A Problem in Rhetoric: Teaching Writing with Western

But rather than the large theoretical questions of canon revision that grabhcd national headlines last year, I want to talk about a more mundane and limih"d question that I tried to deal with while teaching at Stanford between 1984 and JIIIII 1988. That question addresses one of the practical concerns of this conference Oil core curriculum: how does one effectively combine a course in English Compo sition with a course in Western Culture? It was first presented to me in Spring 1984, when I was hired by the English Departmentto coordinate and teach in its newly designed "track" of the University's required Western Culture survey. After two years of brainstorming and politick" ing, the Department had received approval to mount a pilot project that would couple an interdisciplinary lecture-discussion course called "Literature and IllC Arts in Western Culture" with its own freshman writing requirement. Senior professors would deliver three lectures per week to a large group of all the studellis registered in the track; small groups would subsequently meet in sections to discuss the readings and lectures with non-tenured Ph.D. section leaders, who would also conduct twice-weekly composition classes that used the works treated in Western Culture as the basis for writing flssignments. This arrangement would appeal to incoming students as a good deal which got two requirements out of the way in a single eight-unit course, and it would benefit the English Department­ by raising its visibility and its FIE, by attracting new majors, and by providing the benefits of large lectures linked with small, writing-intensive classes. The prob­ lem delegated to me was to work out a curriculum that would adapt the topics of English Comp to the readings and lectures-a curriculum for a course called Writing With Western Culture. Since then, the program has received high student evaluations, has qua­ drupled in size, and, with numerous beneficial modifications, has survived the canon reforms introduced last year. After eight years, the original writing curriculum is still intact. So I think it's appropriate to describe it here in some detail to those dealing with similar problems. Let me begin with a brief discussion of the theory behind "Writing with Western Cullure" and its connection to the classic tradition of rhetorical educa­ tion. The central idea of the program is combining. First ofall, combining the three aspects of the familiar rhetorical trinity: Reading, Writing, and Thinking. A fine