An open letter by the President of the National Council of Teachers of English. (SW)

A paper presented at convention of National Council of Teachers of English (Washington, D.C., November 28, 1969) and a shortened version of the final chapter of With Respect to Readers." (Author/RD)

Offers an English teacher's observations about an international conference held in Sydney, Australia, with particular emphasis on George Orwell's "1984" and his views on language, multiculturalism, and humanism and on George Steiner's "Language and Silence." (RL)

Presents detailed information about school English, a functional variety that has influenced twentieth-century American vernaculars and the writings of most Americans. Sets school English in its nineteenth-century context and comments on factors that have favored its survival. Comments briefly on the Black English case in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (RL)

Describes a course in comparative North/South American literature as a model of one approach to broadening students' ethnic and cultural viewpoints. (DD)

A review of available textbooks and other resources dealing with neo-classical invention, prewriting, tagmemic invention and linguistic theory, the dramatistic method, and invention in speech communication. (DD)

Argues that issues of generic hybridity embody multicultural literature while promoting another kind of multiculturalism that reflects the current debates about literary canons in general and the field of American literature in particular. Considers how a reading of texts that relies on all of their component parts allows literature to perform a…

Offers a critical examination of what benefits may be expected to accrue both for the field of English and for teaching and scholarship now that certain critical approaches, such as feminism, deconstruction, and new historicism, have made their indelible mark. Questions the virtue in the field's direction toward ever-expanding disciplinary…

Discusses the ongoing debate about the role of literature in the freshman composition course. Claims that teachers of these courses individually determine the nature of each course. Shows that, for many decades, literature has not retained a secure place in freshman composition courses. (HB)

Discusses the debate about the use of literary works in freshman composition courses. Calls for more extensive research into the period of the 1950s and 1960s, with particular attention to the changes in composition instruction and the loss of literature from that curriculum. (HB)

Argues that Toni Morrison's fiction encourages the reexamination of the relationship between the narrative structures of oral storytelling and those of the modern novel. Demonstrates how Morrison creatively draws on oral and literate language and memory. (HB)

Suggests that, if politics matters to any field, it should matter to composition instruction, which faces the crisis of postmodernity along with other disciplines. Considers how a truly common knowledge might be pursued and its possible relevance for the field of composition studies. (HB)

Focuses on the homoerotic elements of Herman Melville's novel, "Billy Budd." Describes how these controversial elements were taught in a college literature course. (HB)

Narrates the experience of one graduate student in English at two universities as she prepared for a career teaching composition and literature. Describes the student's experiences as a religious conversion to a proscribed world view. Argues that graduate education should foster critical evaluation rather than dogma. (HB)

Discusses the poststructural impulse to displace authority over texts and their meanings from the author. Questions whether poststructuralists practice an anti-intentionalist impersonalism regarding their own writings. Describes the reactions of Jacques Derrida to readings of his own work by other critics. (HB)