(Re) Visioning Composition Textbook: 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.

An exploration of the sometimes tenuous relationship between textbooks and the discipline of composition and rhetoric, (Re)Visioning Composition Textbooks critically scrutinizes the culture of textbooks from the vantage point of scholars and teachers. It examines a variety of textbooks including: standard rhetorics, handbooks, cross-cultural anthologies, readers, technical textbooks, and argumentation textbooks. Different perspectives are used to discuss the cultures, ideologies, traditions, and the material and political conditions that influence the writing and publishing of these works. Contributors raise challenging questions about the relationship between textbooks and the cultures which produce them, the discipline of which they are an indispensable part, and the classrooms in which they are to have their most tangible effects on teaching and learning.

Xin Liu Gale is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

Fredric G. Gale is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, Gale was formerly a practicing attorney and judge.