Beginning with the premise that writing cannot be separated from the subject written about, composition teachers should address themselves to what their students are learning in the process of writing. Some writing courses introduce students to great books but those books are usually written only by white men. Others open students to multicultural diversity but the anthologies used essentialize race and gender differences; however noble these courses may be, their purpose is dubious: Is building tolerance the job of a composition course? As an alternative, writing courses can be centered around historical moments that involve rhetorical interaction between cultures and viewpoints. They can introduce students to multicultural pluralism but do so with a clear sense of purpose. Frederic Jameson has argued that effective democratic communication requires that people be able conceptually to locate themselves in history. A course taught at Holy Cross asked students to participate in a debate over the meaning of the phrase "all men are created equal" from the 19th century to the present. The students first read a variety of scholarly interpretations. Then the students wrote and shared diverse assignments working over the readings: summarizing, analyzing rhetorical strategies, or reworking the beginning of the Declaration of Independence as one of the scholars would have done it. (TB)