Guest Editors' Introduction

Abstract

1986. New Orleans. The Conference on College Composition and Communication. The two of us and Elaine O. Lees are presenting on a panel titled “ReaderResponse Theory and the Teaching of Writing: The Teacher as Responding Reader.” Our titles? Salvatori: “Some Implications of Iser’s Theory of Reading for the Teaching of Writing.” Donahue: “Barthes and the Obtuse Reader.” Lees: “Is There an Error in This Text? What Stanley Fish’s Theory of Reading Implies about the Teaching of English.” There was something special about the Conference on College Composition and Communication that year, especially for anyone concerned about reading. A few books had already been published: Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap, edited by Winfred Bryan Horner (1983); Writ­ ing and Reading Differently, edited by G. Douglas Atkins and Michael Johnson (1985); Only Connect, edited by Thomas Newkirk (1986); and Conver­ gences: Transactions in Reading and Writing, edited by Bruce T. Peterson (1986). More appeared to be on the way, for instance, Reclaiming Pedagogy: The Rhetoric of the Classroom, edited by Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl (1989). College English and College Composition and Communication were brimming with provocative investigations. Interest in reading was, paradoxically, both bourgeoning and at its apex, which we came to recognize only in retrospect. Over the next few years, while we and a few others (most notably David Bartholomae, Elizabeth Flynn, Joseph Harris, David Jolliffe, Kathleen McCormick, Susan Miller, Thomas Newkirk, and Donna Qualley)