In this article, the author argues that compartmentalization in the way that writing education tends to be discussed and therefore understood in the professional discourse of rhetoric and composition should be critically examined and transcended if the field is going to lead the development of undergraduate writing majors. Any new major should be conceived in a way that accounts for the institutional pressures, constraints, and professional contradictions that already characterize writing education in English departments that do not offer majors. The development of writing majors could present opportunities to transform the broader "ecologies" of postsecondary writing. However, developers of undergraduate majors will need to be aware of not only "the horse," the scholarly vision that will propel writing majors forward, but also the historical/institutional baggage that writing instruction carries, and the "roads" that the field is traveling and will likely see in the future. A materially grounded understanding of "circulation" in postsecondary writing could help everyone to make scholarly conceptions of literacy and institutionally-situated praxis (pedagogical and administrative) more accountable to one another. Without this materially grounded understanding, however, the development of new writing majors could actually have a negative effect on undergraduate English curricula and the profession more generally. (Contains 5 notes.)