Textual Organization and Curriculum Structure

The editors of Coming of Age recommend that the advanced undergraduate writing curriculum require core classes from disciplinary, professional, and public fields of writing, and the essays describing writing courses are organized in categories reflecting these three major content areas. While these fields clearly represent important areas of study, the courses sometimes seem either arbitrarily or inaccurately placed within them.

For example, the courses included in the professional content area are identified by the editors as courses that help prepare students for participation in the profession of writing. However, only Mary M. Lay's course in technical communication, Richard Fulkerson's course in argumentation for pre-law students, and Libby Miles' course in editing and publishing teach writing within the context of a specific profession. For other courses (though they have an unquestionable place in the writing curriculum), there seems to be no clear reason for their placement within this content area rather than another. For example, Kathleen Blake Yancey's course in voice and genre, Rebecca Moore Howard's course in race and style, and Diana George's cultural studies course would all seem appropriately situated within "the discipline of writing" content area.

Similarly, a number of the courses within the public writing content area seem to exceed their "field." Yameng Liu's course in comparative rhetoric, Valerie Balester's course in race and ethnicity, and Patricia Bizzell's course in rhetoric of the contact zone, along with Bahri's postcolonial course and Rebecca Moore Howard's course in race and style, which are included in the discipline and profession content areas, suggest another way to organize the writing curriculum. These courses may suggest the need for a content area that focuses specifically on difference and the signification of difference in language. Additionally, although some of these courses are listed as "electives," they seem absolutely central to the study of rhetoric and composition.


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