Composition

Abstract

Course Description RWS 6319 will introduce you to the field of composition studies as well as to the larger disciplinary domain of rhetoric and writing studies that simultaneously emerged. The goal is to familiarize you with the evolution of some of the field’s key conversations and provide you with a disciplinary framework to ground your scholarly contributions to these conversations. The course is organized primarily across topics or primary issues that have dominated scholarly conversations from the mid-’60s to the present, noting the ways they have been imagined, complicated, and reimagined. In our readings, we will strive to understand the writer’s position and arguments, along with how and where they’re contextualizing their work. The course will survey theoretical approaches to writing and the questions raised by those theories. It will also consider composition as a situated and relational practice. In part, our goal will be to understand the act of writing itself—how it takes place, what effects it has on people, and how it functions within culture. Questions stemming from our discussions will direct us to think deeply about our own positions as writers, students, teachers and workers, and as critical citizens. Our focus will be on the production of writing and on the conditions that surround the act of writing. Composition—also known as Writing Studies—is a field that concerns itself centrally—though not exclusively—with the teaching of writing. Therefore, much of what we read will concentrate on theorizing writing in classrooms and applying theory to classroom practices; however, we will also concentrate on the writing practices people employ in situations outside of the classroom. This course is focused more on theorizing writing as it is practiced than on understanding teaching practices. By the end of the course, you should have a clear idea of the concepts, contexts, and situations that shape the discipline; you should also consider your own positions in relation to composition theories and pedagogies. This semester, our focus will be on a few of the many contemporary conversations in the field, some that you will want to enter and may want to participate in during and beyond the scope of the class.