Dissertation Abstract
Pivotal Moments: Personal Histories of Labor in First Year Composition
In a now seminal 2012 CCC article, David Gold argues that “Rhetoric and composition historiography must not simply recover neglected writers, teachers, locations, and institutions, but must also demonstrate connections between these subjects and larger scholarly conversations” (17). Today, course caps on writing classes are questioned by administrators trying to cut teaching costs; composition courses are often taught by low-paid and low-status contingent laborers; on many campuses first year writing curricula suffer from administrative over-reach and “reimaginings” from those outside (and sometimes even hostile) to our field. These conditions present us with an exigent moment for considering how we can look to lessons from history to improve our labor conditions in the present. Many labor scholars in composition have suggested various avenues for reform—from unionization (Bousquet; Carter; Schell) to replacing first year composition with vertical writing curricula (Crowley) to converting contingent faculty pools into alternative labor structures (Kinney). The practical solutions these scholars offer are important, but in my dissertation I argue that these conversations must be complemented by microhistories of earlier compositionists dealing with labor issues in first year composition (FYC). By incorporating historiographical research that offers micro-level analyses of individual case studies, our understandings of historical labor challenges can enrich our vision of current conditions as well as how we develop actionable plans for the future.
In order to support this kind research, my dissertation also argues that feminist rhetorical practices offer historians in Composition and Rhetoric tools for entwining our current debates, experiences, and practices into our historical research in productive and powerful ways. Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch’s 2012 book Feminist Rhetorical Practices outlines four practices feminist historians of Composition and Rhetoric use (critical imagination, social circulation, globalization, and strategic contemplation), arguing that these represent best practices in our field. While their text argues that these practices support ethical historical work and function as generative methods for engaging in historical work, I consider the ways these practices offer strategies for researching and writing revisionist historical work which makes its connections and contributions to currently scholarly debates explicit and practical. Royster and Kirsch’s book names four primary feminist rhetorical practices, but working off of their general definition of the term, I suggest additional practices from within the literature of the field that qualify as feminist rhetorical practices and I demonstrate how these practices enable revisionist historians to name, consider, and theorize about connections between their historical work and current labor debates in the field.
My dissertation studies significant figures from the history of FYC in the United States, paying special addition to the labor conditions that affected their work. I am particularly interested in their class sizes, the time commitments of their pedagogical practices, their administrative responsibilities, and the economic issues surrounding their employment. The introduction articulates my research methodologies. Feminist rhetorical practices (Royster and Kirsch) and historiographies are well-established methodologies in the field, but they have been applied primarily to recovering lost or neglected researchers, teachers, or sites of rhetorical engagement. I argue these methods can be applied to established historical figures in ways that enrich our understanding of labor in our field. The first chapter on Barrett Wendell (circa 1890-1910) troubles common assessments of his teaching and contribution to the discipline by considering his labor conditions and argues that curriculum development must take labor explicitly into account. The second chapter reexamines the work of Edwin Hopkins (circa 1900-1920), who devoted much of his professional life to reforming labor conditions in FYC and argues that understanding the rhetorical strategies he used to advocate for writing teachers can invigorate contemporary strategies for reforming FYC labor conditions. The third chapter investigates George Wykoff (circa 1940-1960), a crucial figure in the professionalization of teaching writing and the evolution of Composition and Rhetoric as a discipline, focusing on his labor conditions and the professional effects of his own scholarship on teaching writing. Here I argue that while professionalization has been largely beneficial to our field, the word itself masks labor and has contributed to rise of tiered labor structures. The fourth chapter, on Mina Shaughnessy (circa 1970-1980), explores labor in the open enrollment era and the “feminization” of the field. In this chapter I argue that “feminized” workspaces are also often more humane, frequently at the cost women’s physical and mental health. I conclude by sketching my own labor experiences (circa 2010-present) as they are representative of current labor crises in FYC and higher education more generally, elaborating on the connections between contemporary labor issues and the historical microhistories in this dissertation. For example, Barrett Wendell designed a curriculum that applied rhetorical knowledge to English composition: I consider how better understanding his experience of unstainable labor conditions offers today’s composition instructors a blueprint for approaching curricular reform with labor in mind. My work demonstrates that as we design responses to labor crises in FYC, we must return to the history of FYC in the United States. While many have historicized the field (Berlin; Connors; Crowley), none use labor as their primary lens, even as labor issues in higher education are increasingly taken up in relation to FYC (Bousquet; Carter; Schell; Scott). By linking my calls for action to historical case studies, I hope to enrich and support contemporary effects to productively reimagine FYC labor conditions. Ultimately, I make suggestions about crafting curriculum, advocating effectively for reform of FYC labor conditions, balancing professionalization in a field that simultaneously values and devalues teaching, serving under-prepared student populations, and productively embracing the “feminized” identity of the field. In these ways, my historical research on specific individuals serves as a springboard for tackling labor issues today.
Return to About Me