Re Visioning Composition Textbooks: Conflicts of Culture, Ideology, and Pedagogy

Explores the cultures, ideologies, traditions, and the material and political conditions that influence the writing and publishing of textbooks.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Foreword Gary A. Olson I. Overview 1. Introduction Xin Liu Gale and Fredric G. Gale 2. In Case of Fire, Throw In (What to Do with Textbooks Once You Switch to Sourcebooks) David Bleich II. Textbooks, Culture, and Ideology 3. The Great Way: Reading and Writing in Freedom Kurt Spellmeyer 4. Self, Other, In-Between: Cross-Cultural Composition Readers and the Reconstruction of Cultural Identities Yameng Liu 5. Appreciating Narratives of Containment and Contentment: Reading the Writing Handbook as Public Discourse Joseph Janangelo 6. A Textbook's Theory: Current Composition Theory in Argument Textbooks Lizbeth A. Bryant III. Textbooks and Pedagogy 7. Teaching from a Single Textbook "Rhetoric": The Potential Heaviness of the Book Michael W. Kleine 8. Imitations of Life: Technical Writing Textbooks and the Social Context Fredric G. Gale 9. The "Full Toolbox" and Critical Thinking: Conflicts and Contradictions in The St. Martin's Guide to Writing Xin Liu Gale IV. Material and Political Conditions of Publishing Textbooks 10. Of Handbooks and Handbags: Composition Textbook Publishing after the Deal Decade Peter Mortensen 11. Textbook Advertisements in the Formation of Composition: 1969-1990 James Thomas Zebroski 12. Writing Writing Lives: The Collaborative Production of a Composition Text in a Large First-Year Writing Program Sara Garnes, David Humphries, Vic Mortimer, Jennifer Phegley, and Kathleen R. Wallace Contributors Index

About the Author :
Xin Liu Gale is Assistant Professor of Writing and English at Syracuse University. She is the author of Teachers, Discourses, and Authority in the Postmodern Composition Classroom, also published by SUNY Press. Fredric G. Gale is Associate Professor of Writing and English at Syracuse University. He has coedited several books and is the author of Political Literacy: Rhetoric, Philosophy and the Possibility of Justice, also published by SUNY Press.

Review :
"(Re)Visioning Composition Textbooks intelligently addresses a significant issue in the profession. From the time of Adam and Eve before the fall until recently, the profession ignored the problematics of textbooks. Now we are beginning to take the theory, effectiveness, economics, and politics of textbooks seriously." - Ross Winterowd, Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California