Conceding Composition: A Crooked History of Composition's Institutional Fortunes

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Synopsis
First-year composition became the most common course in American higher education not because it could “fix” underprepared student writers, but because it has historically served significant institutional interests. That is, it can be “conceded” in multiple ways to help institutions solve political, promotional, and financial problems. Conceding Composition is a wide-ranging historical examination of composition’s evolving institutional value in American higher education over the course of nearly a century. Based on extensive archival research conducted at six American universities and using the specific cases of institutional mission, regional accreditation, and federal funding, this study demonstrates that administrators and faculty have introduced, reformed, maintained, threatened, or eliminated composition as part of negotiations related to nondisciplinary institutional exigencies. Viewing composition from this perspective, author Ryan Skinnell raises new questions about why composition exists in the university, how it exists, and how teachers and scholars might productively reconceive first-year composition in light of its institutional functions. The book considers the rhetorical, political, organizational, institutional, and promotional options conceding composition opened up for institutions of higher education and considers what the first-year course and the discipline might look like with composition’s transience reimagined not as a barrier but as a consummate institutional value.
Copyright:
2016

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
208 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781607325055
Related ISBNs:
9781607325048
Publisher:
Utah State University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
the University Press of Colorado
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Language Arts, Communication
Reading Age:
18 and up
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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