Phelps, "Composition Studies," from Enos, _Encyclopedia_

Summary: This article tracks the development of composition studies from around the 1960s to the mid-90s. Phelps identifies major tensions and commonalities between the different sub-areas of comp. studies. She discusses the teaching tradition (and composition's still-remaining grounding in the practical), the new rhetoric ("composition is the inheritor of classical Western rhetoric"), and the new science (which draws on methodologies from other fields such as the social sciences and education). A major heuristic she uses to explain the field is "a process of equilibration between forces of expansion and differentiation" (126)--expansion in terms of what the field studies (traditional writing, multimodal writing, etc.) and differentiation in terms of, I think, growing differences of focus that sometimes threaten to tear it apart. Phelps describes different ways to hold the field together--the dominance of one paradigm, the inclusion of all, and dialogue between different perspectives. She also discusses the importance of practice to the discipline.

Response: This article serves as an excellent introduction to the discipline. It is extremely readable and does a great job of outlining the different areas of interest in the field and showing the tensions. The publication of date of the book is 1996--I wonder what has changed? From my perspective, the digital dimension has been growing like wildfire, and I wonder if there could be another article that speaks to that that could perhaps be paired with this one.

Uses: This would be good early in the course to provide a basic description of the field to those students who are unaware of composition's history. It is important to understand the discipline, I think, before we get into the administration aspect.