Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of Composition

301 Pages·2001·1.12 MB·English

by  James F. Slevin

INTRODUCING ENGLISH
Pittsburgh Series in Composition,Literacy,and Culture
Introducing
English
Q
Essays in the Intellectual Work
of Composition
JA M E S F. S L E V I N
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15261
Copyright © 2001, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10987654321
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Slevin, James F., 1945–
Introducing English : essays in the intellectual work of composition / James F.
Slevin
p. cm. — (Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-8229-4151-1(acid-free paper) —isbn0-8229-5752-3(pbk. : acid-free
paper)
1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—United States. 2. Academic
writing—Study and teaching—United States. I. Title. II. Series.
pe1405.u6 s58 2001
808'.042'071073—dc21 2001002725
For Kathy and Lucy

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part One: Imagining the Work of Composition
Prologue: Toward an Interpretive Pedagogy 13
1. Learning the Work of Composition 18
2. Inventing and Reinventing the Discipline of Composition 37
Part Two: Introducing English in America: Education
as Conversion and Conservation in Colonial Settings
Prologue 59
3. Figuring Pocahontas 66
4. Composing the Other: Underwriting Colonial Education 82
5. Educating the Other 100
Epilogue to Part Two 118
Part Three: The Contexts and Genres
of the Intellectual Work of Composition
6. Reading/Writing in the Classroom and the Profession 123
7. Genre as a Social Institution 142
8. Academic and Student Genres: Toward a
Poetics of Composition 160
Part Four: Composition’s Work with the Disciplines
9. Genre Theory, Academic Discourse, and Writing
within Disciplines 183
10. Working with Faculty: Disciplinary Writing Seminars
as Interdisciplinary Work 196
11. Engaging Intellectual Work: The Role of Faculty
in Writing Program Teaching and Assessment 211
viii Contents
Part Five. Correspondences
12. The Impolitics of Letters: Undoing Critical Faculties 233
13. A Letter to Maggie 246
Afterword 253
Notes 267
References 273
Index 281
Acknowledgments
Throughout the years, I have had the opportunity to try out many of these
ideas in classrooms, meetings, academic conferences and at talks at univer-
sities. To all who were kind enough to listen and respond, and especially my
students (who have regularly read my writing and who have been unwa-
veringly candid in reply), I want to express my gratitude for their interest
and my appreciation for their help.
I wish also to thank my colleagues at Georgetown and at Cornell, who
have been ever and patiently supportive while, with their help, I have
worked through many of these ideas over the course of many, many years.
There are so many who deserve mention, but I cannot imagine having done
my work at all without Patricia O’Connor, Keith Fort, Dan Moshenberg,
and others in the Georgetown Writing Program who have taught me so
much more than I can even imagine ever teaching them. Special thanks, too,
to other Georgetown colleagues: to Paul Betz, Lucy Maddox, Leona Fisher,
and Joe Sitterson whom it has been my good fortune to have as my depart-
ment chairs; and to Michael Ragussis, Jason Rosenblatt, Bruce Smith, and
Penn Szittya. Finally, I am indebted to Niels Aaboe, Marilyn Prudente, Jean
Carr, and especially David Bartholomae, my editors at the University of
Pittsburgh Press and the Pitt Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture.
For their financial support, I thank Georgetown University, which has
been generous in affording me sabbaticals and other leaves, and the Vir-
ginia Endowment for the Humanities and Public Policy, whose fellowship
support enabled me to begin work on this project.
And finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Kathy, for her
thoughtful reading, advice and encouragement, and to my daughter Lucy
who has taught me once again why reading and writing matter so.
Q
Though much of the previously published work has been revised for in-
clusion here, I am grateful to the editors of the following journals and col-
lections for their permission to use all or parts of articles in this book.
ix