Abstract

All reference bibliographies are little systems, to quote Tennyson?exercises in classification. They require circumscribing a subject by defining what will be included and excluded. The categories used not only must accommodate every work falling within the scope of the bibliography but also must anticipate how people will consult it. The MLA International Bibliography's new composi tion and rhetoric section represents an interesting case study of the influences and expectations that shape such classification systems. This essay explores briefly the principles that helped shape the new section and that reflect how composition studies has come to define itself over the past twenty-eight years. The classification system for the new composition and rhetoric section was devised on 30 November 1999, in the conference room of the old MLA headquarters on Astor Place in New York City. Those present were Terence Ford, then editor of the MLA International Bibliography, Phyllis Franklin; Gail Hawisher; Jacqueline Jones Royster; James Sosnoski; Todd Taylor; and 1.1 marked the moment because it seemed typical of what would hap pen if you put a group of composition teachers into a conference room for two days. After a mil day of discussing different ways of viewing the field, someone suggested that each of us make a list of essential categories that a bibliography of composition and rhetoric should include. The lists were remarkably similar. When we had finished discussing them, we reached

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