The (Dis/Re) locations of composing

From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957-1974David FlemingPittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011Interests and Opportunities: Race, Racism, and University Writing Instruction in the Post-Civil Rights EraSteve LamosPittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who LeavePegeen Reichert PowellBoulder: Utah State UP-UP of Colorado, 2013Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing CenterTiffany RousculpUrbana: NCTE, 2014Transnational Literate Lives in Digital TimesPatrick W. Berry, Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. SelfeLogan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web.As I started my journey into this review, I quickly realized an appropriate title capturing the experiences. These books lead us on journeys, never linear, into an array of composing locations: the halls of rhetoric and writing pro- grams, dusty archival basements, old forgotten meeting minutes, off campus community writing centers, foreign countries, and the disruptive conflicts among travelers-teachers, administrators, students, and the general public.I began my own voyage with David Fleming's From Form to Meaning, and I was surprised with the way his historical study hooked me in. In his acknowledg- ments, Fleming observes that "the freshman writing course I teach and direct today is not all that dissimilar from the 1960s course I describe in this book" (ix); later in the Introduction he expands on this point, stating that first-year composition has not changed much in "its basic purpose and configuration . . . over a span of 125 years and across diverse terrain in North American postsecondary education" (1). Fleming paints an ironic picture of first-year composition. As Harvard president Derek Bok in 2006 states, "No other single course claims as large a share of the time and attention of undergraduates" (2). As we observe Fleming's research unfold, we see Bok's statement validated, yet we also hear what we all know well: first-year composition is a hotbed of power for a few, and in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's case (hereafter referred to as Madison) a few faculty wanted all the power over their subordinates yet did not want to improve the course. This latter stance eventually left Madison without a functional composition program.Fleming asks, how could a course like first-year composition become so widespread across all types and sizes of schools? The class is driven not by rules and needs of the academy, but by "'perceived social and cultural needs'" and "anxiety among the general public about the ability of young people to write correctly" (4). He argues the outside pull and push on first-year composition is greater than we credit, pointing to newspapers, politicians, the media's lit- eracy crises, and so on, all of which claim an interest in first-year composition, that is, for students to write well. These outside influences contributed both to composition's minimal pulse at Madison and its eventual resuscitation. "This study," Fleming states, "tells us new things about the history of fresh- man composition," particularly in regard to the tumultuous years between 1967 and 1970 (22). Fleming's view is that our theories and pedagogies did not cause educational change; the sociocultural movements of the 1960s, "massive cultural, demographic, political, economic, and institutional change," altered higher education (24).In "A Prehistory, 1848-1948" Fleming includes historical details so we see how first-year writing was taught during this time and how it compares to the way we teach today. Importantly, first-year composition "was oriented to public communication ... and was thus more the culmination of the undergraduate curriculum than its gateway" (29). "The Postwar Regime, 1948-1968," is a time of composition enrollment explosion across the country, when schools like Madi- son used "homegrown materials" such as Ednah S. …