History Bump

I would like to survey selected works of Geneva Smitherman and Jacqueline Jones Royster in an effort to explore their contributions to composition studies. By reviewing, a set of selected works, I will be able investigate how they established themselves as contributors, and how they gained national recognition and audience in composition studies. As I contemplate this from a historical perspective, my charge would be to background movements in composition and rhetoric that foreground the attitudes and ideologies held true at that time. In other words, in order to explore such an idea, I would need to gain insight about the political, social, and cultural conditions surrounding the time at which these women were publishing the texts that I have selected to review. I would also like to perform a comparative analysis of the “selected texts” in an attempt to distinguish the difference between how Smitherman enters composition studies differently than Royster. And as I consider their contributions to composition, to some extent, I feel that I must analyze, from a historical perspective, some of the techniques they use to establish their work as disparate.

Questions that I would like to explore further are,

- What movements in comp and rhetoric chronicle the events leading up to their acceptance as scholars, specifically in comp/rhet.?
- What were the attitudes towards Black women at the time of their acceptance?
- What political or cultural issues were at stake during the time of their surfacing as composition scholars?
- What ideological criticisms have they overcome, paralleled, intersected?
- What critical issues are they raising?
- How does their stance toward language and pedagogy differ from that of their white counterparts?
- What have critics or other comp. scholars saying about the subject matter of their texts?
- What does the future hold for other rising African American women scholars of comp/rhet. scholars?

Reservations that I have concerning starting this probe couch themselves around locating the movements existing in composition studies at the time the selected texts were published. I am also weary about understanding research in terms of how to go about locating what critics/scholars have said concerning their works (Smitherman and Royster), especially the works that I plan to select. I am also concerned that I will not be able to establish a timeline of events that would have occurred outside of composition studies (that is, what the social, political, and ideological stance was concerning the attitudes and beliefs of Americans) in order to situate this as a historical piece that my readers will not have trouble taking part in.

As far as sources are concerned, I’d like to keep the preliminary list. But I’m also wondering if someone will be able to point out a few meaningful sources that would allow me to examine the mentality of composition studies around or between the 1970s 1968 up through the 1990s. That in itself might be a large task.

The works that I want to explore thus far still hold:

Potter, J. and M. Mulkay. "Scientists' Interview Talk: Interviews as a Technique for Revealing Participants' Interpretative Practices." The Research Interview: Uses and Approaches. Ed. M. Brenner, J. Brown, and D. Canter. New York: Academic P, 1985. 247-271.

Fink, Arlene, and Jacqueline Kosecoff. How to Conduct Surveys: A Step-by-Step Guide. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985.

Smitherman, Geneva. Interview. (Before this project is complete [2005]).

Jackson, Austin, and Geneva Smitherman. “ ‘Black People Tend to Talk Eubonics': Race and Curricular Diversity in Higher Education.” Strategies for Teaching First-Year Composition. Ed. Duane Roen, Veronica Pantoja, Lauren Yena, Susan K. Miller, and Eric Waggoner. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002. 46-50.

Makoni, Sinfree, Geneva Smitherman, Arthur K. Spears, and Arnetha F. Ball. Black Linguistics: Language, Society and Politics in Africa and the Americas. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Rose, Shirley K. “Two Disciplinary Narratives for Non-Standard English in the Classroom: Citation Histories of Shaughnessy's Errors and Expectations and Smitherman's Talkin' and Testifyin'.” History, Reflection, and Narrative: The Professionalization of Composition 1963-1983. Eds. Mary Rosner, Beth Boehm, and Debra Journet. Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1998. 187-204.

Smitherman, Geneva. “ ‘The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice’: African American Student Writers.” The Need for Story: Cultural Diversity in Classroom and Community. Ed. Anne Haas Dyson and Celia Genishi. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 80-101.

Smitherman, Geneva. “CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights.” College Composition and Communication. 50.3 (February 1999): 349-376.

Smitherman, Geneva. “The Historical Struggle for Language Rights in CCCC.” Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice. Ed. Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2003. 7-39.

Smitherman, Geneva. “Language and Democracy in the USA and the RSA.” Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on the Official English Movement. Vol. 2. Ed. Roseann Dueñas González. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2001. 316-345.

Smitherman, Geneva. “Language Policy and Classroom Practices.” Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement among African American Students. Ed. Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian, and Orland Taylor. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999.

Smitherman, Geneva. “Meditations on Language, Pedagogy, and a Life of Struggle.” Rhetoric and Ethnicity. Ed. Keith Gilyard and Vorris Nunley. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2004. 3-14.

Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1977, 1986.

Smitherman-Donaldson, Geneva. “Toward a National Public Policy on Language.” College English 49 (1987): 29-36.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Interview. (Before this project is complete [2005]).

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” College Composition and Communication 47.1 (February 1996): 29-40.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Jean C. Williams. “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication. 50.4 (June 1999): 563-585.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones, Anne Bradford Warner. “Saga of the Dragon Slayers or Perspectives on Teaching Writing at Spellman College.” Teaching Writing at Historically Black colleges and Universities. eds. David G. Lanoue and Vivian A. Wilson. New Orleans: Southern Education Foundation, 1988. 25-30.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. “In Search of Ways in: Reflection and Response.” Feminine Principles and Women’s Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. eds. Louise W. Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. 385-392.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones and Rebecca Greenberg Taylor. “Construction Teacher Identity in the Basic Writing Classroom.” Journal of Basic Writing. 16.1. 1997: 27-50.