Urges the Association of Departments of English (ADE) to issue position statements on promotion and tenure, on teaching composition, and on becoming more active politically. (AEA)

Concludes that the humanities cannot be reduced to the teaching of specific, depersonalized skills (such as editing) and that they must maintain the link between reading and writing. (AEA)

Summarizes the current state of the English curriculum and calls for a renewed emphasis on rhetoric and student writing for its own sake. (HTH)

Relates the declining literacy among college students to institutional factors and traditions in English departments which devalue undergraduate composition instruction. Available from: Harper's Magazine Company, Two Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016, Subscriptions; $8.97 per year. (AA)

Considers the role of the visiting writer in encouraging and supplying useful writing advice to student writers. Proposes some principles for the art of writing that writers offer composition students, especially related to the art of writing over its craft. (HB)

English is the second-largest major at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington). Students may choose one of three emphases within their major: literature, creative writing, or professional writing. Puget Sound's professional writing program has grown gradually and slowly over the last 11-year period to include an array of 10 professional…

Describes the organization and aims of the English curriculum at the University of Iowa. (AA)

Contends that rhetorical study is the key to the integration of reading and writing in the college English department and discusses problems created by pigeonholing literature by periods and genres. (DD)

Concludes that a combination of a writing sample and an objective test should be used to place students in freshman composition courses. (DD)

Explores the ways a constellation of domestic metaphors has governed relationships between composition faculty and literature faculty in English departments and, further, governed the way English studies faculty have conceived their role in American universities in the 20th century. (SR)

Many English handbooks and "grammars" fail to offer sound advice to writers about matters of exactness in diction and precision in sentence structure. A gap between linguists and English teachers, the literary bias of most graduate departments of English, and a national obsession with the all-powerful capabilities of common sense, have…

Describes political and economic conditions in English Departments that are being manipulated to the detriment of the writing discipline and the teacher of writing. (DD)

Discusses various aspects of language--written and spoken--and concludes that departments of English have not yet met their responsibilities concerning the teaching of writing. (JM)