WRITING IN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

Elizabeth Losh, Writing Director, Humanities Core Course


WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) vs. WID (Writing in the Disciplines) at UCI:

Humanities Core Course and Upper Division Writing Courses

Some Basic Definititions

A Few Milestones for Interdisciplinary Writing :
Harvard Entrance Examination in Writing (1885) [See the work of Robert Connors for more . . .]

Subject A Examination at the University of California, originally in "oral and written composition" (1897-8) [See the work of Holly Bauer and George Gadda for more . . . ]

First Classes at Reed College (1911)

"War Issues" at Columbia College
Contemporary Civilization at Columbia College (1919)

General Honors at the University of Chicago (1931)

Robert Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (1936)   Lectures originally delivered at Yale

The G.I. Bill changes the demographic profile of undergraduates

Federal funding of higher education increases during the Cold War, particularly for the sciences

Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956)

Albert Kitzhaber, Themes, theories, and therapy: teaching of writing in college. The report of the Dartmouth study of student writing (1963)  . . . also a critique of style-driven composition instruction

Richard Braddock, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer, Research in Written Composition (1963) . . . includes the  famous chemistry/alchemy analogy

Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (1963)

William Perry, Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years (1970)

Founding of the Humanities Core Course at U.C. Irvine (1970)

"Why Johnny Can't Write," Newsweek (December 1975)

Elaine Maimon at Beaver College introduces a WAC program

Ground-Breaking Rhetoric of Science Articles:

Paul Campbell, "The Personae of Scientific Discourse," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 61, 1975, 391 - 405
Joseph Gusfield, "The Literary Rhetoric of Science," American Sociological Review, 41, 1976, 16 - 43

Janet Emig "Writing as a Mode of Learning" College Composition and Communication (1977)
Writing to Learn vs. Learning to Write

"Western Civilization" courses revised on many campuses to recognize diversity and non-canonical works

WID approach replaces WAC approach on many campuses

The Boyer Commission Report (1998)


Where are We Now? 

The Readings:
Deborah Holdstein, "'Writing Across the Curriculum' and the Paradoxes of Institutional Initiatives" (2001)

What paradoxes are at work in the university?
How do competing discourses about "excellence" and "crisis" function?
What is wrong with WAC according to Holdstein?
What role does institutional rhetoric play?

McLeod and Maimon, "Clearing the Air: WAC Myths and Realities" (2000)
Why do McLeod and Maimon see themselves as under attack?
What is their counterargument to Knoblauch and Brannon? [See below for original article.]
What is the rhetorical situation of this essay?
How do they present their authority as researchers?
What data have they gathered?

Roger Mourad, "At the Forefront--Postmodern Interdisciplinarity" (1997)

Does the "Postmodern" function as too large an umbrella for all these thinkers?

What are Foucault's arguments in "The Discourse on Language"?
Power struggles between disciplines are perhaps inevitable because any disciplinary organization will seek to appropriate specific forms of knowledge and exclude competing parties from access and dissemination.

What is Lyotard's critique of Humboldt's model of the University on page 52 of The Postmodern Condition?
"each science had its own place in a system crowned by speculation"
"encroachment of one science into another's field can only create confusion, 'noise' in the system"
"the interdisciplinary approach is specific to the age of delegitimation and its hurried empiricisim"
"no metalanguage or metanarrative . . . but they do have brainstorming [and] the emphasis on teamwork"
 
Parks and Goldblatt, "Writing Beyond the Curriculum: Fostering New Collaborations in Literacy" (2000)  

How do Parks and Goldblatt question the authority of "academic" writing?
What genres do their students produce?
What is "Literacy Studies"?
How do their arguments relate to other readings from 398 (Bartholomae, etc.)?

A Bonus Question from my own research: How is information different from knowledge?  What impact will "information literacy initiatives" have on higher education?

Supplementary Reading:
Charles Bazerman and David Russell, Landmark Essays in Writing Across the Curriculum

Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, "Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Textbooks: A Bibliographic Essay"

C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon, "Writing as Learning through the Curriculum"

Susan McLeod and Margot Soven, Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide for Program Development

Janice H. Peritz, "When Learning Is Not Enough: Writing Across the Curriculum and the (Re)turn to Rhetoric"

Kate Ronald,  "On the outside Looking in: Students' Analyses of Professional Discourse Communities"

David R. Russell, "Writing Across the Curriculum in Historical Perspective: Toward a Social Interpretation"

Stay tuned for more about WAC . . .
Ellen Strenski,"Disciplines and Communities, 'Armies' and 'Monasteries,' and the Teaching of Composition" (course pack)

More Resources:

The WAC Clearinghouse
Council of Writing Program Administrators