Throughout much of the 20th century, English departments were the crown jewels of the humanities. Exposure to great literature was often considered essential for students expected to assume lead roles in business, law, government, and society. Today, English departments have lost their position at the center of the American university. Enrollments…

Many teachers have known of (or been members of) departments in which all of the potentially successful chairs--after having proven themselves by running subunits or graduate programs--have decided to devote themselves solely to research or teaching, and to leave department administration to whoever is willing to do it or whoever can be talked…

This essay provides an account of The Ohio State University's (OSU) rhetoric department during the tenure of Joseph Villiers Denney, arguing that he appropriated and repurposed national trends in education and rhetoric in ways that complicate the narrative of rhetoric and composition's decline in the late nineteenth century. In this essay, the…

This essay offers a history of a basic writing course that began at a public ivy campus in the 1970s. Relying on principles of universal design and on insights derived from his school's studio program about ways the institution's selective functions can impact curricular matters, the author describes how the basic writing course was merely…