David Fleming is associate professor of English and director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America.

Through a detailed history of the collapse of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing program in the late 1960s, Fleming provides a fascinating and vital portrait of a field on the cusp of legitimacy as well as an important reminder to all of us that history and careers are often made (and lost) in the departmental hallways that mark our everyday life.

• In the spring of 1968, the English faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) voted to remedialize the first semester of its required freshman composition course, English 101. The following year, it eliminated outright the second semester course, English 102. For the next quarter-century, UW had no real campus-wide writing requirement, putting it out of step with its peer institutions and preventing it from fully joining the “composition revolution” of the 1970s. Fleming shows how contributing factors—the growing reliance on TAs; the questioning of traditional curricula by young instructors and their students; the disinterest of faculty in teaching and administering general education courses—were part of a larger shift affecting universities nationally. He also connects the events of this period to the long, embattled history of freshman composition in the United States.

David Fleming is associate professor of English and director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America.

Through a detailed history of the collapse of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing program in the late 1960s, Fleming provides a fascinating and vital portrait of a field on the cusp of legitimacy as well as an important reminder to all of us that history and careers are often made (and lost) in the departmental hallways that mark our everyday life.

• In the spring of 1968, the English faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) voted to remedialize the first semester of its required freshman composition course, English 101. The following year, it eliminated outright the second semester course, English 102. For the next quarter-century, UW had no real campus-wide writing requirement, putting it out of step with its peer institutions and preventing it from fully joining the “composition revolution” of the 1970s. Fleming shows how contributing factors—the growing reliance on TAs; the questioning of traditional curricula by young instructors and their students; the disinterest of faculty in teaching and administering general education courses—were part of a larger shift affecting universities nationally. He also connects the events of this period to the long, embattled history of freshman composition in the United States.

David Fleming is associate professor of English and director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America.

Through a detailed history of the collapse of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing program in the late 1960s, Fleming provides a fascinating and vital portrait of a field on the cusp of legitimacy as well as an important reminder to all of us that history and careers are often made (and lost) in the departmental hallways that mark our everyday life.

• In the spring of 1968, the English faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) voted to remedialize the first semester of its required freshman composition course, English 101. The following year, it eliminated outright the second semester course, English 102. For the next quarter-century, UW had no real campus-wide writing requirement, putting it out of step with its peer institutions and preventing it from fully joining the “composition revolution” of the 1970s. Fleming shows how contributing factors—the growing reliance on TAs; the questioning of traditional curricula by young instructors and their students; the disinterest of faculty in teaching and administering general education courses—were part of a larger shift affecting universities nationally. He also connects the events of this period to the long, embattled history of freshman composition in the United States.