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Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker, Edward M. White. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Reviewed by K. Butler-Nalin University of Northern Iowa
During October 1993 a group of teachers, researchers, and writing program administrators gathered to examine questions "central to the future of composition" (xii). The Conference on Composition in the 21st Century: Crisis and Change, held at Miami University, invited speakers to discuss the following questions.
What is composition, and why do we teach it?
What have we learned from the past, and how can it shape the future of composition?
Who will assess composition in the twenty-first century, and how will they assess it?
What issues will writing program administrators confront in the twenty-first century?
Who should teach composition, and what should they know?
What direction will research in composition take, and how will research affect teaching?
What political and social issues will shape composition in the future?
What will be the meaning of literate action and intellectual property?
Two speakers, invited because of their significant contributions to the field, addressed each question. Following the speakers, participants gathered for a group discussion led by a designated respondent who wrote a response to the session. The speakers' addresses and the group's responses to them are recorded in Composition in the Twenty-First Century. The editors who organized the conference and the book are members of the council of Writing Program Administrators (WPAs).
The questions addressed at the conference were sweeping, the issues tangled, the canvas large. One conference response group suggested that the conference conversations be labeled "the new geography of composition," alluding to Carlos Fuentes's "new geography of the novel." The editors propose that Composition in the Twenty-First Century "seeks to map and chart that new geography" (2).
The collection has much to recommend it. The format draws on the dialogic nature of conferences: Presenters address the audience; the audience responds to the presenters. The dialogic format in text form invites and stimulates readers to involvement, to plot the course of the arguments along with those at the...