Composition studies is a rapidly growing and constantly changing field. At present, however, graduate students new to the field and writing teachers who want to make new connections between theory and practice have little choice of current reference works that define key terms in composition studies and provide information about the scholars and researchers who have shaped and are shaping the discipline. This book supplies this information in an easily accessible format and places both scholars and terms in the context of the field's development. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 108 individuals who have developed the field and 128 terms central to the discipline. The first part of the book provides entries for leaders in composition studies. Each entry identifies the areas in which the scholar has contributed most influentially to the field and provides both a chronological overview of the person's contributions and a bibliography of representative works. The second part includes entries for terms that are problematic both for newcomers and for those already familiar with the discipline. The entries for the terms show how the disciplinary context has shaped the ways in which they have been used. The entries also indicate how established thinkers in composition studies and other disciplines have explained or defined the terms, provide examples of the terms in context, and list scholars often associated with them. An appendix includes entries for scholars from other disciplines who have contributed to the field.

"Contemporary Composition is still inflected by the epistemic turn taken in the 1980s, convincing me that we need to remember what we've forgotten—namely, how impassioned resolves and thrilling discoveries were abandoned and why. I'd like to retrace the road not taken in Composition Studies, to salvage what can still be recovered... I want to inspect the wreckage, in order to show what was the promise of the Happenings for Composition, as well as the huge gray longueur of its pale replacement, Eighties Composition. In so doing, I hope to begin a reconfiguration of our field's pre- and after history." What happened to the bold, kicky promise of writing instruction in the 1960s? The current conservative trend in composition is analyzed allegorically by Geoffrey Sirc in this book-length homage to Charles Deemer's 1967 article, in which the theories and practices of Happenings artists (multi-disciplinary performance pioneers) were used to invigorate college writing. Sirc takes up Deemer's inquiry, moving through the material and theoretical concerns of such pre- and post-Happenings influences as Duchamp and Pollock, situationists and punks, as well as many of the Happenings artists proper.

Keywords in Composition Studies is the first systematic inquiry into the vocabulary of writing teachers and theorists. In brief yet heavily researched essays, contributors explore the development of and interconnections among fifty-five of the most consequential words in the field. It is with these critical terms that the contemporary field of composition has been composed, and in this sense, Keywords in Composition Studies is an introduction to the principal ideas and ideals of compositionists. Yet this book is neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia; it does not attempt to capture the established knowledge of a unified discipline through its vocabulary but rather explores the multiple layers of meaning inhabiting the words writing teachers and theorists have depended and continue to depend on most. Each essay begins with the assumption that its central term is important precisely because its meaning is open, overdetermined. The purpose of each essay is to foreground a range of meaning signified by its central term rather than to pinpoint a meaning. In this sense, Keywords in Composition Studies is a practical model for reading the texts of an expanding and unsettled field.

Explores the historical context of cognitive studies, the importance to our field of studies in neuroscience, the applicability of habits of mind, and the role of cognition in literate development and transfer.

Emancipatory Movements in Composition provides an overview of the four major disciplines that have, for the last ten years, influenced and guided the direction of composition studies. Drawing on contemporary social and rhetorical theory, this is the first cultural studies text deeply informed by classical rhetoric, feminism, and postcolonial studies. Readable and engaging, it merges theory and pedagogy, providing a rubric for understanding critical pedagogy, neosophistic rhetoric, service-learning, and ethnographic research. This self-reflexive and critical book examines the ethical dimensions of partaking in liberatory learning practices in the contemporary composition classroom.

Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy conducts an in-depth investigation into the long and complex evolution of style in the study of rhetoric and writing. The theories, research methods, and pedagogies covered here offer a conception of style as more than decoration or correctness—views that are still prevalent in many college settings as well as in public discourse.

Why has classical rhetoric been a subject of such growing interest for the past ten years? Because the most exciting work in classical rhetoric has asked us to rethink classical concepts in modern terms. What's been missing, at least in book-length form, is a scholarly rethinking of rhetorical memory and delivery. As many scholars have been noting in their work for some time now, three of five classical issues -- invention, arrangement, and style -- have dominated rhetorical studies while the other two -- memory and delivery -- have largely been misunderstood or ignored. Re-examined in light of recent research on orality, literacy, and electronic technology, rhetorical memory and delivery issues can become not only central to the field but also key to the continued interest in classical rhetoric. Bringing together national scholars from a variety of related disciplines in which rhetorical memory and delivery issues matter, this collection is the only volume that examines classical and contemporary interpretations of rhetorical memory and delivery in depth and detail.