Clearing the Air: WAC Myths and Realities

Abstract

etween the two of us, we have accumulated more than forty years of experience in writing across the curriculum. As pioneers in the field, we know the WAC territory because we have explored and helped to map it inch by inch, planting flags on behalf of students and their need both to write to learn and to learn to write. We know the field. So when we heard a featured speaker at a recent WPA conference define WAC in a way that neither of us recognized-reifying false dichotomies and serious misunderstandings-we decided it was time to expose the myths surrounding WAC, to clear the air, to set the record straight. Comparing notes after the talk, we concluded that what bothered us most was the fact that an informed and respected colleague clearly had in his head an inaccurate map of terrain that both of us knew so well. He referred to formalist concerns with grammar across the and to irreconcilable dichotomies between writing in the disciplines (WID) and writing across the curriculum (WAC). Our simultaneous and shared discomfort at this conference presentation illustrated for us the need to re-historicize WAC and to reposition WAC theory. Our goal is a more enlightened discussion of what WAC is, what it does, and what it can become. This