Understanding Teaching and Interpretation in Literature and Composition-Rhetoric

Understanding Teaching and Interpretation in Literature and Composition-Rhetoric McDonald, Christina Russell, and Robert L McDonald, ed 2002 Teaching Writing: Landmarks and Horizons. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Pres $2500 sc xv + 301 pp

Olson Gary A., and Lynn Worsham, ed 2003 Critical Intellectuals upon Writing. Albany: SUNY Press. $5450 hc$1795 sc 209 pp

Tokarczyk, Michelle M and Irene Papoulis, ed 2003 Teaching Composition/Teaching Literature: Crossing Great Divides. fresh York: Peter Lang Publishers. $2995 sc 170 pp

TuSmith, Bonnie, and Maureen T Reddy ed 2002 Race in the corporation Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics. fresh Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. $6000 hc $2200 sc x + 326 pp

Winifred Bryan Horner noted in the introduction to her 1983 collection Composition and Literature a belong to with what she called the "widening large bay between research and teaching in literature and research and teaching in composition" (1983 1) She went upon to describe the book as "an attempt to denude fresh and exciting opportunities within our profession" (8) through understanding synergies between the sum of two units fields. Following Horner, as a composition-rhetoric scholar with a background in literary studies, I also reliance to better mobilize together the vigors and limitations of these sum of two units area of English studies. Thus, in this review essay, I present to view how four quite distinct collections-all addressing literacy, writing, and pedagogy in different ways-each has something to contribute to the two literature and composition, and towards that extremity I focus on reading each collection [i]or[/i] part of to the other the perspective of connecting the sum of two units fields of study. These works illustrate one of the greatest in quantity compelling similarities between literature and composition studies: their commitment to introducing postsecondary pupils to new-and increasingly complex-literacy practices.

Taking this shared commitment to postsecondary literacy education as a foundation, I engage these four collections with an organ of sight towards forging stronger connections between the sum of two units fields and towards better understanding teaching practices in English studies. I end by suggesting some further directions for research intimateed by the work presented in these collections, particularly in coming to understand in what way a mutually beneficial relationship between teaching and scholarship can be cultivated across disciplinary borders.

Michelle Tokarczyk and Irene Papoulis's Teaching Composition/Teaching Literature: Crossing Great Divides picks up Homer's debate twenty years after her collection was published, as they explicitly engage the productive (and not-so-productive) tensions among composition and literature within English departments. Christina Russell McDonald and Robert L McDonald's Teaching Writing: Landmarks and Horizons traces the trajectory of composition-rhetoric's attention to teaching writing, while Race in the guild Classroom, edited by Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen Reddy addresses issues of race and racial identity within institutional and classroom spaces. Finally, end interviews with prolific writers and intellectuals, Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham's Critical Intellectuals upon Writing illustrates some of the actual particular ways that scholarship and writing are intertwined.

I organize the review by the agency of first situating the composition/literature divide from one side my discussion of Tokarczyk and Papoulis's collection; then, after locating the three remaining works in their respective scholarly connections I show how each of them also bridges composition and literature teaching. I pair McDonald and McDonald with TuSmith and Reddy because each provides a window into the kind of attention commonly being given to pedagogical issues within English studies, as McDonald and McDonald focus upon writing classrooms, while TuSmith and Reddy situate their work in a more general classroom space. Finally, I indicate that the interviews compiled by dint of Olson & Worsham can act as pedagogical designs for budding intellectuals. I terminate the review by suggesting a certain quantity of further directions suggested by these research practices.

In 2003 literary scholar Elaine Showalter published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in which she urg her literary colleagues to take more seriously the teaching of literature. In in the way that doing, Showalter was engaging a pervasive attitude within literary studies, namely, that teaching is antithetical to one's scholarship and/or something that single should know about but not explicitly focus on Yet, however accurate Showalter's estimations may be for literary studies, it does not apply to composition-rhetoric, a field of close attention that has long taken as its foundation significant attention to the pair the pedagogy and practice of writing.

Indeed, Showalter's faculty of perception that she needs to encourage her literary colleagues to bring their scholarship to bear upon their teaching (and vice versa) is single of the more identifiable differences between literature and composition. Note-I am in no way suggesting that literary scholars do not care about their teaching-the point has to do with engaging in scholarship related to teaching, or intertwining one's teaching with one's scholarly activity. individual kind of this pedagogical scholarship is engaged by dint of each of the contributors to Tokarczyk and Papoulis's collection, whether composition or literature is their disciplinary place of abode Each essay theorizes a large bay between composition and literature and proffers ways that contributors have bridged those gaps in their pedagogical practices.