History Bump

Where are you with this now? Which topic are you leaning towards?
Porter Perrin: do-able. My (partial) Perrin bibliography is online. Would you like to take a look at his diss? It would be possible, I think, to begin the task of editing his diss as a project for this course. Think of it in those terms: what could you actually accomplish here, and what would remain to be done?
Comp and rhet separation: holy cow, too enormous. Is there a topic within it that you might want to investigate?
Archival research in journals: yes, very do-able.
So: what's your pleasure, m'am?

I looked at the Perrin bib earlier, and yes, I think I would like to take a look at the diss. If I can think of that project as beginning the editing in the confines of this class, then it might also be something I could continue to work on after the class, and that would be a cool thing to do, I think.

You are correct about the enormity of the comp/rhet separation project. My real interest in that history has to do with a) the conceptualization of the student subject in the discourse surrounding composition, and b) the rise of English over the "classics" of Greek and Latin and the shift through the 20th century in the discourse justifying the "need" for a composition requirement. (I might just say here that I am a huge fan of Sharon Crowley's "modest proposal").

Archival research - do-able, and the project of default choice. It is something I would want to do in light of a) above, but since I have an interest in a comparative project, and since I am interested in what does not appear as well as what does in any of these journals, I could see it getting to be a bigger project.

So, my proposal at the moment is to look at Perrin's diss, imagine what I can do with it and how interested in that I am, and if that doesn't work, then more narrowly define the archival project. Fair?

Fair. I've been thinking about this, and I'm thinking that you should look at Perrin's diss (and of course at Gage's editing of Kitzhaber's diss); read some of Perrin's other published work; and figure out how you're going to construct a sense of his disciplinary (and extra-disciplinary?) context. At some point (maybe not until the end of the semester), I'd like you to write up what it would take for you to edit Perrin's diss; what you have done toward that; what remains to be done; and on what timetable you would do it. Fair?