Course description

That composition is itself an economic system has long been recognized in relation to labor and institutional status. Our disciplinary stereotype has a single compositionist in a college. S/he is in a tenure-line position and supervises--manages--legions of part-timers and TAs who teach the course. The economics of composition extends beyond that single image, though, to issues of the place of composition in the economic system of the university. Typically (and for complex reasons) composition suffers low status in university hierarchies, while bringing in more student tuition dollars than any other academic unit.

This course will focus less on these familiar economic questions having to do with our disciplinary status or our labor arrangements, than on the production, management, and representation of text. We will look carefully at issues of intellectual property, inquiring into the extent to which it determines the discipline of composition studies. How do economically grounded representations of the author govern the production and circulation of text? Such abstract questions are at play in very specific practices: How, for example, are machine scoring of student essays, mechanized composition instruction, and mechanized plagiarism-checking affecting the teaching of composition? What is the role of the composition teacher in an economy of standardized testing and top-down learning outcomes assessment?

The schedule of readings offers details on how these questions will be collaboratively explored, and the description of assigned writing suggests ways in which individuals (or collaborative writing teams) might frame and explore a single question.