Professional Histories: Creating a Knowledge-making Community
This week we will be looking at collective knowledge-making by WPAs. Please read:
Heckathorn, Amy “Moving Toward a Group Identity: WPA Professionalization from the 1940s to the 1970s.” Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline. Ed. Barbara L’Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. 191-219
This week we will be looking at collective knowledge-making by WPAs. Please read:
Heckathorn, Amy “Moving Toward a Group Identity: WPA Professionalization from the 1940s to the 1970s.” Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline. Ed. Barbara L’Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. 191-219
McLeod, Susan. “A History of Writing Program Admnistration.” Chapter 3 of Writing Program Administration. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2007.
Use the class blog http://680wsp08.blogspot.com/ to post a discussion question related to these readings for us to consider together in our meeting on Feb 12. Please use comment feature, replying to this post, for posting your question.
6 comments:
My questions for consideration for Tuesday:
1) The history of WPA seems to me to mirror the struggle that the larger field of composition studies had with establishing itself as a discipline. In fact, the first 20 or so pages of McLeod’s article could be a history of the rise of composition studies. What similarities exist between the two histories? What areas are different? What can we learn from one that can be applied to the other?
2) (As an aside) Leading from this question, what exactly IS the relationship between the larger field of rhetoric and composition and WPA?
3) Thinking to the future of historical work on WPA: What types of documents might be useful to collect now for historians of future generations interested in this kind of work? What should be saved? In what format? Who should retain these files?
4) Concerning Heckathorn’s article: How do we classify the work of Adam Sherman-Hill, Gertrude Buck, or Fred Newton Scott (who created the first composition program in 1874) and other very early writing program developers? Why doesn’t Heckathorn’s work make mention of these early pioneers? Is this “pre-early” era?
5) Finally, I’m interested in McLeod’s discussion of gender and WPA work (53-55). Do these issues still arise in WPA work?
Question 1
In Chapter 3 of Writing Program Administration, Susan McCloud reminds us that “first-year composition was born under the shadow of remediation and a focus on correctness, a heritage that can create difficulties for present-day writing program administrators” (29).
Given that some people who see themselves as “stakeholders” in first-year composition, both inside and outside the academy (e.g., our colleagues in other departments, businesses, parents, maybe the students themselves), continue to envision composition as remediation and to focus on the goal of correctness, how do we effectively engage the university and the broader community in a conversation about our objectives in college writing programs?
Question 2
On page 47 of Writing Program Administration, McCloud discusses Fred Newton Scott’s formation of a separate Department of Rhetoric at the University of Michigan in 1903 (which, as she points out, was held together by the force of Scott’s own magnetism and quickly fell apart after his retirement).
I though it might be interesting to discuss the relative benefits and drawbacks for contemporary WPAs of the separate rhetoric department configuration…
McLeod writes that the requirement of entrance examinations at Harvard began a precedent for similar examinations at other schools, which also set the precedent "for WPA work to be forever intertwined with assessment" (28). What are some potential negative effects of the connection between WPA work and assessment? Are there other areas of work that writing program administration is "forever intertwined with" that are detrimental to the field and perceptions of WPAs?
Heckathorn lists job descriptions, records of professional compensation, research and publications, and the development of professional organizations as the "archives" or markers of professionalization in WPA. Are there any other markers or materials that can (should?) be added to this list?
My question for class is what exactly does historicizing writing program administration do for us?
I think Heckathorn and McLeod makes cases for why it should matter, and I don't think any of us would necessarily disagree. But when we discussed a WPAs "ways of knowing" I don't think that historical knowledge of the field was on the list. Was it? At the very least we (meaning us in this class) seem to be prioritizing other "ways of knowing" like curriculum development, placement testing, politics, and others above historical knowledge.
Maybe another way to state this is "where does historicizing writing program administration fall in terms of prioritizing WPA knowledge?" Is it essential? Is it a luxury?
TS
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