ENC5700 – Spring 2027 – Graban

ENC 5700 provides a critical overview of the field of contemporary composition studies, from the early twentieth century to the present, with an emphasis on theoretical “turns” that have acted—or do act—as landmarks. Its overarching goal is to familiarize you with the conversations situating writing, rhetoric, literacy, teaching, institutional politics, and institutional discourse so that you can enter into and contribute to those conversations. This requires both a global understanding of the field (i.e., what are its historical arcs, its interdisciplinary foraging, and its various philosophical orientations) and a local understanding of the field (i.e., what issues generate talk, how it forms its social agendas, what various individuals bring to the conversation, and what keywords serve as “god terms,” in Kenneth Burke’s sense of the word). By the end of the semester, you will have both a comprehensive sense of critical issues in the field, and a more critical understanding of those issues that reflect your own scholarly and pedagogical interests, in and beyond the university. This course is also open to students from outside the English department.