Landmark Essays on Writing Program Administration

Kelly Ritter is Professor of English and Writing Studies and Associate Dean for Curricula and Academic Policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has seventeen years’ experience as a WPA across three different universities. Her most recent book is Reframing the Subject: Postwar Instructional Film and Class-Conscious Literacies (2015). From 2012 to 2017, she was editor of College English.Melissa Ianetta is Professor of English and Unidel Andrew B. Kirkpatrick Jr. Chair in Writing at the University of Delaware, where she has served as a WPA in both the university’s writing center and the English department’s composition program. She is the current editor of College English and, with Lauren Fitzgerald of Yeshiva University, she co-authored The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research.

• Table of ContentsIntroductionCanon Fodder? Surveying Our WPA Landmarks – Melissa Ianetta and Kelly RitterSection 1Historicizing WPA Emerson C. Shuck, Administration of the Freshman English Program Gary Olson and Joseph M. Moxley, Directing Freshman Composition: The Limits of Authority Barbara L’Eplattenier, Finding Ourselves in the Past: An Argument for Historical Work on WPAs Charlton, Jonikka and Shirley Rose, Twenty More Years in the WPA’s Progress Neal Lerner, Searching for Robert MooreSection 2Defining WPA Joseph Harris, Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss: Class Consciousness in Composition Marc Bousquet, Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers Shirley K. Rose and Irwin Weiser, "The WPA as Researcher and Archivist Paul Kei Matsuda, Let’s Face it: Language Issues and the Writing Program Administrator Amy Vidali, Disabling Writing Program Administration Anne Ellen Geller and Harry Denny, Of Ladybugs, Low Status and Loving the Job: Writing Center Professionals Navigating Their Careers Thomas Amorose, WPA Work at the Small College or University: Re-Imagining Power and Making the Small School Visible Tim Taylor, Writing Program Administration at the Two Year College: Ghosts in the MachineSection 3Theorizing WPA Jeanne Gunner, Decentering the WPA Bruce Horner, Redefining Work and Value for Writing Program Administration Donna Strickland,The Managerial Unconscious of Composition Studies Laura Micchiche, More than a Feeling: Disappointment and WPA Work Linda Adler-Kassner, The WPA as Activist: Systematic Strategies for Framing, Action and Representation Melissa Ianetta, If Aristotle Ran the Writing Center: Classical Rhetoric and Writing Center Administration Rachael Green-Howard, Building A WPA Library: A Bibliographic Essay Index