This study focuses on the ways composition pedagogy emerges out of and gives way to the dynamics of space. At one level, the study describes the attempts of one community college instructor to create a writerly space for his students, and at another level, it describes how those attempts resonate with broader conceptions of academic space. Chapters 1 and 2 develop a narrative about the particular difficulties and pedagogical crises of teaching composition at a community college. This narrative suggests that those crises relate to problems of academic space. Therefore, chapter 3 turns to the field of critical geography. Using the terminology and theoretical perspectives of critical geography, chapter 3 describes the dynamics of space and time in American culture, particularly, the characterization of space in capitalist systems. Chapter 4 applies critical geography's spatial terms and concepts to composition, specifically, to the problems of teaching composition in the real-and-imagined space of a community college. Chapter 5 argues that the increasing numbers of part-time, commuter college students are changing the spatial orientation of college students. The study concludes that the nature of academic space is changing, not simply with the rise of community colleges in the United States, but also with shifts in student demographics. Appended are composition course descriptions. (Contains 127 references.) (NB)