LaSalle's "Program Fact Sheet," forms for faculty nominations, fellow-faculty agreement, letter to potential writing fellows, and program evaluation reports.

McLeod, Susan, and Elaine Maimon. "Clearing the Air: WAC Myths and Realities." College English 62.5 (May 2000): 573-583.

McLeod and Maimon respond to “WAC Myths” they have encountered at conferences, and particularly in articles by C. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon, and by Daniel Mahala. They feel that the history of WAC is misunderstood, leading to misconceptions about WAC today; therefore, they try to re-historicize and redefine WAC. They deny that WAC began as “grammar across the curriculum.” They deny that there is a “technical correctness” camp in WAC, and that this camp’s goals are expressed in WID. They answer Mahala in particular, and say that WAC has always taught both exploratory, “writing to learn” assignments, and disciplinary writing. But the latter does not imply teaching “correctness.” Instead, WID is rhetorical. It allows students to learn the purposes and expectations of writing in their field; it also makes faculty express and clarify what they expect out of disciplinary writing. For the authors, WID is part of WAC, and should be, and always has.

Westphal-Johnson, Nancy, & Mary Anne Fitzpatrick. "The Role of Communication and Writing Intensive Courses in General Education: A Five Year Case Study of the University of Wisconsin-Madison." The Journal of General Education 51.2 (2002): 73-102.

An account of the "Writing Wars," the struggle at UW-Madison to define the goals of a commications component added to the gen. ed. requirements in 1994. The conflict was between a centralized, rhetoric-based course taught by Communications and English faculty, and a WID model. Compromise and conflict continue there to this day.

Young, Art. Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum, Third Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997/1999. <http://wac.colostate.edu/books/young_teaching/>.

Available online as part of the Academic.Writing series, Landmark Publications in Writing Studies, Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum provides a comprehensive, accessible discussion of teaching writing across the curriculum. Written by one of the leaders in the field, it offers a brief introduction to WAC and then discusses how writing can be used to help students learn and communicate.