By virtue of its interdisciplinary nature, the Humanities Base program at the University of Dayton encourages carefully designed composition instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogy. Because the Humanities Base themes are set in binary opposites--faith versus reason; autonomy versus responsibility; individual versus community, and humans versus nature-dialogic and conflictual experiences are natural points of departure for any composition exercise. James Berlin's article, "Poststructualism and Cultural Studies" (1993) offers a coherent, theoretical basis for the pedagogy employed in the courses in this program. Students in these classes select the topics of their essays, but they must do so within the context of larger Humanities themes and the binaries those themes represent. Responding, interacting, and composing--the tripartite elements of a social/epistemic rhetoric--provide a way of determining what it means to be human. (SAM)