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Janice Lauer Annotated Bibliography Articles

Lauer’s comment is a short response to an essay by Gary A. Olson and Julie Drew, titled “(Re)Revisioning the Dissertation in English Studies.” In their essay, Olson and Drew discuss the push to publish mindset and how it relates to graduate students and dissertations. They write that Lauer has questioned whether or not her graduate students are prepared for scholarship. Lauer says that she is “puzzled by this characterization of my attitude toward graduate students’ scholarship,” because she says she has “not held such views” (625). She concludes her comment by referring readers to her article titled “Graduate Students as Active Members of the Profession: Some Questions for Mentoring” for her views on graduate students and their preparation.

Lauer’s response focuses on a problem she sees in the field of rhetoric and composition, which is “the tendency to form impressions of a person’s position based not on reading his or her work but on brief and reductive secondary characterizations” (421). She discusses Phillip Arrington’s mistake of implying Composition Research: Empirical Designs favors empirical research over other kinds of research. According to Lauer, in the book and in her other publications, she advocates for “multi-modality, a dialogic interaction among modes of inquiry” (421). She explains her aim in writing Composition Research, which was to inform teachers who were unfamiliar with empirical research and to show the “contributions and limitations of empirical research” (421). Lauer concludes her response by suggesting readers who are interested in the complexity of inquiry in composition studies to read Louise Phelps’ “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition.”

Lauer’s article is a response to Robin Varnum’s article, “The History of Composition: Reclaiming Our Lost Generations.” In this article, Lauer argues that the discussion between Emig, Young, and herself at the 1991 College Composition and Communication Convention panel has been taken out of context. She says her discussion was intended to be a recounting of “the sixties when composition began to take shape as an academic field” and was not intended to “provide a comprehensive history of anyone who had ever published on writing since the eighteenth century” (252). She says that her talk included stories from her informal and formal networking sessions with people who shared an interest in composition. She says nowhere in her ‘oral history’ did she “state or argue that no one had ever written about composition before that time” (252). Finally, Lauer says her discussion did not include a tale of composition theorists “fighting virgin territory” (253).

Lauer begins her article by discussing the questions surrounding composition studies, questions about the origins, domains of investigation, and modes of inquiry in composition studies. Lauer “does not attempt to offer definitive answers to these questions but rather some preliminary reflections on the nature of composition studies as a discipline” (20). Her article discusses composition studies’ distinct features and then the advantages and disadvantages of these features. Lauer says that one of the distinguishing features of compositions studies is investigation—investigation of the nature of writing, the developmental phases of writing, writing’s epistemic potential, and the interaction between writers, readers, subject matters, and texts, among other things. Lauer praises composition’s early theorists and their multidisciplinary studies, which have “stimulate[d] further investigation”(23). Lauer believes another feature of composition studies is its ability to contribute to other social fields. Lauer explains that the “unmapped territory” and “multimodality” of composition studies are both advantages and disadvantages, and she discusses the complexity of the modes of inquiry in composition studies (25). Finally, Lauer describes composition studies’ tone, which she believes has been positive because of a “sense of community” (27).

In the article, Lauer outlines the graduate program at Purdue University as an example of how rhetoric and composition programs “are initiated and shaped within departments of English” (392). She says the features of the program have been similar to making an argument, “offering warrants for the claim that rhetoric and composition is an academic field’ (392). She says one of the features of the Purdue graduate program is that the students have not disappeared “into a larger English department,” but “have developed a sense of identity as rhetoric and composition specialists” (393). According to Lauer, a sense of community is created in her program by privileging collaboration. Lauer then outlines the courses and faculty of her program. She says another feature of her program is the “effort to strengthen its connections to pedagogy” (396).

This article is an account of a meeting sponsored by the Rhetoric Society, titled “Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric” at the 1980 College Composition and Communication Convention in Washington. Lauer says the meeting was important because it discussed the needs of “an emerging group of potential rhetoricians,” it outlined “the working philosophy of the Rhetoric Society,” and it “marked an important stage in the development of the discipline” (190). Lauer describes the increasing interest in rhetorical theory. She says the meeting discussed various questions dealing with everything from the possible qualifications of a rhetoric program staff to what should make up a graduate program in rhetoric and how the coursework should relate to other programs and disciplines. She discusses the participants’ ideas on rhetoric’s interdisciplinary nature.

In her article, Lauer seeks to address questions concerning the feminization of composition and the emerging field of rhetoric and composition. Lauer argues that “‘feminine’ acts by women and men have played a significant role in shaping the field” (283). Lauer refers to several accounts of the formation of the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition, but she focuses on her “own experience with that formation” to speak about the field’s “concrete events, individual efforts, and social interactions,” which led to the field’s professionalization (280). In her description, Lauer resists the word feminization and instead seeks to point out feminine traits. Lauer says she believes the field began “as a growing social network, a web of friendship” (280). According to Lauer, the members of this web began to introduce courses and direct dissertations in rhetoric and composition studies, which “boldly positioned composition theory as appropriate subject matter” for study and “began to enlarge the web” (281). Lauer then describes how seminars helped “satisfy the growing desire and need for rhetoric and composition theory” (281). Lauer feels these beginnings were “feminine,” because they helped “to release in other unexplored resources and transformative power” and because, similar to much of women’s work, they were not “rewarded by salary increases or lightened faculty loads” (282). Lauer also notes that women in the field put together bibliographies collaboratively. Finally, Lauer says some competition is present in the field today, but she also sees “theorists, researchers, and editors still building networks” and “empowering others,” things that she hopes will continue in Rhetoric and Composition Studies (283–284).

In her article, Lauer explains her reactions to CCC meetings and how they differ from her reaction to other conventions. She says, “CCC is a symbol of rhetoric itself,” because it is exploring and growing but also unsettled and struggling. According to Lauer, teachers circle through various worlds of classrooms, theory, and departments. She insists teachers rely on the past and current publication to “enter the world of the classroom with more confidence” (342). Lauer describes the frustration that comes along with the worlds, which is not discouragement. For Lauer, it is instead the driving force to “meet, share, and ignite each other” (343).

In this article, Lauer argues student writer’s “chances of discovering insight increase through heuristic models,” which are “conscious operations that are useful in open-ended inquiry” (268). According to Lauer, although recent textbooks have included heuristics and heuristic model, there is a need for a metatheory, or “a set of criteria by which to judge the capacity or the adequacy of models” (268). She proposes three criteria—transcendency, flexible direction, and general capability. Transcendency highlights the need for a model to be applicable to a variety of writing situations. Lauer says, “a model has flexible direction if it specifies a clear sequence of operations” (268). Finally, she says a model should be highly generative, meaning engaging in operations that “have been identified as triggers of insight” (269).

In her article, Lauer explains that many institutions are changing their curricula but maintaining the idea that students should be introduced “to the known, the best that has been thought and said in a given discipline” (89). She argues that “these debates overlook the fact that most core curricula already posses courses with potential for helping students to develop the power of inquiry—the composition courses” (89). Lauer briefly reviews others’ literature and research on this potential, but her purpose is to help explain the nature of inquiry. She takes from Lonergan’s ideas and argues “inquiry demands conscious exploration and verification” and is “cumulative and organic in nature” (91). According to Lauer, teaching writing as inquiry does create problems, but she believes that students who learn and find answers from themselves would become “both better writers and more liberally educated people” (93).