first installment

When reading these addresses, I was struck by two things: one, the issues they address are so incredibly relevant today (i.e., economic crisis, devaluing of the humanities broadly, etc.), and second, the defensive ethos of composition, which continues to this day and reflects a systemic subjugation of writing and its instruction within the context of higher education. So the affect tends to be "steal yourself against enemies" or, as Lloyd-Jones says, "those people" who deny rhetorical choice, see language as rule-bound, and so forth. Irmscher calls them "invaders," "scientific absolutists," and "anti-rhetoricians." "We" must protect ourselves from "them."

Some other issues that I noted: remarks about the interdisciplinary nature of the field (we have always borrowed from other fields to help us do our work). Irmscher makes clear our rhetorical heritage as does D'Angelo when he talks about rhetoric as a unifying center for English Studies. Davis comments on the need to borrow from social science in order to develop research methods to assess and defend our work (we/them binary again). Davis's emphasis on learning how to speak in a more public voice about the value and importance of writing and literacy also resonates with current efforts by CCCC and NCTE to place lobbyists and to prime representatives who can speak to reporters about writing placement, testing, and the myriad other politicized issues that require funding, and lots of it, to thrive.

D'Angelo's call to embrace all text-making as critical, important work, not just imaginative writing (i.e., lit), is also very topical today and remains a point of contention in many English depts across the country. I like this point in his essay, "Reading and writing, when taught as the art of expression, should not be concerned with elite verbal artifacts, but with the verbal arts as process." Composing as action and movement, not static, fixed product. Cool.

Troyka's comments remain a challenge and a call to action. Diversity among student populations is seriously at risk in the current climate in which "developmental" or "basic" education is increasingly being farmed out to two-year colleges.