Composition, Language, and Rhetoric Ph.D. Exam
*M.A. candidates should read * titles;
Ph.D. candidates should read all titles,
unless otherwise indicated.
Composition:
*Barnett, Robert W., and Jacob S. Blumner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory
and Practice. New York: Longman, 2001. [PhD level, read all. MA level, read these
essays (given with their starting page number): Stephen North, p. 63; Andrea Lunsford,
p. 92; Kenneth Bruffee, p. 206; Jeff Brooks, p. 219; Linda Shamoon and Deborah Burns,
p. 225; Muriel Harris, p. 272; Anne DiPardo, p. 350]
Bazerman, Charles, and David R. Russell, eds. Landmark Essays on Writing Across the
Curriculum. Davis, CA: Hermagoras P, 1994.
Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.
*Corbett, Edward P.J., Nancy Myers, and Gary Tate. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. 4th ed.
New York: Oxford UP, 2000. [PhD level, read all. MA level, read these essays (given
with their starting page number): Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, p. 129; David
Bartholomae, p. 258; Nancy Sommers, p. 279; Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford, p. 320]
Dean, Terry. "Multicultural Classrooms: Monocultural Teachers." College Composition and
Communication 40 (1989): 23-37.
*Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.
*Emig, Janet. The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1971.
*Flower, Linda S., and John R. Hayes “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” CCC 32
(December 1981): 356-87.
Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1971.
Gilyard, Keith. Race, Rhetoric, and Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999.
Grimm, Nancy. Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. Portsmouth:
Boynton/Cook, 1999.
Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Passions, Pedagogies, and Twenty-First Century
Technologies. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 1999.
Jarratt, Susan, and Lynn Worsham, eds. Feminism and Composition Studies. New York: MLA,
1998. [PhD and MA level, read: Elizabeth Flynn, p. 243; Dale Bauer, p. 351. PhD level,
also read: Patricia Sullivan, p. 124, Shirley Wilson Logan, p. 425, Min-Zhan Lu, p. 436]
Kirsch, Gesa, and Patricia Sullivan, eds. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992.
*Lindemann, Erika. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.
*McLeod, Susan, and Margaret Sovin. "What Do You Need to Start--and Sustain--A Writing
Across the Curriculum Program?" WPA: Writing Program Administration 15 (1991): 2534.
Mortensen, Peter, and Gesa Kirsch, eds. Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Research of
Literacy. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996.
*Murray, Donald M. A Writer Teaches Writing. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.
*Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Free P, 1989.
*Shaugnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations. New York: Oxford UP, 1979.
*Tate, Gary, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. NY:
Oxford, 2001. [PhD level, read all. MA level, read Lad Tobin, p. 1; Christopher
Burnham, p. 19; William Covino, p. 36; Rebecca Moore Howard, p. 54; Diana George
and John Trimbur, p. 71; Deborah Mutnick, p. 183]
*White, Edward M. Assigning, Responding, Evaluating. 3rd ed. NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
Wolff, Janice M., ed. Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together.
Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake, and Irwin Weiser, eds. Situating Portfolios: Four
Perspectives. Logan, UT: Utah UP, 1997.
Other useful reference books (not required reading):
Enos, Theresa, ed. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition. New York: Garland, 1996.
Kennedy, Mary Lynch, ed. Theorizing Composition: A Critical Sourcebook of Theory and
Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1998.
Reynolds, Nedra, Patricia Bizzell, and Bruce Herzberg. The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of
Writing. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. [Also available online at
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/bb/]
Language Structure and Language Diversity:
Barber, Charles. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. New York: Cambridge UP,
2000.
*Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill. Language Myths. NY: Penguin, 1998.
Brown, H. Douglas. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. 4th ed. New York: Longman,
2000.
Byrd, Patricia, and Joy Reid. Grammar in the Composition Classroom: Essays on Teaching ESL
for College-Bound Student. New York: Heinle, 1997.
Chomsky, Noam. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2000.
Clark, Virginia P., Paul A. Eschholz, and Alfred F. Rosa. Language: Readings in
Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
Connor, Ulla. Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing. New
York: Cambridge UP, 1996.
*Connors, Robert J., and Andrea Lunsford. “Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College
Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research.” College Composition and Communication
39 (1988): 395-409.
Grabe, William, and Robert B. Kaplan. Theory and Practice of Writing: An Applied Linguistics
Approach. White Plains: Longman, 1996.
Hamp-Lyons, Elizabeth, ed. Assessing 2nd Language Writing in Academic Contexts. Westport:
Greenwood, 1991.
*Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” College English 47
(1985): 105-127.
Haussamen, Brock. Revising the Rules: Traditional Grammar and Modern Linguistics. 2nd ed.
Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2000.
Haussamen, Brock, Amy Benjamin, Martha Kolln, and Rebecca S. Wheeler. Grammar Alive: A
Guide for Teachers. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2003.
*Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and
Classrooms. Rev. ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.
Kroll, Barbara, ed. Second Language Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1994.
Malinowitz, Harriet. Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Students and the Making of
Discourse Communities. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 1995.
Martin-Jones, Marilyn, and Kathryn Jones. Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different
Worlds. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000.
*Noguchi, Rei R. Grammar and the Teaching of Writing: Limits and Possibilities. Urbana, IL:
NCTE, 1991.
*Oaks, Dallin D., ed. Linguistics at Work: A Reader of Applications. Cambridge: Heinle, 2001.
[PhD and MA level: read chapter 5 on Linguistics, Education, and Social Policy (Heath,
Labov, Spector, Wolfram, Kaplan, and Nunberg) and chapter 6 on Linguistics and
Composition (Riley & Parker, Noguchi, Eggington, Stagberg, and Garcia)]
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Paperback ed. New
York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Silva, Tony J., and Paul Kei Matsuda, eds. On Second Language Writing. Mahwah: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 2000.
*Smith, Neilson V. Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals. New York: Cambridge, 1999.
*Vygosky, Lev. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1986.
*Weaver, Constance, ed. Teaching Grammar in Context. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1996.
*Wheeler, Rebecca, ed. Language Alive in the Classroom. Westport: Greenwood-Praeger, 1999.
Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialect and Variation. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 1998.
Other useful reference books (not required reading):
Cassidy, Frederic G, and Joan Hall, eds. Dictionary of American Regional English. 3 vols.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985-1996.
Chalker, Sylvia, and Edmund Weiner, eds. Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar. NY: Oxford
UP, 1998.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 2nd ed. NY: Cambridge UP, 1997.
---. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language. NY: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Johnson, Keith, and Helen Johnson, eds. The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A
Handbook for Language Teaching. Malden: Blackwell, 1999.
Matthews, Peter H. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. NY: Oxford UP, 1997.
McArthur, Tom, ed. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. NY: Oxford UP, 1992.
Quirk, Randolf, et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. White Plains:
Longman, 1989.
Richards, Jack, John Platt, and Heidi Platt. Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics. London: Longman UK, 1994.
Stewart, Jr., Thomas W., and Nathan Vaillette, eds. Language Files: Materials for An Introduction
to Language and Linguistics. 8th ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2001.
Rhetoric:
*Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times
to the Present. Boston: Bedford Books, 1990. [PhD level, read all listed below. MA
level, read chapters marked with asterisk]
*General Introduction
*Introduction - Classical Rhetoric
*Isocrates
*Against the Sophists
*Plato
Gorgias
*Aristotle
*Anonymous
*Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book IV
*Cicero
*Quintilian
*Introduction - Medieval Rhetoric
*Augustine
*Christine de Pizan
*Introduction - Renaissance Rhetoric
*Desiderius Erasmus
*From Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style
Peter Ramus
*Francis Bacon
*From The Advancement of Learning
*Introduction - Enlightenment Rhetoric
John Locke
David Hume
*George Campbell
*Hugh Blair
*Introduction - Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric
*Introduction - Modern and Postmodern Rhetoric
Mikhail Bakhtin
From The Problem of Speech Genres
*Kenneth Burke
*From A Grammar of Motives
*From A Rhetoric of Motives
Hélène Cixous
The Laugh of the Medusa
Stanley Fish
Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP,
1990. 1-120.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change." College Composition and
Communication 47 (1996): 7-28.
*Enos, Theresa, and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Professing the New Rhetorics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1994. [PhD level, read all listed below. MA level, read chapters marked
with asterisk]
*I. A. Richards, "How to Read a Page"
*Richard Weaver, "The Cultural Role of Rhetoric"
*Stephen Toulmin, "The Layout of Arguments"
Chaïm Perelman, "The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning"
*Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?"
Wayne C. Booth, "The Idea of a University--as Seen by a Rhetorician"
*Andrea A. Lunsford and Lisa S. Ede, "On Distinctions between Classical and Modern
Rhetoric"
Jim W. Corder, "Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love"
Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the
Renaissance. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997.
[MA and PhD level: read only Chapter One: "Mapping the Silences, or Remapping
Rhetorical Territory"]
Kennedy, George. A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.
Lunsford, Andrea A., ed. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition. Pittsburgh: U
of Pittsburgh P, 1995.
Murphy, James J. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974.
Porter, James E. Rhetorical Ethics and Internetworked Writing. Greenwich: Ablex, 1998.
Other useful reference books (not required reading):
Rollinson, Philip, and Richard Geckle. A Guide to Classical Rhetoric. Signal Mountain, TN:
Summertown, 1998.
(revised: April 2004)