Authority: Some sources for composition and rhetoric


Rebecca Moore Howard
The Writing Program
Syracuse University


Please note: I'm increasingly using CiteULike and del.icio.us for my bibliographic work. (On both sites you'll need to click on tags of interest.) Browse what's on this page and then check out CiteULike, del.icio.us, CompPile, and the MLA International Bibliography (requires SU ID) for more. A list of all the static bibliographies that I've put online is here.


Please email suggestions, corrections, or additions.


Last updated 16 February 2007

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Susanmarie Harrington, eds.  Questioning Authority:  Stories Told in School.  Ann Arbor:  U Michigan P, 2001. 

Berkenkotter, Carol.  "Student Writers and Their Sense of Authority over Texts."  College Composition and Communication 35 (1984):  312-19. 

Bizzell, Patricia.  "Power, Authority, and Critical Pedagogy."  Journal of Basic Writing 10.2 (1991):  54-70. 

Blumner, Jacob S.  "Authority and Initiation:  Preparing Students for Discipline-Specific Language Conventions."  Writing Centers and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs.  Ed. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blummer. Greenwood Press, 1999.  33-44. 

Brown, Johanna Atwood.  "The Peer Who Isn't a Peer:  Authority and the Graduate Student Administrator."  Kitchen Cooks, Plate Twirlers and Troubadours: Writing Program Administrators Tell Their Stories. Ed. Diana George. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999.  120-126. 

Carino, Peter.  "Power and Authority in Peer Tutoring."  The Center Will Hold:  Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship.  Ed. Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead.  Logan:  Utah State UP, 2003.  96-113. 

Carruthers, Mary.  "Memory and Authority."  The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge UP, 1990.  189-220.

Donnelly, Michael.  "Male Instructor, Feminist Pedagogy:  Interrogating Presence and Authority in the Classroom."  Pre/Text:  A Journal of Rhetorical Theory 16.3-4 (Fall-Winter 1995):  228-244. 

Duffey, Suellynn, et al.  "Conflict, Collaboration, and Authority:  Graduate Students and Writing Program Administration."  Rhetoric Review 21.1 (2002):  79-87. 

Elbow, Peter.  Writing Without Teachers.  2nd ed.  New York:  Oxford UP, 1998. 

Enos, Theresa, and Shane Borrowman.  "Authority and Credibility:  Classical Rhetoric, the Internet, and the Teaching of Techno-Ethos."  Alternative Rhetorics:  Challenges to the Rhetorical Tradition.  Ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Sibylle Gruber.  Carbondale:  Southern Illinois UP, 2001.  93-110. 

Ethos. 

Evidence. 

Foster, Dennis A.  "Interpretation and Betrayal:  Talking with Authority."  Reclaiming Pedagogy:  The Rhetoric of the Classroom. Ed. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl.  Carbondale:  Southern Ill UP, 1989.  35-48. 

Golson, Emily.  "Using Stories to Probe Assumptions, Question Authority, and Stabilize Meaning." Questioning Authority:  Stories Told in School.  Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington.  Ann Arbor:  U Michigan P, 2001.  77-96. 

Gorzelsky, Gwen.  "Ghosts:  Liberal Education and Negotiated Authority."  College English 64.3 (January 2002):  302-325. 

Greene, Jody. "Francis Kirkman's Counterfeit Authority: Autobiography, Subjectivity, Print." PMLA 121.1 (Jan. 2006): 17-32.

Harrington, Susanmarie, and Linda Adler-Kassner.  "Stories, Authority, Teaching:  Making a Difference in the Composition Classroom." Questioning Authority:  Stories Told in School.  Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington.  Ann Arbor:  U Michigan P, 2001.  1-18. 

Jones, Kathleen.  "What is Authority's Gender?" Revisioning the Political: Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory.  Ed. Nancy Hirschmann and Christine Di Stefano.  Boulder, CO:  Westview Press, 1996.  75-93.

Julier, Laura.  "The Difference It Makes to Speak:  The Voice of Authority in Joan Didion."  Voices on Voice: Definitions, Perspectives, Inquiry.  Ed. Kathleen Blake Yancey.  Urbana, IL:  National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.  130-144. 

Lunsford, Andrea A.  "Refiguring Classroom Authority."  The Ethics of Writing Instruction:  Issues in Theory and Practice.  Ed. Michael A. Pemberton.  Norwood, NJ:  Ablex, 2000.  65-78. 

Mirtz, Ruth M.  "Essaying Theory:  Testing Authority in Classroom Practice."  Questioning Authority:  Stories Told in School.  Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington.  Ann Arbor:  U Michigan P, 2001.  187-202. 

Mortensen, Peter, and Gesa E. Kirsch.  "On Authority in the Study of Writing."  College Composition and Communication 44.4 (December 1993):  556-72.

Newman, S.  "Derrida's Deconstruction of Authority."  Philosophy and Social Criticism 27.3 (2001). 

Pappas, Nickolas.  "Authorship and Authority."  The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47.4 (Fall 1989):  325-332.  Rpt. The Death and Resurrection of the Author?  Ed. William Irwin.  Westport, CT:  Greenwood, 2002.  117-128. 

Penrose, Ann M., and Cheryl Geisler.  "Reading and Writing Without Authority."  College Composition and Communication 45.4 (December 1994):  505-520. 

Queen, Mary. "Genders and Authors." Authorship in Composition Studies. Ed. Tracy Hamler Carrick and Rebecca Moore Howard. Boston: Wadsworth, 2006. 101-116.

Radway, Janice. "Research Universities, Periodical Publication, and the Circulation of Professional Expertise: On the Significance of Middlebrow Authority." Critical Inquiry 31.1 (Fall 2004): 203-228.

Robillard, Amy E. Reimagining Students' Writerly Authority: Co-investigation and Representations of Student Writers in Composition Studies. Diss. Syracuse U, 2004. AAI3149055.

Robillard, Amy E.  "Students and Authors in Composition Scholarship."  An Introduction to Authorship.  Ed. Tracy Hamler Carrick and Rebecca Moore Howard.  New York:  Wadsworth, 2006.

Robillard, Amy E. "Young Scholars Affecting Composition: A Challenge to Disciplinary Citation Practices." College English 68.3 (January 2006): 253-270.

Segal, Judy, and Alan W. Richardson. "Scientific Ethos: Authority, Authorship, and Trust in the Sciences." Configurations 11.2 (Spring 2003).

Shafer, Jack.  "Anonymice Infestation!"  Slate 17 Nov. 2004.  19 Nov. 2004 <http://slate.msn.com/id/2109873/>. 

Strickland, Ronald. "Confrontational Pedagogy and Traditionoal Literary Studies." College English 52.3 (March 1990): 291-300.

Thompson, Celia.  "'Authority Is Everything':  A Study of the Politics of Textual Ownership and Knowledge in the Formation of Student Writer Identities."  International Journal for Educational Integrity 1.1 (2005):  12 pp.  27 Jan. 2006 <http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/journals/index.php/IJEI/issue/view/3>. 

Tischio, Victoria M.  "Speaking the Fool's Rhetoric: A Woman's Critical Praxis for Power-Sharing in a Gendered Writing Classroom." Composition Studies 31.2 (Fall 2003):  27-52. 

Tobin, Lad.  Writing Relationships:  What Really Happens in the Composition Class.  Portsmouth, NH:  Boynton/Cook, 1993. 

Traxler, Megan. "(Re)Reading Identity Narratives: Developing Strategies for Negotiating Authority in the Composition Classroom." Young Scholars in Writing 4 (Fall 2006): 3-14.

Walsh, Peter.  "That Withered Paradigm:  The Web, the Expert and the Information Hegemony."  Democracy and New Media.  Ed. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT P, 2003.  365-372. 

Wardle, Elizabeth. "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces." Enculturation 5.2 (2004).

Werder, Carmen.  "Rhetorical Agency:  Seeing the Ethics of It All."  WPA:  Writing Program Administration 24.1-2 (Fall-Winter 2000):  9-28.