A(n) (Un)Certain Synergy: Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Transdisciplinary Conversations about Writing

Abstract

University faculty who come together to engage in equal dialogue and to build consensus set themselves up for a challenge. We all are professional talkers. Edwin Emery Slosson, writing in 1910, observes that one of the unfortunate results of the lecture system is that the professors get so used to talking that they cannot stop. Faculty, departmental, and council meetings are apt to be unduly extended, and in the end the wisdom of the whole body is not equal to the sum of its parts (169-70). If Slosson notices a less than synergistic relationship among departmental faculty, what then might we expect when faculty from across disciplines attempts to talk about writing? If composition cannot dominate the space afforded to the cooperation, how then might WAC advocates, who often bring insights from the discipline of composition, share our knowledge? If the methods of composition do not provide the best place to start, the methodology of composition, with its imperative to integrate theory and practice, offers an admirable goal to hold as we attempt to work out a WAC program within our particular situations.