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Seminar in Theory and Practice of CompositionEnglish 5372 Composition Theory and Practice (Fall 1998), instructor: Rich Haswell, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi This was a three-hour semester graduate seminar. Enrollment was 17. About half were education MA candidates, half English MA candidates in a Masters program with an emphasis upon rhetoric and composition. Hostility to theory usually means an opposition to other people’s theory and an oblivion of one’s own
—Terry Eagleton No set of institutional practices is immune from interrogation. All are to be investigated for their contradictions, concealments, and exclusions. And this inquiry extends to the classroom itself.
—James A. Berlin TEXTS LeFevre, Karen Burke, Invention as a Social Act. Southern Illinois UP, 1987
Williams, James D., Preparing to Teach Writing. Wadsworth, 1989
Cormac, Mike, Ideology. U of Michigan P, 1992
SYLLABUS PT Presentation of a theory to the class, with a 4–6 pp. paper (possibly multiple authored, due one week later) on the gist of the theory and speculation on how it connects with composition practice, how it might convert to activities and approaches.
PP Presentation of a project to the class, a particular application of a theory to a particular class, with a 4–6 pp. paper (possibly multiple authored, due one week later) detailing the proposed intervention.
PO Presentation of outcomes to the class, a report on the results of the intervention, with a 6–8 pp. paper (single authored, due one week later) detailing and explaining the outcomes.
I encourage you to work in groups of two or three on these presentations, projects, and papers. The groups may regroup from PT to PP to PO. But note that the PO paper is single authored.
Aug. 31 A scenario Sept. 7 No class (holiday) Sept. 14 LeFevre (entire book read) What’s theory? What’s practice? Sept. 21 Williams, Ch. 1. PT Hammer Sept. 28 Williams, Ch. 2. PT Boyd, de Paolo (Attribution); Cicoria (Deviancy); Gonzales (Marxism). Oct. 5 Williams, Ch. 3. PT Crump, Perkes, Soliz (Identity); Chapa, Machen, Picozzi (Type) Oct. 12 Williams, Ch. 4; Cormac, Chs. 1–3 PT Strong, Thorpe (Liberatory); Flint, Bethke (?); Cattana, Morrow, Peña (Reader-response) Oct. 19 Williams, Ch. 5; Cormac, Ch. 4 PP Hammer; Cicoria Oct. 26 Williams, Ch. 6; Cormac, Chs. 5–6 PP Crump, Perkes, Soliz; Boyd, de Paolo; Gonzales Nov. 2 Williams, Ch. 7. PP Chapa, Machen, Picozzi; Flint, Bethke Nov. 9 Williams, Ch. 8. PP Strong, Thorpe; Cattana, Morrow, Peña Nov. 16 Williams, Ch. 9. PO Crump, Perkes, Soliz; Hammer; Cicoria Nov. 23 Williams, Ch. 10.PO Chapa, Machen, Picozzi; Boyd, de Paolo; Gonzales; Flint, Bethke Nov. 30 PO Strong, Thorpe; Cattana, Morrow, Peña Dec. 7 An in-class final, an essay based on Williams, Appendix 1: How are classroom myths dispelled, by theory or by practice? TERMINOLOGY Five ways to categorize events in a writing class: doing, activity, approach, perspective, and theory (1) Doing: Simply what happens Seventeen females raise their hands and the teacher calls on eleven of them; six males raise their hands and the teacher calls on all six. The teacher waits an average of 2.3 seconds between asking a question and answering it herself.
(2) Activity: teacher organized events E.g., free writing, group discussion, journal keeping, multiple-authored writing, peer critique, sentence combining
(3) Approach or method: rationalized systems that relate and guide activities E.g., conferencing, drafting, experiential, heuristic, modeling, process, rhetorical strategies, talk-write, workshopping
(4) Perspective: philosophical or pedagogical view (sometimes called “theory”) E.g., current-traditionalism, expressivism, feminism, collaboration, formalism, social constructivism, poststructuralism, post-process
Berlin, James. “Contemporary Composition: Major Pedagogical Theories.” College English 44 (1982): 765–777.
Bizzell, Patricia. “Cognition, Convention, Certainty: Knowledge About Writing,” Pre/Text 3 (1982): 213–243.
Fulkerson, Richard. “Comp Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus,” College Composition and Communication 41 (1990): 409–429.
Fulkerson, Richard. “Four Philosophies of Composition,” College Composition and Communication 30 (1979): 343–348.
Gere, Anne R. “Teaching Writing: The Major Theories,” in Anthony Petrosky & David Batholomae, eds. The Teaching of Writing (U of Chicago P, 1986): 30–48.
Kinneavy, James L. “Pluralistic Synthesis of Four Contemporary Models for Teaching Composition,” in Aviva Freedman, Ian Pringle & Janice Yalden, eds., Learning to Write: First Language/Second Language (Longman, 1983): 121–138.
Knoblauch, C. H. “Rhetorical Constructions: Dialogue and Commitment,” College English 50 (1988): 125–140 (rptd in Mark Wiley, et al., eds., Composition in Four Keys (Mayfield, 1996: 582–593)
Tate, Gary, Amy Ruipiper, & Kurt Schick (Eds.), A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
(5) Theory: Systematic, self-consistent set of principles with explanatory or predictive power. The boundary separating theory from perspective can be moot. Study and practice of writing can be informed by many theories from many different disciplines. Probably we composition teachers ought to range around a little more. This is a starter list—a start for further study. Each item locates one or two readable introductions to the theory written not from a composition perspective, and then in square brackets, if available, a book applying the theory to composition studies.
Activity theory: [Charles Bazerman & David Russell (Eds.), WRITING SELVES/WRITING SOCIETIES: RESEARCH FROM ACTIVITY PERSPECTIVES, WAC Clearinghouse, 2002]
Articulation theory: Stuart Hall, REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES (Sage, 1997). [John Trimbur, “Articulation Theory and the Problem of Determination,” in Olson, Gary A., & Sidney I. Dobrin, eds. COMPOSITION THEORY FOR THE POSTMODERN CLASSROOM, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.]
Attribution theory: G. Weary, M. A. Stanley, & H. H. Harvey, ATTRIBUTION (Springer-Verlag, 1989).
Chaos theory: James Gleick, CHAOS: MAKING A NEW SCIENCE, (Penguin, 1987).
Cognitive theory: Jerome S. Bruner, BEYOND THE INFORMATION GIVEN: STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF KNOWING (Norton, 1973)
Communication theory: John Stewart, LANGUAGE AS ARTICULATE CONTACT: TOWARDS A POST SEMIOTIC PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION (SUNY UP, 1995); or Ernest G. Bormann, COMMUNICATION THEORY (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980)
Culture theory: Henry Giroux & Stanley Aronwitz, POSTMODERN EDUCATION
Developmental (age-span) theory: Nancy J. Evans, Deanna S. Forney, Florence Guido-DiBrito, STUDENT DEVELOPMENT IN COLLEGE: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE (Jossey-Bass, 1998). [Rich Haswell, GAINING GROUND IN COLLEGE WRITING (Southern Methodist UP, 1991)]
Deviancy theory: James D. Orcutt, ANALYZING DEVIANCE (Dorsey P, 1983); Michel Foucault, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH (Vintage, rprt, 1995)
Discourse theory: Timothy W. Crusius, DISCOURSE: A CRITIQUE AND SYNTHESIS OF THEORIES (MLA, 1989) [Gail Stygall & Ellen Barton (Eds.), DISCOURSE STUDIES AND COMPOSITION, Hampton Press, 2002; Charles Bazerman & Paul Prior (Eds.), WHAT WRITING DOES AND HOW IT DOES IT, Erlbaum, 2004]
Embodiment theory: M. de Certeau, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, trans. S. Randall (U of California P, 1985); Jean Lave & Etienne Wegner, SITUATED LEARNING: LEGITIMATE PERIPHERAL PARTICIPATION (Cambridge UP, 1991). [Christina Haas, WRITING TECHNOLOGY: STUDIES ON THE MATERIALITY OF LITERACY (Erlbaum, 1996)]
Expertise theory: Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia, SURPASSING OURSELVES: AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND IMPLICATIONS OF EXPERTISE (Open Court, 1993) [Michael Carter, “Idea of Expertise: Cognitive and Social Dimensions,” COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION 41 (1990): 263–286]
Expressivist theory: Suzanne K. Langer, PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY: A STUDY OF SYMBOLISM OF REASON, RITE, AND ART, 3rd ed. (Harvard UP, 1974)
Feminist literary theory: Toril Moi, SEXUAL/TEXTUAL POLITICS (Routledge, 1985)
Feminist theory: Hester Eisenstein, CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THOUGHT (G. K. Hall, 1983)
Genre theory: [Carol Berkenkotter & Thomas Huckin, GENRE KNOWLEDGE IN DISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATION: COGNITION/CULTURE/POWER, Erlbaum, 1995].
Hermeneutic theory: Peter Szondi, et al., INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY HERMENEUTICS (Cambridge UP, 1994). [Timothy W. Crusius, A TEACHER’S INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS (NCTE 1991)]
Identity theory: Kenneth Gergen, THE SATURATED SELF: DILEMMAS OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE (Basic Books, 1992); Rom Harré, THE SINGULAR SELF (Sage, 1998)
Ideology theory: Mike Cormac, IDEOLOGY (U of Michigan P, 992) or Jorge Larrain, THE CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY (U of Georgia P, 1969; rprt 1992).
Learning theory: Margaret Gredler, LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION: THEORY INTO PRACTICE 3rd ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1996); Roger M. Tarpy, CONTEMPORARY LEARNING THEORY AND RESEARCH (McGraw-Hill, 1997).
Liberatory pedagogy theory: Paulo Freire, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, (Continuum Pub. Group, 1970; rev. ed. 1995)
Literacy theory: John Oxenham, LITERACY (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); [Alan Purves, THE SCRIBAL SOCIETY: AN ESSAY ON LITERACY AND SCHOOLING IN THE INFORMATION AGE (Longman, 1990)]
Marxist literary theory: Raymond Williams, MARXISM AND LITERATURE (Oxford, 1977); Terry Eagleton, CRITICISM AND IDEOLOGY (NLB, 1976)
Narrative theory: Dan P. McAdams, THE STORIES WE LIVE BY: PERSONAL MYTHS AND THE MAKING OF THE SELF (Morrow, 1993); Peter J. Rabinowitz, BEFORE READING; NARRATIVE CONVENTIONS AND THE POLITICS OF INTERPRETATION (Cornell UP, 1987).
Organization theory: Anne Wilson Schaef, THE ADDICTIVE ORGANIZATION (Harper San Francisco, 1990).
Performance theory: Richard Schechner, ESSAYS ON PERFORMANCE THEORY (Routledge, 1988)
Popular culture theory: Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker, & David Cook, PANIC ENCYCLOPEDIA (St. Martins, 1989), Greil Marcus, LIPSTICK TRACES (Harvard UP, 1989.
Post-Colonial theory: Edward Said, CULTURE AND COLONIALISM (Vintage, 1994 reprint).
Psychological type theory: Thomas C. Thompson, ed. MOST EXCELLENT DIFFERENCES (Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1996); [George H. Jensen & John K. DiTiberio, WRITING AND PERSONALITY (Black-Davies, 1995).]
Poststructural literary theory: Catharine Belsey, CRITICAL PRACTICE (Routledge, 1980);
Pragmatics theory: Geoffrey N. Leech, PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATICS (Longman, 1986); [Walter H. Beale, A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF RHETORIC (Southern Illinois UP, 1987)]
Reading theory: Frank Smith, UNDERSTANDING READING, 5th ed. (Erlbaum, 1994). [Louise M. Rosenblatt, THE READER, THE TEXT, THE POEM: THE TRANSACTIONAL THEORY OF THE LITERARY WORK (Southern Illinois UP, 1978)]
Reader-response theory: Jane Tompkins, READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM: FROM FORMALIST TO POST-STRUCTURALISM. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1980; Elizabeth Freund, THE RETURN OF THE READER (Methuen, 1987); [Richard Beach, A TEACHER’S INTRODUCTION TO READER-RESPONSE THEORIES (NCTE, 1993)]
Rhetorical theory: Sonja K. Foss, Karen A. Foss, & Robert Trapp, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON RHETORIC (Waveland Press, 1985). [Sharon Crowley, THE METHODICAL MEMORY: INVENTION IN CURRENT-TRADITIONAL RHETORIC (Southern Illinois UP, 1990)]
Social constructivist theory: Rom Harré, SOCIAL BEING (Blackwell, 2nd. ed. 1993); Peter L.Berger & Thomas Luckmann, THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY (Anchor, 1967). [Charles Bazerman, SHAPING WRITTEN KNOWLEDGE (U of Wisconsin P, 1988)]
Social interaction theory: Erving Goffman, INTERACTION RITUAL: ESSAYS ON FACE-TO-FACE BEHAVIOR (Pantheon, 1982)
Social rhetorical theory: Kenneth Burke, LANGUAGE AS SYMOBLIC ACTION (U of California P, rprt, 1986)
Speech-act theory: John R. Searle, SPEECH ACTS (Cambridge UP, 1969); [W. Ross Winterowd, COMPOSITION/RHETORIC: A SYNTHESIS (Southern Illinois UP, 1986)]
Value or axiology theory: Archie Bahm, AXIOLOGY: THE SCIENCE OF VALUES (World Books, 1984)
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