Educators of graduate students of English who are simultaneously teaching undergraduate composition courses should focus on how the study of institutional history might shed light on contemporary praxis. The Cultural and Critical Studies Ph.D. Program in the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) English Department combines an innovative approach to theoretically aware and historically based advanced work in English Studies with a comprehensive teacher-training program. Seminar work connects teaching and theory, disciplinary history and current practices, cultural studies and composition. Within a cultural studies context, the required two-semester teaching seminars taken by all first-time composition teachers are designed to help them compose their stances as teachers. These seminars focus on intensive reading of, followed by written assignments about, important historical texts concerning the "social mission" of English teachers. Students must reflect on their pedagogical goals, assignments, and philosophies of education. Extensive quotes from three papers by different students show that a range of positions results from these assignments. These texts represent teachers in the process of constructing and revising self-conscious positions about teaching composition within the structures of the contemporary department and university, as well as reflect diverse readings of institutional history. A shift in the paradigm of graduate training, as exemplified by the University of Pittsburgh's program, constitutes an important and progressive aspect of a cultural studies curriculum in English graduate education. (HB)