One of the first collections to focus on independent writing programs, A Field of Dreams offers a complex picture of the experience of the stand-alone. Included here are narratives of individual programs from a wide range of institutions, exploring such issues as what institutional issues led to their independence, how independence solved or created administrative problems, how it changed the culture of the writing program and faculty sense of purpose, success, or failure.

Further chapters build larger ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of stand-alone status, covering labor issues, promotion/tenure issues, institutional politics, and others. A retrospective on the famous controversy at Minnesota is included, along with a look at the long-established independent programs at Harvard and Syracuse.

Finally, the book considers disciplinary questions raised by the growth of stand-alone programs. Authors here respond with critique and reflection to ideas raised by other chapters--do current independent models inadvertently diminish the influence of rhetoric and composition scholarship? Do they tend to ignore the outward movement of literacy toward technology? Can they be structured to enhance interdisciplinary or writing-across-the-curriculum efforts? Can independent programs play a more influential role in the university than they do from the English department?

A FIELD OF DREAMS

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Introduction: Cautionary Tales about Change Angela Crow and Peggy O'Neill........................................................................................................................1I LOCAL SCENES: STORIES OF INDEPENDENT WRITING PROGRAMS...........................................................................................................................................191 The Origins of a Department of Academic, Creative, and Professional Writing Daniel J. Royer and Roger Gilles...................................................................................212 Internal Friction in a New Independent Department of Writing and What the External Conflict Resolution Consultants Recommended Eleanor Agnew and Phyllis Surrency Dallas.......................383 Writing Identity: The Independent Writing Department as a Disciplinary Center Anne Aronson and Craig Hansen....................................................................................504 Small but Good: How a Specialized Writing Program Goes It Alone Louise Rehling.................................................................................................................625 Independence Fostering Community: The Benefits of an Independent Writing Program at a Small Liberal Arts College Elizabeth J. Deis, Lowell T. Frye, and Katherine J. Weese.....................756 No Longer Discourse Technicians: Redefining Place and Purpose in an Independent Canadian Writing Program Brian Turner and Judith Kearns........................................................90II BEYOND THE LOCAL: CONNECTIONS AMONG COMMUNITIES................................................................................................................................................1057 Learning as We G(r)o(w): Strategizing the Lessons of a Fledgling Rhetoric and Writing Department Jane E. Hindman...............................................................................1078 Creating Two Departments of Writing: One Past and One Future Barry M. Maid.....................................................................................................................1309 Who Wants Composition? Reflections on the Rise and Fall of an Independent Program Chris M. Anson...............................................................................................15310 Revising the Dream: Graduate Students, Independent Writing Programs, and the Future of English Studies Jessica Yood...........................................................................17011 Locating Writing Programs in Research Universities Peggy O'Neill and Ellen Schendel...........................................................................................................18612 Wagering Tenure by Signing on with Independent Writing Programs Angela Crow...................................................................................................................213III THE BIG PICTURE: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMPOSITION, ENGLISH STUDIES AND LITERACY EDUCATION.........................................................................................................23113 A Rose by Every Other Name: The Excellent Problem of Independent Writing Programs Wendy Bishop................................................................................................23314 Keeping (in) Our Places, Keeping Our Two Faces Theresa Enos...................................................................................................................................24715 Managing to Make a Difference Thomas P. Miller................................................................................................................................................25316 Stasis and Change: The Role of Independent Composition Programs and the Dynamic Nature of Literacy Cynthia L. Selfe, Gail E. Hawisher, and Patricia Ericsson..................................26817 Bigger than a Discipline? Kurt Spellmeyer.....................................................................................................................................................278Afterword: Countering the Naysayers: Independent Writing Programs as Successful Experiments in American Education Larry W. Burton................................................................295References........................................................................................................................................................................................301Notes on Contributors.............................................................................................................................................................................312Index.............................................................................................................................................................................................316

Chapter One

There has been a great deal of discussion recently about the decline and fall of literature, about the lost agenda and corruption of the humanities, about our embattled profession. Andrew Delbanco opens a November 1999 article in the New York Review of Books with a stinging anecdote meant to explain something about how funds are allocated for faculty positions. He tells about a Berkeley provost who warns, "On every campus there is one department whose name need only be mentioned to make people laugh; you don't want that department to be yours" (32). Delbanco insists that we all know which department that is these days.

What can make one department a laughingstock involves a nest of complexities. As the list of seven books under Delbanco's review might indicate, the debate is not just about the discipline of English, but about social agendas, the humanities, the unity of a discipline, literature itself, and jobs. The "rise and fall of English," as Robert Scholes describes it, has occurred over the last century, but of course the antecedents of some of these conflicts are found even among the debates of ancient thinkers. Delbanco's point, and the point of Scholes and perhaps others whose books he reviews, is that the time has come to restructure a discipline that has for too long taken itself for granted and lost touch with viable purposes and social commitments.

The formation of a separate department of academic, creative, and professional writing at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) reflects much of this current discussion-as well as its history. Our narrative affirms and broadly illuminates many of the general themes present in Scholes and other accounts of the conflicted state of affairs in the humanities and in English. However, our discussion also shines a directed light on three disciplinary functions that mark off contended boundaries in this ongoing conversation about English studies in general-and the viability of separate departments of writing in particular. These three functions-academic, creative, and professional writing-represent curriculum and activities within a department, but they also stand for larger purposes within the university, disciplinary activities, and social commitments beyond the campus boundaries.

ACADEMIC WRITING: SHOULD WE? WOULD WE?

It's largely with issues related...