About the author: Dr. Jeffrey Hoogeveen received his PhD from the University of Rhode Island. Currently, he is an associate professor at Lincoln University, where he teaches Composition and is the Writing Program Administrator. He is writing a rhetorical reader for McGraw-Hill and a handbook for Heinle (with David Blakesley).
2003 0-7734-6871-4 The first part of this study establishes the economic workings of Composition, (and how student desire for writing and writing instruction is subsumed and made into academic capital) and then proceeds into an extended critique of fours histories of Composition (North, Connors, Harris, and Berlin). It then uses the concept of student desire to explore the four histories. The second part examines the problems of pedagogical eros and how the subject, (like the student) is further disempowered by a dialectical construction of language. The third part illustrates a course the author helped devise, which used student desire as a jump-off point for first year writing courses. This study will be of interest to both scholars and teachers of Composition.