• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

The Contributions of Janice Lauer

the field of rhetoric and composition are her focus on rhetorical invention, her representation of writing as multidisciplinary and multimodal, and her work with graduate programs.

writing, but it also helped legitimize the field of composition by tying it to ancient rhetoric. Her work has impacted the discipline by viewing writing as a means of discovery, which in turn influenced the vast research done focusing on the epistemic potential of writing. As she describes in “Getting to Know Rhetorica,” Lauer evaluates current theories in terms of how they relate to rhetorical invention. In her works, including Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention and “Heuristics and Composition,” Lauer discusses the move from a focus on invention to the study of heuristics and also shines light of the ways the study of heuristics can be a foundation for new studies of invention.

ideas. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition is a vital source outlining the role of invention in rhetoric from the ancient Greeks to modern pedagogy. She also contributes to the field with her own narratives of the beginnings and influences of the discipline in works such as “Metatheories of Rhetoric: Past Pipers.”

with her insistence that rhetoric and composition is multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multimodal. She says that writing is a multimodal process; that is, students learn to write better when they learn in many different ways or modes. Lauer also contributed to the field with her ideas on multimodal research approaches. In Composition Research: Empirical Designs, Lauer and Asher explain that using various research methods from various disciplines when accessing writing “helps avoid the nearsightedness that causes some other fields to overlook major problems because they fall outside the domain of a particular mode of inquiry” (6). She explains that research in rhetoric and composition should come out of other fields and says that composition studies affects other disciplines. In “Heuristics and Composition,” Lauer argues that English teachers are doomed unless they seek out solutions to their problems from fields beyond English or rhetoric. She provides a bibliography of the psychological research done on heuristics, which she believes is priceless to writing teachers and theorists. As Janet M. Atwill says in the introduction of Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention, Lauer’s and other scholar’s research on invention “‘migrated, entered, settled, and shaped’ other research areas in rhetoric and composition, such as writing across the disciplines and cultural studies”(xi). Lauer’s work, such as “Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline,” proves that there is a need for the study of writing, demonstrating the ways it relates to and contributes to other fields.

and ideas on doctoral programs. She developed a graduate program in rhetoric and composition at Purdue and has directed 52 dissertations. Throughout her work with graduate programs, Lauer has argued that rhetoric and composition merits a place in academia as a legitimate field of study because of the vast amount of existing research and publications and the positions that await graduates in the field. Lauer advocates for a graduate program that reflects these things. Her work, such as “Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric,” discusses the needs of and the demand for graduate programs in rhetoric. Also, in “Constructing a Doctoral Program in Rhetoric and Composition,” Lauer provides an example of how rhetoric and composition programs “are initiated and shaped within departments of English” (392). She further outlines the courses and faculty of her program and explains the sense of community her programs creates to allow students to develop an identity of rhetoric and composition specialists.

seminars in for thirteen summers for teachers who wanted to learn and discover new ways and theories of writing instruction. Finally, Lauer shares her excitement about what is to come, which she believes is more multidisciplinary research and investigation.

Works Citied and Referenced