College English, Vol. 72, No. 5, May 2010

Table of Contents

• Twisted Tongues, Tied Hands: Translation Studies and the English Major

  Emily O. Wittman and Katrina Windon

  • Show Abstract
  • Hide Abstract

  Abstract: Emphasizing the value to English majors of a course in translation studies, the authors describe one involving them at their home institution.

• Working Rhetoric and Composition

  Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu

  • Show Abstract
  • Hide Abstract

  Abstract: Given the multiple meanings of rhetoric and composition, as well as the vexed history of institutional relationships between these two terms, it is important for scholars to trace how they are “worked”—that is, how they materially function—in a variety of specific circumstances.

• A Usable Past for Writing Assessment

  Brian Huot, Peggy O’Neill, and Cindy Moore

  • Show Abstract
  • Hide Abstract

  Abstract: Writing program administrators and other composition specialists need to know the history of writing assessment in order to create a rich and responsible culture of it today. In its first fifty years, the field of writing assessment followed educational measurement in general by focusing on issues of reliability, whereas in its next fifty years, it turned its attention to validity. Overall, the field has exhibited a tension between reliability and validity, with the latter increasingly being conceptualized as involving a whole set of considerations that need to be theorized.

• Texts of Our Institutional Lives: SATS for Writing Placement: A Critique and Counterproposal

  Emily Isaacs and Sean A. Molloy

  • Show Abstract
  • Hide Abstract

  Abstract: Focusing on writing placement at a particular university, the authors analyze the limits of SAT tests as a tool in this process. They then describe the writing program’s adoption of a supplementary measure: a faculty committee’s review of essays by students who may need to be reassigned to a different writing course.

• Reviews

  Jude Chudi Okpala and Daniel Grausam

  • Show Abstract
  • Hide Abstract

  Abstract: Reviewed are Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy by Keith Gilyard and The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl.

• Comment & Response: A comment on “Conversation at a Critical Moment: Hybrid Courses and the Future of Writing Programs”

  Susan M. Lang and Catherine Gouge

• Announcements and Calls for Papers

* Journal articles are provided in PDF format and can be opened using the free Adobe® Reader® program or a comparable viewer. Click here to download and install the most recent version of Adobe Reader.