Conceding Composition: A Crooked History of Composition's Institutional Fortunes

by Ryan Skinnell

First-year composition became the most common course in American higher education not because it could “fix” underprepared student writers, but because it has historically served significant institutional interests. That is, it can be “conceded” in multiple ways to help institutions solve political, promotional, and financial problems . Conceding Composition  is a wide-ranging historical examination of composition’s evolving institutional value in American higher education over the course of nearly a century.
 
Based on extensive archival research conducted at six American universities and using the specific cases of institutional mission, regional accreditation, and federal funding, this study demonstrates that administrators and faculty have introduced, reformed, maintained, threatened, or eliminated composition as part of negotiations related to nondisciplinary institutional exigencies. Viewing composition from this perspective, author Ryan Skinnell raises new questions about why composition exists in the university, how it exists, and how teachers and scholars might productively reconceive first-year composition in light of its institutional functions.
 
The book considers the rhetorical, political, organizational, institutional, and promotional options conceding composition opened up for institutions of higher education and considers what the first-year course and the discipline might look like with composition’s transience reimagined not as a barrier but as a consummate institutional value.

208 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2016

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and convincing reinterpretation of composition history.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skinnell argues that far from being invisible or marginal to institutions of higher education, composition is actually quite visible and important to institutional goals. Further, institutions have been using composition as a concession to achieve larger goals since the late 19th century. Skinnell's new research methods, genitive history, is an interesting approach, though I can't claim to understand it very well. I would love to see this kind of approach applied to other institutional contexts and situations--small, liberal arts schools would be interesting sites for research; additionally, the current issues surrounding online, distance education could be an interesting topic to study using this genitive history approach.