Books

Inspired by an incident during a field trip in 1989, David Schaafsma has written a powerful and compelling book about the struggle of teaching literacy in a racially divided society and the importance of stories and storytelling in the educational process.

Connors provides a comprehensive history of composition and its pedagogical approaches to form, genre, and correctness. He shows where many of the today’s practices and assumptions about writing come from, and he translates what our techniques and theories of teaching have said over time about our attitudes toward students, language, and life.

Composition in the University examines the required introductory course in composition within American colleges and universities. Crowley argues that due to its association with literary studies in English departments, composition instruction has been inappropriately influenced by humanist pedagogy and that modern humanism is not a satisfactory rationale for the study of writing. Crowley envisions possible nonhumanist rationales that could be developed for vertical curricula in writing instruction, were the universal requirement not in place.

Winner, 1998 MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize

Offers a critique of current scholarly publishing practices, exposing the inequalities in the way academic knowledge is constructed and legitimized.

Winner of the 2002 JAC Gary A. Olson Award

Mariolina Salvatori presents an anthology of documents that examine the evolution of American education in the nineteenth century and meaning of the word pedagogy.

Thomas Masters examines a pivotal era—the years following arrival of former soldiers on college campuses thanks to the GI Bill—in the history of the most ubiquitous and most problematic course offered in America: freshman English.

Relying on Gestalt theory, this work describes the relationship between literacy and change in both personal and social situations. It presents historical and contemporary case studies, emphasizing the ways language interacts with perception.

Richard E. Miller questions the current views of the relationship between the humanities and daily life, and proposes that, in the face of increasing violence, the humanities should become more important, not less.

Winner of the 2006 CEE James H. Britton Award

A critique of current pedagogies that introduces a psychoanalytical approach in teaching composition and rhetoric. Thomas Rickert builds upon the advances of cultural studies and its focus on societal trends and broadens this view by placing attention on the conscious and subconscious thought of the individual.

Winner, 2007 JAC Gary A. Olson Award

An original and significant study of the developmental diversity within the discipline of composition that opens the door to further examination of local histories as guideposts to the origins of composition studies.

Miller defines college English studies as literacy studies and examines how it has evolved in tandem with broader developments in literacy and the literate. He maps out “four corners” of English departments: literature, language studies, teacher education, and writing studies. Miller identifies their development with broader changes in the technologies and economies of literacy that have redefined what students write and read, which careers they enter, and how literature represents their experiences and aspirations.