Writing Across the Curriculum at most institutions is a web of local knowledges and techniques “situated” within the historical and immediate contexts of academic departments, disciplines, and disciplinary cultures. Because of political and economic tensions existing within colleges and universities, and within academic disciplines themselves, WAC can become a “contact zone,” where individuals and institutional structures struggle for power, influence, and in some cases, survival.

This dissertation uses the work of Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu to examine such a struggle as it occurred at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the early 1980s. A WAC program was initiated there, but eventually failed as a result of political and economic influences. In the time since that failure, a growing emphasis on teaching and learning has helped create new potential for WAC at UMSL. Yet, to make it viable, WAC proponents there must recognize existing realities, attitudes, and conventions within each discipline or department, and develop new methods and approaches to writing and teaching that are relevant to that discipline or department.

This examination then focuses on writing in chemistry to discover the realities, attitudes, and conventions used in teaching and learning writing at the undergraduate level. Standards for content acquisition are gathered from ACS accreditation requirements, and from a study of educators and practitioners from a variety of professions. A study of Chemistry students in an NSF-funded educational program suggests that science students may learn as much or more about disciplinary discourse from sources other than the traditional writing course. Interaction with the literature and with graduate students, professors, and professionals may teach students more about disciplinary discourse conventions than a composition-trained specialist might accomplish in a writing course. Still, the writing course can be useful. These findings suggest that writing can be woven into the chemistry curriculum in a number of ways.

Interviews with UMSL faculty and administrators suggest new instantiations of WAC that might better thrive in today's political and economic environment. What takes shape might serve as a model for other institutions to follow.