This handbook brings together contributors from the United States, Australasia and Europe who use theoretical insights and empirical data to examine current practices as well as possible future directions of postgraduate education. A full range of postgraduate study options are explored, including PhD and professional doctorates, masters awards,…

The loss of full-time tenure faculty positions along with the overuse and financial exploitation of contingent faculty (part-time, full-time nontenure track and graduate employees) are roiling higher education around the country. This is called the academic staffing crisis. Many are undoubtedly working through the bargaining process to improve the…

Examines two metaphors for considering a university's social organization: the "Army" metaphor, a geopolitical model of disciplines advancing the frontiers of knowledge; and the "Monastery" metaphor, a religious model of communities conserving cultures. Urges composition teachers to reflect on these opposing images and on how they affect the…

Argues that composition is at risk of losing its "disciplinarity." Grounds this argument in Jacques Derrida's notion that whatever counts as the condition for achieving certain identity becomes the very condition of its failure. Argues that in a Derridean reading, composition will cease to be as it is now known. (RS)

Shares several writing program administrators' observations on selecting and changing course names, job titles, and program terminology. Considers the psychological and social dimensions that lend power to the act of naming. Draws generalizations about the developing discipline of composition. (RS)

Presents and discusses some ideals and some ideas that should be considered by communication programs that want to persist through hard times. (SR)

Presents a revised version of a talk given at the 2001 meeting of the City University of New York Association of Writing Supervisors. Offers a critique of current use of metaphors of community in teaching writing as both utopian and confining. Suggests alternate ways of imagining writing and teaching. Proposes three counter-concepts to community:…

Notes that Judith Butler is arguably one of the world's most influential and innovative scholars dealing with questions of difference, identity, and the role of rhetoric in subject formation. Explores Butler's views on anti-intellectualism and identity relating to sexual orientation. Presents an interview examining many of Butler's writings. (SG)

Examines two criticisms of the politics of collaborative learning. Argues that consensus can be a powerful instrument for students to generate differences, identify systems of authority that organize these differences, and transform the relations of power that determine who may speak and what counts as a meaningful statement. (MM)

Argues that the university has increasingly become an isolated, isolating culture, a bureaucracy of specialized disciplines producing knowledge painstakingly sequestered from the lived world. Argues that composition, as the anti-discipline, has the chance to re-root that stranded knowledge in the lived worlds, and play a part in the rebirth of the…

Notes a response to any discussion of trust is itself in danger of repeating the very problems that Helen Nicholson raises in her article "The Politics of Trust: Drama Education and the Ethics of Care" (2002). Agrees in part with the elaborations of her thesis, but admits to some serious hesitation regarding any discussion of trust as a guiding…

Discusses the theories of relativism and radical pedagogy. Supports the goals of radical pedagogy, but maintains that sophisticated conceptions of relativism are vital to any system of critical thinking. Identifies caveats for teaching relativistic conceptions to students, and suggests ways to foster "healthy" relativist critical thought…

Describes "academentia," the delusion that disciplines are intellectually powerful as a result of their specialization. Prescribes "neighborliness"--intellectual and practical work done from the perspective of critical consciousness--as the antidote to academentia. Suggests that writing projects have great potential as…

Describes the distinction between the National Endowment for the Arts, which funds artists, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds those who talk about art. Examines the similar distinction in alliances between writers and scholars in English departments, focusing on their effects on writing programs. (MM)

Maintains that the humanities get "screwed" in the academy because they are feminized. Explores this process of "feminization," focusing on college English departments. Offers a different view of the relationship between "soft" humanities and "hard" disciplines, reconceived from a feminist perspective. (SR)