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.

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.