A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to The Modern United States

This newly revised Thirtieth Anniversary edition provides a robust scholarly introduction to the history of writing instruction in the West from Ancient Greece to the present-day United States.

It preserves the legacy of writing instruction from antiquity to contemporary times with a unique focus on the material, educational, and institutional context of the Western rhetorical tradition. Its longitudinal approach enables students to track the recurrence over time of not only specific teaching methods, but also major issues such as social purpose, writing as power, the effect of technologies, orthography, the rise of vernaculars, writing as a force for democratization, and the roles of women in rhetoric and writing instruction. Each chapter provides pedagogical tools including a Glossary of Key Terms and a Bibliography for Further Study. In this edition, expanded coverage of twenty-first-century issues includes Writing Across the Curriculum pedagogy, pedagogy for multilingual writers, and social media.

A Short History of Writing Instruction is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in writing studies, rhetoric and composition, and the history of education.

James J. Murphy is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis.

Christopher Thaiss is Professor Emeritus of Writing Studies in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis.