Undergraduate Composition Theory

I finally get to teach the course for which I was ostensibly hired: Theory and Practice of Writing. This is a required course in the Professional Writing Program but serves other students in the Major and in the Graduate Programs. I have already been tinkering with the syllabus based upon my interactions with students and faculty. As the course description indicates, it has largely been a survey through the accepted modes of composition. I want to change that. I want students to get less coherence in each major approach and more of the push and pull that often generates the interesting debates in composition.

So, I have a couple histories (Nystrand, Greene, Weimelt; Reynolds, Bizzell, Herzberg), Berlin's taxonomy, and outlines of composition's purpose (Emig, Bruffee, Ackerman, Dobrin) as opening moves and the rest mostly complicates the accepted storylines. Of course the real trick in all this is to get them to understand the reception of poststructuralism in composition -- certainly "Winds of Change" is key, but I'm wondering how much original material is needed. Do I assign "Signature Event Context"? Plus I need a full-length text and despite my own education, not to mention partiality to the text, I cannot in all good conscience assign Fragments of Rationality.

So, I'm looking for good texts that can speak to where composition is post-millenium. I'm toying with the idea of Sanchez's Function of Theory, but I'm wondering if that might be too much for undergraduates. For whatever graduate enrolls, it has a lot to offer, especially if they are thinking of becoming a TA in our program. Related to this though, from what I can find, is the overall lack of undergraduate composition theory courses. I have consulted several comp theory courses from all around, but most of them are directed toward graduate students in a comp-rhet program. I need to make this accessible to undergads as well.

Added Postscript: There are articles about developing coursework at the undergraduate level, however, and they are helpful. But, maybe part of what I am running up against are some audience constraints. Many comp theory courses I have reviewed look similar to our teaching methods course "The Teaching of Writing". This is required for teaching majors and deals specifically in the pedagogical application of theory/ies in K-12 curricula. Also, several prof writing programs seem to farm out the concentration of theory to Communications Studies courses, like here. While we are looking to do much of the same thing in regards to Electronic Media, we still have our theory course as its own requirement.

Not Again...

NIU... let's all of us work for peace among ourselves, our students, and our communities. We are all in this together.

The Politics of Hope

I'm posting this here and in other places because while it seems fairly slick and is professionally done, it is also why I support Obama. The message and the vision he has combats the cynicism in which we live and breathe in America today. If you watch this and are not moved, if not by the professional and amateurs who freely gave of their talents, then by the message itself and the hope it brings for current and future generations, then you are worthy of pity and I hope something awakens your heart to what is possible and how that is so very different from what has gone before.




If nothing else, something is waking up. You can feel it and hear it on the news. Even if Obama loses the nomination, what stirs will not go gently back to sleep.