Rebecca Moore Howard
Office: 239A HB Crouse
Office hours: By appointment
Telephone: 443-1083
E-mail: rehoward@syr.edu
Home page http://wrt-howard.syr.edu



Projects, CCR 611, S02



Your assignment for this course

Write a history/genealogy of one activity system in composition studies. You may write this history in one of these ways:
(a) As a prospectus for a dissertation. You need not actually write this dissertation, but writing the prospectus will give you experience that you will soon need, and it will also help you process the information and ideas you are gathering about your historical topic. Follow the guidelines for a CCR dissertation prospectus.
(b) As a doctoral exam. If you choose this option, you will need to write a proposal for this exam area (following CCR guidelines) and then take the mock exam by the end of the semester.
(c) As a journal article. If you choose this option, you may work collaboratively with another seminar member.
(d) As an incredibly boring, useless seminar paper, enough of which you've already written. If you choose this option, you may work collaboratively with another seminar member.


Sample projects

Consider doing a project that follows the ways in which a topic such as assessment or writing processes has been deployed as a tool to develop, organize, and fragment a sense of shared discipline in composition studies. What follows are a few preliminary readings that limn some of the ideas and contradictions that define these deployments. You should feel free to adopt one of these samples (assessment or writing processes) as your semester project, or to develop a different one:

Assessment

Bizzell, Patricia. "What Can We Know, What Must We Do, What May We Hope: Writing Assessment." College English 49.5 (September 1987): 575-84.

Ford, James E., and Gregory Larkin. "The Portfolio System: An End to Backsliding Writing Standards." College English 39 (1978): 950-55.

Gale, Xin Liu. "Judgment Deferred: Reconsidering Institutional Authority in the Portfolio Writing Classroom." Grading in the Post-Process Classroom: From Theory to Practice. Ed. Libby Allison, Lisbeth Bryant, and Maureen Hourigan. Westport, CT: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 1997. 75-93.

Haswell, Richard H. "Dark Shadows: The Fate of Writers at the Bottom." College Composition and Communication 39 (1988): 303-15.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Assumptions and Applications of Student Self-Assessment." Student Self-Assessment and Development in Writing: A Collaborative Inquiry. Ed. Jane Bowman Smith and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2000. 35-58.

Huot, Brian. "Reliability, Validity, and Holistic Scoring: What We Know and What We Need to Know." College Composition and Communication 41 (May 1990): 201-13.

Kamusikiri, Sandra. "African American English and Writing Assessment: An Afrocentric Approach." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 187-203.

Lloyd-Jones, Richard. "Tests of Writing Ability." Teaching Composition: Twelve Bibliographical Essays. Ed. Gary Tate. Rev. ed. Forth Worth: Texas Christian UP, 1987.

Matalene, Carolyn B. "Objective Testing: Politics, Problems, Possibilities." College English 44 (1982): 368-81.

Schuster, Charles I. "Climbing the Slippery Slope of Assessment: The Programmatic Use of Writing Portfolios." New Directions in Portfolio Assessment: Reflective Practice, Critical Theory, and Large-Scale Scoring. Ed. Laurel Black, et al. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1994. 314-24.

Spellmeyer, Kurt. "Testing as Surveillance." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 174-84.

Trimbur, John. "Why Do We Test Writing?" Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 45-50.

White, Edward M. "The Opening of the Modern Era of Writing Assessment: A Narrative." College English 63.3 (January 2001): 306-320.

WPA Outcomes Committee. "WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition." College English 63.3 (January 2001): 321-25.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment." College Composition and Communication 50.3 (February 1999): 483-503.

Writing processes

Couture, Barbara. "Modeling and Emulating: Rethinking Agency in the Writing Process." Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 30-48.

Flower, Linda, et al. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 365-87.

Gebhardt, Richard C. "Initial Plans and Spontaneous Composition: Toward a Comprehensive Theory of the Writing Process." College English 44 (1982): 620-7.

Hairston, Maxine. "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication 33 (1982): 76-88.

Kent, Thomas, intro. Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 1-6.

Larson, Elizabeth. "The Effect of Technology on the Composing Process." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 16 (1986): 43-58.

Murray, Donald M. "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product." The Leaflet (November 1972): 11-14. Rpt. Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. 3-6.

Olson, Gary A. "Extending Our Awareness of the Writing Process." Journal of Teaching Writing 5 (1986): 227-236.

Olson, Gary A. "Toward a Post-Process Composition: Abandoning the Rhetoric of Assertion." Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 7-15.

Perl, Sondra. "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers." Research in the Teaching of English 13 (1979): 317-36. Rpt. Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1997. 17-42.

Rose, Mike. "Speculations on Process Knowledge and the Textbook's Static Page." College Composition and Communication 34 (1983): 208-13.

Russell, David. "Activity Theory and Process Approaches: Writing (Power) in School and Society." Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 80-95.

Schilb, John. "Reprocessing the Essay." Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 198-216.

Smagorinsky, Peter. "The Writer's Knowledge and the Writing Process: A Protocol Analysis." Research in the Teaching of English 25.3 (October 1991): 339-64.

Tobin, Lad. "Process Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 1-18.

Voss, Ralph F. "Janet Emig's The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders: A Reassessment." College Composition and Communication 34 (1983): 278-83.

Zebroski, James. "New Perspectives on the Social in Composition: Lev Vygotsky's Theory of Process." Composition Chronicle 3 (April 1990): 4-6.





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