College English, Vol. 71, No. 5, May 2009

Table of Contents

• From the Editor

• Representations of the Field in Graduate Courses: Using Parody to Question All Positions

  Nancy Mack

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  Abstract: The author reports on and analyzes the inclusion of parody in her sequence of assignments for a graduate composition theory seminar. She contends that having students write parodies of particular theorists and theoretical camps enables them to gain critical leverage that they might not otherwise obtain on a field (in this case, composition studies).

• Composing Alternatives to a National Security Language Policy

  Scott Wible

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  Abstract: President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative focuses narrowly on gearing language education to security and military needs. English educators should work with their counterparts in foreign language departments to promote a broader view, one that encourages study of the multiple language groups that currently exist within the United States.

• Reading The Fountainhead: The Missing Self in Ayn Rand’s Ethical Individualism

  Roxanne J. Fand

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  Abstract: Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead can be a useful text in an undergraduate English class, helping students think through issues of individualism. Rand’s own concept of the self, however, ignores its social dimensions.

• Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value: The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies

  Stephen J. Parks

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  Abstract: The author discusses his experience in a university project that led to the creation of a first-year writing text based on interviews with members of a local neighborhood. In particular, he analyzes the negative reaction that many of the community’s residents expressed toward the text’s portrayals of them. From the tensions that developed, the author concludes that English studies must go beyond mere expansion of the canon and reflect upon the very nature of value, including the importance of “use-value” with respect to the production and circulation of community-generated texts.

• Review: Stanley Fish’s Tightrope Act

  Donald Lazere

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  Abstract: Reviewed is Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish.

• Comment & Response: A Comment on “Pleasurable Pedagogies: Reading Lolita in Tehran and the Rhetoric of Empathy”

  Richard S. Albright/Theresa Kulbaga

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