Just Identity: Become an Author

Texts are everywhere. Writing and composing technologies seem ubiquitous. Multiple modalities of communication make possible the composing, designing, and curating of many different ways of reaching out to one another, building knowledge, preserving heritages, and fostering understanding.

Indeed, writing, and the teaching of writing, in the early twenty-first century seems full of possibilities and challenges- all reflected in the diverse research agendas and debates that animate our field. We argue over whether our discipline should be focused on the teaching of writing or on writing stud- ies more broadly. Pressures to apply and justify assessment measures have shaped in part our curricula and research agendas, while continuing interest in

community-based literacies signals a longstanding commitment to think- ing of writing and writing instruction as fundamental to literate participation in pluralistic democracy. Many of us have fought to establish independent programs to value and cultivate the work we do, and yet we also know that a too strict focus on writing courses limits at times our study of composing in diverse contexts.

Transfer studies have championed empirical studies of writ- ing; at the same time, recent CCCC conventions have pushed us to remember the value of personal story and identity in shaping what we know about writ- ing. We continue to study the acquisition of academic literacies and ways of knowing, but we also turn curious eyes and ears and hands to the proliferation of composing in and through diverse digital and multimodal platforms.

We are starting to think about the uses of big data, and we con through case studies, interviews, and other ethnographic m the transfer of knowledge about writing across different dom keep alive a sense of writing as complex, multifaceted, and tr itself and ourselves - as we write.

We use writing to know, to think, but also to feel, to intuit, to explore, to bump up against that which we do not know and may never capture fully in writing.

I have never thought that our diverse interests and methods are a weakness. Rather, I firmly believe that our methodological plurality keeps us intellectually vigorous. Given its complexity as an expressive, cognitive, and social activity, writing should be studied with a broad-minded empiricism-paying due respect to, but stopping short of fetishizing, quantitative methods while also continuing to value qualitative research that studies writing in particular contexts.

And increasingly, we need to be attentive rhetorically to how people outside of our discipline understand what we do and why it's important.

We have much to share with the public, not just our students and fellow academics, about the value of studying writing-personally, culturally, politically.

We remain a discipline in motion, evolving and transforming along with the ever-changing complexities of composing.

I am honored to be the new editor of College Composition and Communication. I recognize both the challenges and the possibilities of studying writing and the teaching of writing at this time. And I believe the capaciousness of our field offers the right set of strengths to understand what writing is and does. Unsurprisingly, then, this issue reflects that capaciousness-still growing and exploring its methods, its objects of study, and even its audiences. In that spirit,

this issue offers essays in transition-from Kathleen Blake Yancey's amazing editorship to my fledgling steps.

Questions of our disciplinarity-who are we, and what should we be focusing on as scholars and teachers-permeate the essays in this issue, often explicitly but always implicitly. For instance, Russel Durst's "British Invasion: James Britton, Composition Studies, and Anti-Disciplinarity" focuses on one of the field's founding figures-one who,

according to Durst, had his own vexed relationship to the concept of disciplinarity. In exploring our history, Durst turns to one of our field's thorniest present issues: should our work be focused on teaching? Durst says yes, but he also intriguingly notes Britton's sense that disciplinarity across the university narrows students' development as thinkers. In such a spirit, Durst urges a revaluation of how composition must necessarily draw on multiple disciplines to do its work.

Turning to the analysis of particular pedagogies, Wendy Hayden's "'Gifts' of the Archives: A Pedagogy for Undergraduate Research'' offers a compelling model for inviting and training students to undertake archival research: a powerful pedagogy for acculturating them to "uncertainty and exploration:• Hayden's thoughtful examples and analyses draw on work from feminist historiography to model an open approach to research that values students as

researchers, not just learners. Ultimately, Hayden suggests we might rethink our disciplinary content as oriented not just around a subject, writing, but also around methods, approaches, and modes of inquiry. Focusing on a slightly different pedagogical context, Sarah Read and Michael J. Michaud's essay, "Writing about Writing and the Multi-major Professional Writing Course;• applies the theoretical and pedagogical insights from the

writing-about-writing movement to the teaching of professional writing courses. Resonating with Hayden's approach to teaching archival research, Read and Michaud foreground how instructors in other writing courses, not just first-year comp, might work with students to learn about writing, not just "to write: In making such a move, the authors seem to stake a claim: ours is a teaching subject, but one connected to a range of sites oflearning throughout the

disciplines.

The final article and the review essay consider spheres outside the classroom. Sean Zwagerman's "Local Examples and Master Narratives: Stanley Fish and the Public Appeal of Current-Traditionalism" usefully reminds us of the worlds beyond the academy-publics often interested in the teaching of writing but lacking our experience and expertise. While analyzing Stanley Fish's blog and other writings on the need to teach

writing from a current-traditional perspective, Zwagerman notes the frequent disconnects between the public's view of what we do and our own views on teaching writing. As we assert our disciplinarity, then, we need to be mindful of how we represent ourselves-both inside the academy and out. And Steve Parks's assessment of several recent books in his review essay, "Sponsors and Activists: Deborah Brandt, Sponsorship, and the Work to Come;' reminds us that,

for many working in our field, writing and literacy education are political acts, even activist ones. They see our disciplinary calling as focused on preparing people for literate participation in pluralistic democracy.

So-many approaches, methods, and investments. To embrace that diversity and provoke more thought on it, I conclude this issue with a set of what I call "critical retrospections" on a CCCC position statement from 1987, "Scholarship in

Composition: Guidelines for Faculty, Deans, and Department Chairs" (http:/ /www.ncte.org/ cccc/resources/positions/ scholarshipincomp ). I invited scholars and teachers from across the field to reflect on this statement, asking them if it still represents our interests and commitments. I present here the first set of such reflections. In their diverse responses, these writers will leave you with yet more questions, but as nearly every author whose work is

published in this issue might argue, the production of questions about writing is what our discipline is all about.

Let me close by saying thank-you to the CCC journal search committee members, the CCCC Executive Committee, and the NCTE/CCCC staff for putting their trust in me to guide this journal over the next five years. A special thanks to Kathleen Yancey for shepherding me through the transition; to my editorial assistants, Loren Eason;

and Jasmine Lee, for working with me on this first issue; and to Kurt Austin and Rona Smith for making the learning of the online editorial management system both intellectually engaging and fun. I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of editing this journal and to being a part of a vibrant set of probing conversations about writing.

Jonathan Alexander
University of California, Irvine

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi’ bickerin brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee

Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!

It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!

An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,

O’ foggage green!

An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,

Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,

An’ weary Winter comin fast,

An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble

Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!

Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,

But house or hald,

To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,

An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my e’e,

On prospects drear!

An’ forward tho’ I canna see,

I guess an’ fear!

Next Editors Selected

NCTE and CCCC welcome Dr. Matthew Davis, of the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Dr. Kara Taczak, of the University of Central Florida, as incoming editors of College Composition and Communication. Kara and Matt were editorial assistants at CCC as graduate students and are thrilled to return to service at the journal after an editorial tenure at Composition Studies. Their first issue will be published in February 2025.

composition as a scholarly discipline and what Joseph Harris appropriately calls "a teaching subject:"

In what to me remains significant among pivotal addresses by a CCCC Chair, Andrea Lunsford, in 1989, affirms not only that we must ''compose ourselves;• but that we in composition and rhetoric are "heteroglossic:' Clearly, CCC articulates this heteroglossia. Consequently, as was Joseph Harris, I am interested in pieces that take a

"critical or revisionary look at work in composition studies" and scholarly work that examines its historical contexts, efforts that contribute to the continuum by which we do, indeed, compose ourselves as a discipline. As did Harris, I seek pieces that "strive to connect scholarship" in literary studies, philosophy oflanguage, communication, education- and more-to "the study and teaching of writing."

Our discipline continues to evolve and expand. We are still

"composing ourselves." And as a sign of its health as an enterprise, composition studies reflects a kind of Cartesian duality in several ways: first, in the constructive, intellectual tension between a scholarship of pedagogy and more traditional forms of scholarship; and, second, in the desire to feature an expansive representation of approaches, issues, and interdisciplinarity that competes with a prudent, if sometimes misguided, desire to promote a

narrow scope or focus.

Perhaps the most important legacies of my immediate predecessors, Marilyn Cooper and Joseph Harris, will be for these pages to continue articulating the many, often vexing, positions and commitments in composition studies and the fields with which it intersects. As Marilyn Cooper writes in the February 2003 issue, for instance, she took the editorship prepared to "make CCC a meeting place for the range

of issues and approaches represented in the field:' In Cooper's path and in her legacy, I will look for contributions that represent a variety of subfields and interdisciplinary approaches, grounded in the scholarly contexts of composition studies. At the same time, and as did Cooper, I hope also to broaden perspectives, taking us each out of our own sometimes narrowly prescribed areas of interest.

As further sign of the health of composition studies, there is

more competition for fine articles among journals than in the past. I hope that CCC will not only continue to feature the best of newer voices in the profession, but also offer readers the opportunity to read and respond to contributions by established, prominent thinkers in our field who take on issues of importance and, it is hoped, controversy. Toward this end, I will often feature a regular Symposium ( or "Interchange") of responses to particular articles and another,

regular forum for response, where appropriate: Commentary. Further, through its articles, CCC will support our CCCC leadership as these colleagues articulate in substantive ways both within and to a complex national audience the many issues of national concern that affect the teaching and learning of writing. These might include writing and its institutional constraints; appropriate uses of technology and various media; language use; contingent faculty; literacy

practices; composition and cultural and literary studies; assessment; and principled, research-and practice-based responses to government initiatives. And this is but a partial list.

Moreover, through CCC, we have an ongoing opportunity to broaden the focus of the journal's title to additional, larger issues and questions: for instance, language use, orality, and literacy, and the broader sense of "writing" used by

poststructuralists. And there's more: How can we conceptualize, articulate, and narrow the distance between curricula in graduate rhetoric and composition programs and undergraduate writing programs? How do past chairs of CCCC now analyze-or rethink, or revisit-pressing issues of practice and theory in composition studies? We must continue to ask, for instance, as Marilyn Cooper did in 2000, how 'genres and technologies of communication''

affect our standards for "written language, format design, and representation," and their rhetorical, ethical, and political implications for the classroom and the discipline. And there will always be room as well for good articles that focus more on the "rhetoric" side of the discipline often called "composition-rhetoric."

Despite many readers' participation on listservs and other, more immediate forms of communication than the journal,

CCC still provides a central, expansive forum for the collected gathering of wide perspectives and divergent voices, complementing the sometimes specifically directed conversations of a single-issue list. In the months that separate our annual and regional conferences, CCC can, in many ways, come closest, in the words of Emmanuel Levinas, to seeing "the face of the other;• with myriad, substantial, and situated perspectives, goals, and topics-

for want of a better phrase-all in one place. As I write these words, a search committee composed of CCCC officers and Executive Committee members is determining the future of CCC Online and its relationship to this flagship journal.

Our tradition of innovation, however, demands that we honor and remain mindful of what has become CCC's over half-century legacy of the best thinking and writing in this discipline. On occasion, I hope to devote some

of these pages to showcase portions of pivotal articles in CCC history, using the Symposium or Interchange sections of our journal for thoughtful response and critique. {The entire, original article will then be available on CCC Online.) One sign of a mature and maturing discipline is its own scholarly-institutional memory-in the light of historically grounded, intellectually expansive, current thinking and analysis. Further, both of my recent predecessors,

Marilyn Cooper and Joseph Harris, have brought innovative practices to CCC that I expect to continue.

The editorship of this important journal carries both honor and obligation- to our discipline, to our readership, to our complex constituencies, and, ultimately and by extension, to our students. While there must and will be decisive leadership at the helm, this is a highly collaborative affair, with a committed editorial board and consulting readers

and a dedicated staff representing institutions across the United States. I thank these dedicated members of the editorial board, each of whom has shown tremendous interest, responsiveness, and patience during this editorial transition: Arnetha Ball, Gill Creel, Roz Ivanic, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Shirley Wilson Logan, Scott Richard Lyons, LuMing Mao, Carolyn Miller, Peter Mortensen, Nedra Reynolds, Carol Severino, John Trimbur, Victor Villanueva,

Nancy Welch, and Smokey Wilson. I also thank the many consulting readers who have already demonstrated their thoroughness and dedication to the profession during this transition, with particular appreciation to the officers of CCCC, Margaret Chambers, and Rona Smith. I am already indebted to my editorial assistant, Courtney Fitzgerald, and to my colleagues at Governors State whose enthusiasm brought CCC to its

home at this institution: Dr. Stuart Fagan, Dr. Paul Keys, Dr. Eric Martin, and Dr. Roger Oden.

However, I especially thank Marilyn Cooper. I have rarely met an editoror colleague anywhere, for that matter-so thoroughgoing in her reading and review of manuscripts, so devoted to and successful in bringing myriad voices to a national audience. Tremendously helpful during the inevitable bumps and near-misses of an editorial transition, Cooper has only augmented with

her editorial expertise and advice my existing admiration for her as a scholar. In fact, as if to enact the symbolic transition of the past and present of composition studies, this and the next issue will feature several articles whose time at the journal began during Marilyn's editorship and will have come to fruition in mine.

In the spirit of composition's heteroglossia and historical continuity, this issue reflects several of the myriad projects within our field: Patricia Harkin

traces the complex, often troubled relationship of reader-response criticism and composition studies; LuMing Mao examines the "border zones" of Chinese American rhetoric; Nancy Welch reveals the social and economic policies that have "shrunk the spaces in which most students' voices can be heard:' John Schilb reviews three books that contribute to current debates about "rhetcomp:"" And as part of this celebratory merging of our past with our present, this issue

features a special Symposium with essays by John Brereton, Douglas Hesse, and Nancy Sommers. Based on a session at the 2004 CCCC meetings in San Antonio, Brereton, Hesse, and Sommers merge personal histories as writing program administrators and work as scholar-teachers with recent, historical contexts for composition studies.

As these pieces were being prepared for publication, we received the terrible news of the

fire that injured John Brereton and took the life of his wife, Virginia Brereton, a beloved teacher of writing at Tufts University. This Symposium is dedicated to the swift recovery of John Brereton and to the memory of Virginia Brereton.

As Thomas Jefferson has written, "The past is prologue: Given the fine work of my predecessors and of the grounded, innovative thinkers whose work has been featured in these pages, it is an honor to sustain and extend this

set of eclectic, honorable traditions.
Deborah H Holdstein
Governors State University

ABSTRACT
By the time they graduate from college, most students still have not achieved the kind of self-authorship that would allow them to think independently, make choices, and pursue their dreams. What can we do to help them develop this capacity before they graduate so they can make the most of their college experience? One way, says the author, is to be better company.

SUCCESSFUL JOURNEYS, even short ones, require good company.

This point was reinforced for me in a recent visit to the Hawaiian Islands, where my spouse and I participated in an excursion called “Maui Downhill.” Maui Downhill was a thirty-eight-mile bicycle trek from the ten-thousand-foot summit of the Haleakala volcano to the ocean's edge—the key word here being downhill! The tour company provided us with bicycles, helmets, a van to follow us and collect those who might not make the trek, and a guide who would ride in front of our ten-

automobile drivers who were also enjoying the scenery. Robert emphasized our role in the safety of the trek, noting that our varying weights affected our speed and that our attentiveness and risk-taking behavior mediated our ability to control our own bicycles. Yet Robert allowed us to use our judgment and trusted us to act responsibly. We realized the complexity of our trek as we successfully rounded the first hairpin turn. A rider not associated with our tour had just

missed the turn and gone over the edge of the mountain. We stopped briefly as Robert assisted the park rangers in rescue efforts. Although Robert reported upon his return that the rider would recover from his injuries, our heightened sense of danger prompted us to pay more attention to Robert's hand signals. Robert's good company resulted in our safe arrival at the ocean's edge four hours later.

The journey into adulthood is equally thrilling and even more

treacherous than the downhill bicycle trek, and good company is hard to find. The early years of the journey into adult life are particularly difficult because they are marked by profound transformation— transformation from reliance on external authority to taking ownership and responsibility for one's life. This transformation to self-authorship requires constructing one's own internal self-definition to guide one's life and relations with others in the context of external

influence. Being good company for literally thousands of students, all of whom are on different journeys, is a complex challenge. My longitudinal study of young adults’ development has taught me a great deal about being good company for college students on their journey toward self-authorship. I share their wisdom here to help educators conceptualize what good company looks like.

In his book In over Our Heads, Robert Kegan describes self-

authorship as the capacity to author, or invent, one's own beliefs, values, sense of self, and relationships with others. Self-authorship encompasses the multitude of expectations educators have of college students. Educators strive to promote critical thinking, appreciation of diversity, and mature actions both on campus and beyond. Educators want students to acquire knowledge, learn how to analyze it, and learn the process of judging what to

believe themselves. Educators want students to appreciate diversity and engage in civil interactions. Educators want students to make wise choices about alcohol use and dating behavior. These are expectations for complex ways of constructing knowledge, one's identity, and one's relations with others that would make campus life healthier and prepare graduates for productive participation in adult society. Educators hope that students will integrate these ways

of knowing, being, and interacting with others into the capacity for self-authorship—the capacity to define their own beliefs, identity, and relationships internally.

Mark, one of the participants in my longitudinal study, captures the essence of self-authorship with this comparison:

You're in some sense a piece of clay. You've been formed into different things, but that doesn't mean you can't go back on the potter's wheel and instead of

somebody else's hands building and molding you, you use your own, and in a fundamental sense change your values and beliefs.

Going back on the potter's wheel, using your own hands to reshape values and beliefs, requires a substantive transformation—the shift from reliance on external authorities as the guiding force of knowledge and self-definition to an internal sense of self as the guiding force that grounds the construction of knowledge, self,

and relationships.

Unfortunately, Mark and his peers in the study did not experience this transformation during college. As I reported in Knowing and Reasoning in College, finding out what the authorities thought—a way of knowing I called “absolute”—absorbed most participants upon entrance to college. It wasn't long before most realized that authorities did not have all the answers. Participants became transitional knowers, adopting authorities’ views in

areas still believed to be certain and following authorities’ lead in areas believed to be uncertain. Most remained transitional knowers throughout college, continuing their reliance on external authority. A few participants adopted an independent way of knowing during their senior year, assuming that most knowledge was uncertain and that people chose to believe whatever they felt best. Only two of eighty participants adopted contextual knowing,

or viewing knowledge as relative to a context, and judged based on evaluation of relevant evidence. Participants in these latter two ways of knowing, despite having adopted assumptions about knowing consistent with self-authorship, had not developed the capacity to invent their own beliefs. Instead they joined their transitional counterparts in following external formulas for success. They followed curricula and cocurricular involvements they were told would lead to ideal

jobs. They accepted jobs their colleges and parents judged as desirable. They attended the graduate or professional schools that would net prestigious futures. Many felt pressure to follow the formula of marrying and having children after college. Thus participants left college having made little progress toward self-authorship—a circumstance that is typical, according to research on college student development by Patricia King and Karen Kitchener, described in their book

Developing Reflective Judgment.

Not achieving self-authorship made the journey into adulthood unnecessarily treacherous. Having become adept at functioning within the control of external influence, participants were now expected to manage external influence instead. In their work lives they were expected to function independent of authority, make mature decisions in complex contexts, and effectively negotiate among competing interests. In their personal lives relationships

built on meeting others’ needs became contexts for balancing their own and others’ needs. Having to structure one's own life, or as one participant put it, no longer having a syllabus to tell you what to do, led to the awareness of the need for self-authorship. I called this phase of the journey the “cross-roads”—the place where participants recognized that they needed to shift from external to internal authority but were unsure how to do so and afraid of the costs involved.

Incongruence between externally driven career choices and their values led to financially draining career changes. Incompatibility of their values and relationships led to difficult renegotiations or divorce. Struggles to achieve internal authority led to seeking professional therapy. It was not until the mid- to late twenties that my participants were able to return to the potter's wheel and become the authors of their own lives. Doing so moved their voices to the forefront to guide their

relations with others, making possible mature relationships in which all parties’ needs are considered. Because young adults are expected to function independently in important positions in society and participate in mature relationships with partners and children soon after college, it is crucial that colleges promote this transformation during college. Like the rider on the bicycle trek, my longitudinal participants are likely to recover from their

injuries; yet avoiding the injuries is a more responsible approach.

The stories of my longitudinal participants in the ten years after college reveal why self-authorship was not achieved during college and how it was promoted after college. Together these two insights illustrate how college educators can be good company for the journey toward self-authorship. A primary reason self-authorship remained elusive during college was the lack of emphasis on developing an

internal sense of self. Students learned disciplinary content and processes for thinking about it and applying it. It was not until after college, however, that their employers and graduate educators stressed that their thinking, knowing, and applying their perspectives to their work all hinged on their internal values and how they defined themselves. The crucial role of adults in providing guidance and good company while participants construct internal definitions is evident in the

postcollege stories that are shared further on in this article. Inviting the self into the educational process requires moving away from the traditional forms of teaching and control-oriented forms of organizing student life that prevail on many campuses. Being good company for journeys toward self-authorship requires new roles for educators and learners.

Good Company: Creating the Conditions to Promote Self-Authorship

PARTICIPANTS occupied diverse contexts during their twenties. Many pursued graduate or professional education in varied disciplines and types of insti-tutions. Their employment settings included business, human services, education, and government. Leadership roles, volunteer work, and family responsibilities also framed their lives in unique ways. Analyzing the influence of these multiple contexts on participants’ journeys toward self-authorship yielded a

framework of the conditions necessary for promoting self-authorship. Despite diversity across contexts, environments that promoted self-authorship consistently operated on three key assumptions. The environmental characteristics stemming from these assumptions modeled the expectation for self-authorship.

First, these environments conveyed that knowledge is complex and socially constructed. In course assignments, job responsibilities, or volunteer roles, participants were faced with multiple interpretations, ambiguity, and the need to negotiate what to believe with others. Andrew reported encountering this assumption in graduate school:

responsibilities, or volunteer roles, participants were faced with multiple interpretations, ambiguity, and the need to negotiate what to believe with others. Andrew reported encountering this assumption in graduate school:

Something that added a lot was dealing with the different cultures and the people from different countries and backgrounds … with different opinions. A lot of things we're taught in business are from an American perspective. Well, that's not necessarily the best and most correct way. In fact, at least in the manufacturing environment, we're getting our rear ends kicked. The Japanese have a much better approach that seems to be working. They challenged a lot of what we took

as standard. They even argued with some of the financial theories, which supposedly aren't one of the things that you debate. But it was really good. We had people from communist countries that just had a very different perspective. And a lot of what they said made sense from the type of situations they were dealing with.

Andrew's professors encouraged this debate, emphasizing the importance of students developing reasoned perspectives and belief systems. Like Robert, they offered their expertise but acknowledged that learners’ multiple perspectives contributed to understanding complexity. This complexity modeled the epistemological growth— development of the capacity to wisely choose from among multiple alternatives—needed for self-authorship.

Framing knowledge as complex and socially constructed gave rise to the second assumption—that self is central to knowledge construction. Just as Robert encouraged us to bring our own perspectives to the bicycle trek, participants were encouraged to bring themselves into their learning, work, and relationships. Alice's master's program emphasized choosing counseling styles compatible with one's personal philosophy and using that philosophy to guide

interactions with clients. Alice described it like this:

The hands-on experience through my internship has made me realize nobody else is in this room with me when I'm doing this counseling session. And so, for me to be clear on these issues, I need to figure them out for myself. Not to say that I'm ever going to figure them out, but to know where I stand on them and to think them through. It's you and your client sitting there. I feel like if I'm not sure where I stand or I'm not clear on

what the issues are and what the arguments are both ways and process that myself, then I don't see how I can be of any help at all to this client. So I think that's really encouraged me to do that.

Environments that encouraged participants to define themselves and bring this to their way of being in the world modeled the intrapersonal growth, the internal sense of self, needed for self-authorship. Examples of self as central to knowledge construction existed across contexts, from writing legal depositions to making complex business decisions.

writing legal depositions to making complex business decisions.

The third assumption—that authority and expertise are shared in the mutual construction of knowledge among peers—created environments in which participants were invited to actively share expertise. Robert modeled this assumption in sharing his expertise while inviting us to use our collective expertise. Ned found this assumption central to his work selling chemicals for

paper machines. Ned needed to share authority with his boss and with numerous others:

There are a hundred different people analyzing it from their perspective. So you've got the guy running the machine, who has no education but he's been there for 35 years and he knows this machine and he's thinking, “Don't some college boy come tell me how to run this thing.” And then you've got the mill manager, who's been to 49 other mills and probably is not aware

of the specific details of how his mill runs. And then you've got the process engineer, who is intimately familiar with his piece of the pie, but not the big picture. So I have to assimilate all that data and kind of filter it. You've got to have the right filter on when you're talking to the specific person.

To succeed, Ned needed to construct knowledge with diverse people, integrate perspectives, and arrive at sound decisions. The invitation, and necessity, to

participate as equal partners in this mutual construction modeled the interpersonal growth, or development of the ability to function interdependently with others, needed for self-authorship. These three assumptions were tightly linked in environments that were most effective in promoting self-authorship.

These three assumptions were usually not explicitly stated. They were instead enacted through the approach educators, employers, or

other adults took to interacting with the longitudinal participants. This approach parallels and extends three principles for educational practice that I initially identified from college experiences that aided students’ intellectual development (which I reported in Knowing and Reasoning in College). These three principles were further supported by an observation study I conducted (reported in Creating Contexts for Learning and Self-Authorship) in which their use in

college courses promoted students’ intellectual development. Stories of participants in their twenties provide further evidence that these three principles help educators across settings join learners at their current developmental place in the journey and promote movement toward self-authorship. Thus they translate the three assumptions into educational practice.

The first principle, validating learners’ capacity to know, was evident in employers’ soliciting employees’ perspectives and trusting their judgments as well as in educators’ interest in learners’ experiences and respect for their beliefs. Sandra, a social worker, experienced this validation from her supervisor:

[My supervisor] was terrific. He built my confidence; he trusted me, never second-guessed me.

He forced me to explain my rea-sons. That trained me to do this for myself. I had to think about it, so I got better at it. I knew he would ask. He trained me to do it on my own; thus I made better decisions. He had confidence in me, so I did too. It was a precious gift.

This validation invited participants into the knowledge construction process, conveyed that their ideas were welcome, and offered respect that boosted their confidence in themselves.

The second principle, situating learning in learners’ experience, was evident in educational and employment settings that used participants’ existing knowledge and experience as the basis for continued learning and decision making. Kelly's graduate education courses modeled this principle:

The professors use more of our knowledge. The feeling that I get from the professors is that they accept me as a professional.

They expect me to come to the class with all this knowledge. And they're going to take that knowledge and expand on a part of it and make me see a different avenue of a part of my knowledge. Like just last night, he was pulling things out of each one of us differently and actually tying it all together to make us see a point. And it's nice to be treated like I've got knowledge…. It makes me feel more confident. The respect that I feel from the professors makes me more comfortable to maybe go

out on a limb and say something that I might not be so sure of. Their respect helps me to get more out of the class.

Participants perceived the use of their current knowledge and experience as a sign of respect; it simultaneously gave them a foundation for enhancing their learning or work.

The third principle, mutually constructing meaning, involved educators or employers connecting their knowledge to

that of the participants to arrive at more complex understandings and decisions. Gavin described how his boss used this assumption to help Gavin learn to think for himself:

It's really nice to know that I can just say, “Mr. Smith, I'm having trouble with—I don't understand this.” He doesn't always give me the answer. A lot of times he'll throw back questions like, “Well, what do you think about it?” He always tries to get you to answer it yourself. And if he feels differently, he'll tell you. I'm still

kind of nervous just because I feel like what I'm asking him is going to be stupid or silly. But he never makes you feel bad. His method of getting people to learn is he always thinks that if you're a bright enough person you really do know the answer or it's easy enough for you to find out. If we disagree, then he says, “Well, if that's the way you see it, do it your way and if it works out let me know.” … It gives me the impression that if my mindset is that I'm going to do it my way,

I can do it that way. If it doesn't work, I'll tell him. And a lot of times he'll say, “Well, you'll feel a lot better with yourself because you tried it.” So it's a very, very relaxed atmosphere with very, very professional people. They just know how to—it's like they're being a mentor. It's neat.

Gavin's boss used numerous forms of mutual construction. He helped Gavin reflect on his own ideas and expertise to think his work through. When Gavin needed help, his boss provided it without

making Gavin feel incompetent. When Gavin wanted to try something a different way, his boss supported trying it even if he disagreed. Even when Gavin did make mistakes, his boss still encouraged him to try out his own thinking in order to feel better about himself. Mutual construction welcomed participants as equal participants in knowledge construction, helped them clarify their own perspectives, and helped them learn how to negotiate with

others.

These three principles helped promote self-authorship by modeling it and providing participants the kind of support they needed to shift from external to internal self-definition. Because participants were at varying places along the journey, the company they needed varied accordingly. Situating learning in learners’ experience and mutual construction of meaning helped educators and employers connect to and stay in tune with

participants’ development. Mutual construction helped educators and employers understand participants’ journeys, an important part of being good company.

Good Company: Educators'Transformation

THE FRAMEWORK of the three assumptions and three principles for being good company requires new roles for college educators and learners and a new relationship between the two.

The journey toward self-authorship revealed how three dimensions of development— how we know or decide what to believe, how we view ourselves, and how we construct relationships with others—were intertwined. How we know or decide what to believe, or the epistemological dimension, is often the primary focus of college and usually the purview of academic affairs. How we construct relationships with others, or the interpersonal

dimension, is often viewed as the purview of student affairs and is generally focused on students’ getting along in community settings. How we view ourselves, or the intrapersonal dimension, is viewed as important but is not the central focus of academic or student affairs. Participants’ journeys through their twenties showed that self-authorship requires growth in all three dimensions. Adopting contextual assumptions about how to know (via evaluation of evidence and

choosing the best knowledge claims) was insufficient for self-authorship because participants lacked an internal sense of self, or identity, from which to choose what to believe. This intrapersonal dynamic also meant a shortcoming in the interpersonal arena; participants’ constructed relationships with others to please others, with insufficient regard for their own needs. Without an internal sense of self, participants’ beliefs, identity, and relationships were defined by others. Good

company during their twenties helped participants make the shift to internal self-definition from which negotiation with others to form mutual relationships was possible, opening the way for self-authorship in all three dimensions of their development. The crucial role of the intrapersonal dimension for self-authorship requires that educators take up this dimension as a primary focus.

The framework calls for a mutual partnership between educator and learner characterized by mutual respect and active exchange of perspectives.

The educator role in this partnership focuses on introducing the complexity of learning or work, inviting learners to bring their sense of self to learning or work, teaching learners how to work through complexity, affording learners autonomy, and respecting learners as adults. The learner role in this partnership involves active engagement in learning or work, taking initiative and responsibility for one's learning or actions, reflecting on one's sense of self,

and participating in the mutual construction of meaning. A mutual respect between educator and learner would enable meaningful exchanges that keep learning connected to learners’ progress on the journey toward self-authorship. The brief quotes provided here, as well as the extensive narratives I include in Making Their Own Way, convey the nature of these new roles and relationships.

Constructing this partnership in the curriculum and cocurriculum is crucial to promoting self-authorship during college.

Pedagogy using this framework emphasizes the uncertain nature of knowledge and the role of learners in deciding what to believe. Readings and class discussions introduce multiple perspectives and controversy. Class activities and assignments help learners analyze multiple perspectives and practice judging their validity. Instructors model establishing and defending their own positions, showing students how to develop frameworks for authoring their own views. Class

discussion focuses on bringing students’ views into the dialogue and giving them opportunities to practice using existing knowledge to refine their perspectives. Assignments emphasize articulating and defending one's view and refining one's belief systems. Involving students in decisions about class organization, assignments, and evaluation practices is another way to challenge reliance on external authority.

Promoting self-authorship in the curriculum is essential yet insufficient. Cocurricular efforts, arenas where students more naturally see their sense of self as central, must also offer good company for the journey. Career and academic advising are arenas in which educators guide students in decision making and are therefore ideal grounds for promoting self-authorship. Envisioning the advising relationship as a mutual partnership means that both

parties take an active role. Rather than telling students what courses to take or what careers are best, advisers introduce students to the complexity of academic and career options. Advisers help students navigate this complexity with tools for exploration and structures for decision making. They emphasize the importance of exploring one's own values to guide these choices, and they help students work with the pressure of external forces on their decisions. This adviser role gives

students meaningful responsibility for exploring and making academic and career choices. The active role for students is engaging in self-reflection, constructing internal values and beliefs, exploring reasonable options, managing external influences, and making their own decisions. This same role works in student leadership positions, campus employment, living arrangements, and student organizations (in Making Their Own Way I provide an extensive

discussion of mutual partnerships in these contexts).

Colleges must offer a new kind of partnership to prepare graduates more effectively for the self-authorship demanded by contemporary society. Encouraging learners to “control their own bicycles,” educators could offer guidance, advice, and intervention, as appropriate, yet still allow the learners to take the lead in directing and managing the journey. Experience in mutual partnerships also enhances

learners’ ability to construct mutual relationships, a crucial component of effective participation in adult community life. Mutual partnerships mean giving learners more control and responsibility for their journeys and lives. They mean reducing external control and enhancing internal self-authorship. Transforming higher education in this way makes it possible for learners to navigate the crossroads during college instead of finding them on the horizon

after graduation.

Notes

Baxter Magolda M. B. Knowing and Reasoning in College: Gender-Related Patterns in Students’ Intellectual Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.

Baxter Magolda M. B. Creating Contexts for Learning and Self-Authorship: Constructive-Developmental Pedagogy. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999.

Baxter Magolda M. B. Making Their Own Way: Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to Promote Self-Development. Sterling, Va.: Stylus, 2001.

Kegan R. In over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.

King P. M., and Kitchener K. S. Developing Reflective Judgment: Understanding and Promoting Intellectual Growth and Critical Thinking in Adolescents and

Adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.

This article is adapted from M. B. Baxter Magolda, Making Their Own Way: Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to Promote Self-Development (Sterling, Va.: Stylus, 2001).

One of the first things you should notice, in the CCC Submission Guidelines, is a slightly realigned scope for the mission of CCC.

The editorial staff of College Composition and Communication (CCC) invites submission of a wide and vibrant range of scholarship focused on writing, composition, rhetoric, and literacy as it intersects with investigating the agency, power, and potential of diverse communicators inside and outside of .

postsecondary classrooms. Like the mission of CCCC itself, scholarship published in CCC should reflect broad and evolving definitions of literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing (including multimodal discourse, digital communication, diverse language practices, and non-alphabetic practices of meaning-making) that emphasize the value of these activities to empower individuals and communities.

This brings the mission of the journal into alignment with the mission of CCCC as an organization and also embraces the CCCC 2020 Strategic Vision. This is a shift that many of you asked about in our conversations over the past year as you’ve shared with me your ideas and hopes for where CCC could go next.

In general, I’m approaching the next years of my editorial work with a set of questions:

What can be done to make space for more varied and diverse scholars and scholarship in CCC?

How can we create a publishing space that is exciting and engaging to the widest possible group of scholars in rhetoric and writing studies?

How can we create spaces for conversation around the newest and most pressing scholarly issues— both in our print pages and through our online presence?

In short, how can we ensure

that CCC remains relevant to scholars and teachers engaged in emerging fields, practices, and pedagogies as well as engaged in conversation with more established, longstanding fields, practices, pedagogies?

I see CCC as a space where all of the scholars in our discipline—from the most respected of the old-timers to the most challenging of the newtimers— should be able to publish, converse, engage, and move us forward together. In order to

ensure that the formal structures and editorial mechanisms of the journal don’t replicate the kinds of institutional barriers that many of us face, we’ll be bringing some equity practices to bear. For example, I’ll be bringing some of the mentoring-focused editorial practices we developed for constellations: a cultural rhetorics publishing space to my work as CCC editor, especially when the content of a piece seems especially important for CCC readers and CCCC members.

We’ll also continue some of the current features of the journal (symposia, interchanges, podcasts, book review essays), go back to hosting special issues with guest editors, add short-form book reviews (500–1,000 words), and, hopefully, build a sharing space on the CCCC website for taking up of-the-moment issues that impact all of our practices.

But this means I’ll need help from you, dear colleagues. I need your

engagement, and I need your ideas. Have a great idea for a symposium? Think there’s a need for a special issue on a particular topic or practice? Have something you want to say in response to a piece we’ve published? Send me an e-mail—let’s talk about your ideas! I want to make sure that I attend to what you think are the most pressing, relevant, or paradigm-shifting issues and scholarship in our discipline. Please take my encouragement here as genuine.

Also, a word about these introductions. This the first of only two introductions that I plan to write. In short, I’d rather spend the pages on your excellent and innovative work and words than on my clumsy attempts to summarize it. This is a print journal, and pages cost money—better to spend the money on sharing your scholarship, eh?

Finally, you’ll notice I say “we” a lot when making reference to editorial practices. Editing a journal is a communal,

collaborative practice. Academic journals, especially, depend on huge amounts of unseen labor. I want to express thanks to Kurt Austin (NCTE Publications Director) and Rona Smith (NCTE Production Editor), who have answered every one of the hundreds of questions I’ve had this year with patience and professional care, and to my outstanding editorial assistant, Tania de Sostoa-McCue, who puts up with my work habits and capably manages the dozens of

different tasks that make up our editorial process. Special thanks as well to Jonathan Alexander, whose advice and assistance have been invaluable. I also want to thank the Editorial Board, our deeply generous group of reviewers, and our patient authors. I’m grateful for all of you and the commitment you’ve made to CCC and to the discipline. There’s been a sharp learning curve to get to this particular moment, but we’re getting there, and we’ll keep getting better.

Thanks,

Malea Powell
Michigan State University

this issue that anticipates the kind of introduction we'll see in forthcoming issues. And throughout this editor's column, I hope it's apparent how pleased, humbled, honored, and excited I am to have this opportunity to work with all of you and to serve our profession.

Hats Off to Deb Holdstein

Past may not always be prologue, but an editor's vision for a journal needs to be grounded in the present, in both observation and

assessment of the current situation. College Composition and Communication ( CCC), the flagship journal of the field, continues to bring rhetoric and composition together through separate articles, through dialogue between them, and through a collective representation over time. Although at approximately 10 percent, acceptance rates are too low given the good work in the field, they are nonetheless useful in supporting colleagues' cases

for tenure and promotion. Articles like Richard Fulkerson's "Composition at the Turn of the 21st Century;• A. Suresh Canajarajah's "The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued;' and Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle's "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions" (as well as the multiple responses to this article) provoke controversies healthy for the field and necessary for its progress. As editor, Deb

Holdstein guided these efforts.

But, of course, she did more. The Symposium, a feature Deb introduced, has enabled a multi-article examination of a topic; topics have ranged from the work ofWPAs to the ways that assessment shapes (and misshapes) our students' writing ideas, practices, and opportunities. The new feature Re-Visions has allowed us to re-visit canonical pieces in light of current understandings, a particularly important

undertaking given the maturing of the field. Collaborating with Collin Brook on CCC Online, she has assisted with the delivery of what we might think of as an extension of and complement to print College Composition and Communication, including an archive of issues dating back to the 1980s; a search engine, complete with a "reverse" bibliographic tool; and additional, complementary material (including videos and other electronic texts) connected

to articles published in the print version.

Editors have what we might call editorial signatures; collectively, these new features together with Deb's diligence and attention have created a signature I feel fortunate to inherit. This signature, of course, has been her gift to the profession, and we thank her.

The Next Five Years

During the next five years, I'll continue the practice of

publishing excellent articles and, rather than single-book reviews, review essays. CCC will not, however, continue the practice of hybrid publication. If and when page limits permit, I hope to publish Symposia and Re-Visions.

In addition, we will see five changes during my editorial tenure:

First, CCC will provide a consistent focus on topics connected to rhetoric and

composition's disciplinary status. Perhaps as never before in our brief history, we are being perceived as a discipline both inside and outside the field, and this perception is crucial to our future. It enables us to exercise appropriate authority over writing courses and programs; to initiate and expand graduate programming; to offer a major either inside or outside of an English department; to create our own departments; and indeed even to participate in cross-

disciplinary efforts.

Including articles that support our disciplinary efforts-for instance, articles outlining majors in rhetoric and composition; articles looking across and synthesizing multiple approaches toward or lenses fram- ing rhetoric, composition, and rhet/comp and comp/rhet; and articles grounded in multiple contexts, with such articles followed by "Interchange" responses as invented by Joe Harris during his editorship-will

be a primary goal of my editorship.

Second, CCC will include more articles reporting on research. A distinguishing feature of a discipline is its research activity. Currently, as indicated by the CCCC program as well as by other efforts-the CCCC research initiatives, for example, and research as either the central focus or a major focus of other conferences and institutes-research activity in the field seems to be enjoying a

resurgence. The pages of CCC will support an emphasis on research, in part by assuring that at least one research article appears in each issue; included in this article will be some attention to methodological issues. As important, I'll use the editor's column as a space for commentary on research, for a two-fold effect: first, each article will be glossed as research; and second, the gloss will include references to the earlier research articles such that they are

"threaded" over time as a series. Accordingly, included in the commentary will be connections across studies located in various methodologies (e.g., qualitative, quantitative) and in different frameworks ( e.g., developmental; activity theory). The commentary will thus provide a kind of cross-referencing of studies with different methodologies and different frameworks for a fuller, more synthetic rendering of research in the field. Put differently, this threading will act

to connect kinds of research, results of research, methodological considerations, and implications of these considerations for the field.

Third, each year, one special issue of CCC will include a defined focus. Earlier in the history of the field, special topics issues of CCC played a critical role in defining the field at that historical moment and in moving the field forward. In 1963, for example, the October CCC issue addressing rhetoric put a new

face on the field; some thirty years later, Joe Harris focused two issues on CCCC's fiftieth anniversary with the theme of the Usable Past. We'll begin with the sixtieth anniversary of the journal, in 2010, with the special issue Toward the Future of Rhetoric and Composition. As you probably know, we issued a call for this issue in the spring of 2009; we were gratified to receive ninety-three proposals. Working with two review teams, we selected eight articles to

constitute the issue, and to complete it, I invited a review essay; this issue is currently in press. In the fall of 2009, we issued a call for the second special issue, for September 2011, addressing Indigenous and Ethnic Rhetorics: proposals for that issue will be under review by the time you read this. Other potential CCC special issues under consideration include the relationship between two-and four-year composition classes, programs, and majors as well as

ways to connect the major in both sites; the role of digital technologies and Web 2.0 in shaping composition and its teaching; rhetoric/composition and civic literacy; literacy development outside of schooling contexts, both historical and contemporary; ways to take rhetoric and composition public; and new ways we serve students and their composing development. I welcome your responses and additional ideas for these special issues:

kyancey@fsu.edu

Fourth, CCC will include in each issue a ''Poster Page" intended for our various publics-students, colleagues, administrators, and the public at large. I'm not the first to note that we don't connect with the pub- lic as we might, and a quick glance at other organizations-from the American Mathematical Association to the American Medical Association- demonstrates how we might go about this. More specifically, in introducing this new feature, I'm

borrowing from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which is published weekly. In each issue, JAMA includes on its last page a poster on a medical concept, from pancreatitis to the consequences of smoking on the circulatory system, each concept described verbally and illustrated visually. The purpose of the poster is twofold. First, it provides a text for talk among doctors and patients so that in their explanations physicians have at

hand a working definition as well as sources for additional information. Second, the page is used to educate patients, their advocates, and their loved ones as well as the public at large in an easily accessible way. As educators, we have as a purpose teaching, and as educators in the twenty-first century, we increasingly have as a purpose connecting to the public at large so that they understand both what composing is not-a synonym for grammar or syntax,

or the product of reading-as well as what writing is: an exercise in rhetorical situation using the affordances of a particular medium to speak with confidence and appropriate authority to a given audience on a specific topic. The purpose of this CCC Poster Page, then, is to provide a text for talk that we can use with students, of course, but also with colleagues, administrators, and the public at large. It's a page suitable for posting and for duplication (as ad copy often

proclaims), and to facilitate that distribution it will also appear in PDF form on the CCC website.

A good question, of course, is, "What are the key concepts we need to explain?" For some, an obvious choice might be process; for oth- ers, genre; for others, digital technology or media; and for still others audience{s); discourse community; rhetorical knowledge or awareness; reflection; and/ or revision-although these hardly exhaust the possibilities. Framing the

question differently, we might ask, "If we had only twenty terms to distribute over the next five years, what terms would we choose, how would we sequence them during this time, and according to what logic?" And a concluding good question is how each concept might be defined and illustrated, and what helpful resources we might identify. To help answer these questions, I asked eleven of our colleagues for help, and they have developed a preliminary list of terms and

expressions. You'll see the first of these here, at the back of the issue: rhetorical situation. And for their good work, I'm grateful to Jonathan Alexander, Amy Devitt, Heidi Estrem, Catherine Hobbs, Sue Hum, Irwin Weiser, Paul Matsuda, Joyce Middleton, Cindy Selfe, Kip Strasma, and Howard Tinberg.

As you might expect, I'm looking for evidence of how you have used the Poster Pages and to what effect. Did one help with a student in a writing center, and if

so, how? Were you able to use another in talking to a high school teacher colleague about college composition practices? When a colleague (skeptically) asked you about genre, could you share the page for a different kind of discussion? What contribution did it make? Please do let me know as you can.

Fifth, CCC will increasingly be connected to CCC Online-both will provide space for scholarly contributions and dialogue-and to other electronic venues. One of

the current issues surrounding scholarly

publishing (and for that matter, other publishing) is the relationship between print versions of journals and what we might call their online counterparts. Not so long ago, these counterparts were called mirror sites, their purpose basically to do as the name suggests: mirror the so-called content of the print version, often in reduced form ( e.g., an abstract of an article).

From the beginning of CCC Online, however, under the leadership of Todd Taylor through the second iteration developed by Collin Brooke, we've seen more than a mirror. That tradition continues as Bump Halbritter assumes the editorship of CCC Online. Together, CCC Online and CCC will provide scholars with new spaces to publish; readers with new places to learn; and students with new materials, including research data, to study and to re-interpret.

More specifically, as Bump Halbritter described his vision to me this week:

The new CCC Online will be a virtual space where members of our community may submit and access both the peer-reviewed texts familiar to CCCs readers and the peer-reviewed multimedia texts that will help shape the direction of rhetoric and composition research and pedagogy in the 21st century. The new CCC Online promises to be a place where scholarship happens:

where scholars access peerreviewed works and where scholars access each other-a place where the members of our field may exchange multi-mediated texts and data to support the new work of rhetoric and composition. The new CCC Online is seeking submissions for

• individual works of multimediated scholarship: works that cannot be mediated solely in traditional print because they depend on audio-visual elements that don't "stick" to

paper;

• proposals for special issues that collect multimediated texts dealing with topics of scholarly concern within the field: such as remix and intellectual property or comics and animation; and

• proposals to make research data, such as audio-visual interviews, available to other researchers in our field.

Bump can be reached at drbump@msu.edu.

CCC will link to other online spaces as well: one of those is the webinar. For our inaugural webinar, we'll feature Cindy Selfe and Doug Hesse extending the conversation they've begun in the Interchange Section of this issue, a conversation they hope to have with you as much as with each other. So please plan to participate in our CCCWebinar on Thursday, March 4, at 4 pm EST. Directions will be available on the CCC website: www.ncte.org/cccc/ccc. As is no

doubt self-evident, my ideas for change build on successful earlier CCC practices as well as on the editorial and composing practices of othersboth in the field and in the public. The intent is to build these practices into a new model of publication, including print and e-spaces in dialogue with each other, the intent also always to provide for capacious, insightful, inclusive, and transparent scholarly activity, activity that collectively continues to define and distinguish our

curricula and pedagogy, our scholarship, and our discipline.

The Current Issue

The current issue is especially rich in material and genres: it includes six articles; two addresses; a review essay; and a set of Interchanges. And while the topics of the articles vary, they seem to share one theme at least: composing as rhetorical education.

Coauthored by Deborah Balzhiser and Susan H. McLeod, the first

article, "The Undergraduate Writing Major: What Is It? What Should It Be?" provides an in-depth description and discussion of the major in rhetoric and composition, itself a comprehensive undergraduate site for rhetorical education. Historically, we haven't focused as we might on gathering our own data so that we can speak with authority about our programs and majors; such gathering is what we see modeled here. As important, Balzhiser and McLeod

raise a series of questions about the major that I hope we will consider as the major expands and develops.

Also focusing on composing inside the academy, "The Ruse of Clarity:' composed by Ian Barnard, points out, first, how our call for clarity is often at odds with the needs of a given discourse and, second, how calling for clarity is itself an ideological act at odds with larger goals many of us share. In outlining this "ruse: Barnard

implicitly also raises good questions about the role that clarity plays in classrooms and programs. In "Rhetorical Numbers: A Case for Quantitative Writing in the Composition Classroom:' Joanna Wolfe also focuses on composition, in her case arguing that if our rhetorical education is to be complete, it needs to include numerical evidence as part of its educational portfolio. In addition, Wolfe argues that we need to attend to this component of rhetorical education in both our undergraduate classes and our TA development programs.

education in both our undergraduate classes and our TA development programs.

In the next article, "Emergent Strategies for an Established Field: The Role of Worker-Writer Collectives in Composition and Rhetoric;' Steve Parks and Nick Pollard outline a composition nested at the intersection of inside school and outside school, showing that for class-based change to occur, an experiential component is essential. "Composing Women's Civic

Identities during the Progressive Era: College Commencement Addresses as Overlooked Rhetorical Sites;• authored by Susan Bordelon, also exists at the interface of inside school and outside as she takes us back to the turn of the last century and to the occasion of the commencement address, which genre functions as a primary site of rhetorical education for women. Although their focus is on sites of rhetorical education separated by a hundred years,

these articles sound a common theme: that the interface between academic literacy and public literacy may be the most powerful site for change, especially for change connected to social justice.

Our last article, "The State of WAC/WID in 2010: Methods and Results of the U.S. Survey of the International WAC/WID Mapping Project;' provides a review of the status of U.S. WAC and WID programs. Here, much like Balzhiser and McLeod, Chris Thaiss and Tara Porter interpret the data, in this case on writing across the curriculum programs so that we have a more complete understanding of their status. And much as Wolfe recommends, Thaiss and Porter's research helps us see what we have to build on and how to go forward.

Thaiss and Tara Porter interpret the data, in this case on writing across the curriculum programs so that we have a more complete understanding of their status. And much as Wolfe recommends, Thaiss and Porter's research helps us see what we have to build on and how to go forward.

We also have two addresses in this issue. The first, of course, will be remembered by those in the audience in San Francisco: in it, Chuck Bazerman casts a wide historical and philosophical

sweep as he both explores and defines the 2009 Chair's Address, "The Wonder of Writing:• And in the next address, Victor Villanueva thanks CCCC for his Exemplar Award, he too providing a historical sweep, this one located in the history of CCCC as he has lived it.

Our final set of texts will compel your reading as well. In ''Activity Systems, Genre, and Research on Writing Across the Curriculum;' Vicki Tolar Burton provides us with a review of the many recent

releases testifying to the ways that WAC continues to thrive. In Interchanges, Doug Hesse and Cindy Selfe continue a conversation that Cindy began in the June 2009 issue of CCC with her "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing:' Together, Hesse and Selfe consider what limits, if any, composition entails, a question central to the field, and one they hope to discuss with you, as indicated previously, in the

March webinar. Chuck Bazerman then speaks to the health of CCCC in the Chair's Report, and we conclude with our first CCC Poster Page.

The research we see in this issue, then, takes several forms, though we might categorize them differentially: programmatic and historical; empirical and textual; compositional and rhetorical. I'll look forward to thinking with you about what these differences in research might mean in the next issue of CCC.

A Final Word of Thanks

I would be remiss not to thank the many who have helped with this editorial transition. From the beginning of the process of application for the CCCC editorship to the now-routine practical workings of editing, the support-indeed, enthusiasm-of Florida State University's English Department, as well as my departmental and rhetoric and comp colleagues-both faculty and studentshas been invaluable. During the spring of 2009, I had

assistance from two CCC Editorial Assistants, Ruth Kistler and Kara Taczak, who helped me set up systems, communicate with authors, and prepare the first special issue. Kara continues in this capacity; her organizational skill provides a model for me to emulate. The CCCC Officers were supportive in all ways, and they continue to provide advice, as have the new members of the CCC Editorial Board; the Editorial Board was pressed into service early on,

and has raised good questions and supplied wise counsel.

Not least, I thank all of you-who through your reading of the pages within bring this journal alive.

Kathleen Blake Yancey
Florida State University

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