Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Mendenhall_dissertation.pdf (1.7 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Locating the Profession: Disciplinary Identities and Professional Spaces in the History of Composition and Rhetoric

Mendenhall, Sarah S
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1368695422

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
This dissertation addresses contemporary concerns that composition studies lacks disciplinary coherence. In the past 50 years, composition has expanded across multiple scholarly specializations and programmatic locations, including Writing Across the Curriculum, writing centers, first-year writing, professional writing, digital media, and undergraduate majors. This project contextualizes this expansion by examining how composition established disciplinary authority throughout the 20th century. Using archival resources from journals, job lists, and the archives of scholarly professional organizations, each chapter explores a key term associated with the emergence of composition as a discipline––science in the early 20th century, research in the 1960s post-Sputnik era, the rise of specialized labor in the 1970s and 80s, and departmental location in the 1990s. Historians typically frame science, research, specialization, and departmental status as disciplinary achievements. Conversely, this analysis argues that these developments instead reveal centrifugal tendencies, both establishing visibility for composition and dispersing its work widely across multiple disciplines and sites of general and remedial education. Rather than frame this challenge as an identity crisis, this project calls for the field to develop strategic alliances and equitable labor practices across sub-fields and programs.
Kay Halasek (Advisor)
Frank Donoghue (Committee Member)
Beverly Moss (Committee Member)
H. Lewis Ulman (Committee Member)
233 p.
Composition; Education History; History; Rhetoric

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Mendenhall, S. S. (2013). Locating the Profession: Disciplinary Identities and Professional Spaces in the History of Composition and Rhetoric [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1368695422

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Mendenhall, Sarah. Locating the Profession: Disciplinary Identities and Professional Spaces in the History of Composition and Rhetoric. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1368695422.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Mendenhall, Sarah. "Locating the Profession: Disciplinary Identities and Professional Spaces in the History of Composition and Rhetoric." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1368695422

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1368695422
1,141
© 2013, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Locating the Profession: Disciplinary Identities and Professional Spaces in the History of Composition and Rhetoric by Sarah S Mendenhall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.