Composition: History & Theory: 1940 - 1949
First Conference on College Composition and Communication
Description
In Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987), James Berlin notes that the first Conference on College Composition and Communication met in Chicago in April 1949, marking the rising sense of professional identity in Composition Studies and clearly linking interests of Communications and Composition. Berlin illustrates how this professionalization had been slowly developing since the thirties. The focus on the Communications course was also a factor. Berlin writes: “Even though these communications programs were often devices to use scarce faculty more economically, they did elevate freshman composition—as well as speech—in the university power structure” (106).
Date of Upload
3/13/09