A Conversation with Patricia Bizzell
Richard Colby

Patricia Bizzell sat down with Richard Colby, Rebekah Shultz Colby, Doug Hesse, Kamila Kinyon, and Jeff Ludwig on Tuesday, April 19, for an informal conversation about her background as well as the state and future of composition and rhetoric.

Doug: What can you tell us about your background? Where did you grow up, and how did you end up in composition studies?
My parents met in Kansas City, then moved to Chicago, so I was born in Chicago -- Northbrook, specifically. Thats where I grew up. It was a typical, white, suburban upbringing. What influenced me the most was that I was a very sickly child, and I spent a lot of time in bed, alone, reading. I cant remember a time when I didnt know how to read. I was a voracious reader, and I had an ideal laboratory because I couldnt do a lot of other things. I had an older cousin who would send me boxes of books when she was done with them, so I was reading above my grade level. I also liked making my own illustrated stories, either drawing my own pictures or cutting out images out of my mothers magazines. I was a born English major.

I entered college at Wellesley as a declared English major and never looked back. Its what I always loved to do -- read stories and write and talk about them. I did minor in philosophy at Wellesley. I went on to a graduate program at Rutgers in English literature because there were no composition programs at the time, and we supported ourselves at the time by teaching freshman composition. As a result, a lot of us got interested in teaching composition. This was at the time, in the early 70s, when there just started to be some scholarship in composition, but it wasnt happening a lot in English. Janet Emig was in education at Rutgers at the time, but I didnt know her because we had no reason for our paths to cross. Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Mina Shaughnessys Errors and Expectations were two works that were very influential to me at the time.

In 1975, after I was finished with my PhD, Rutgers offered me a job as a non-tenured track, assistant professor who served as assistant director for the freshman writing program. My last year there, I developed a course, an elective, that was for the graduate students teaching first year writing to teach them about composition, and it was the first of its kind at Rutgers.

Writing teachers of my generation were self-educated. The first Conference on College Composition and Communication I went to was in a high school building in Philadelphia. It was small. As the field developed, we developed.

Doug: How did you end up at College of the Holy Cross?
I went straight from Rutgers to Holy Cross, and I have been there since. I was always what they call in composition studies an abolitionist, someone who didnt believe in a mandatory composition course. I didnt want to go somewhere and be a writing program director. Plus, I wanted to teach some American Literature; my dissertation was on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Holy Cross wanted somebody to teach American Literature and a writing specialist, and they didnt have a required freshman composition course, so the position was appealing to me.

I went there and started a writing center. The students who worked in it all had to take an upper-division introduction to composition and rhetoric course before they could work in the writing center. I also started a writing-across-the-curriculum program. People in biology and history were already teaching writing, so they should at least do it well its a faculty responsibility and not just the English departments responsibility. They still do not have a required freshman composition course.

I have always had a lot of freedom to teach whatever I want there, so thats why I stayed.

Rebekah: What do you see as compositions place within English studies? What do you think of the new movement within composition to create a separate writing major around writing studies? What do you think should be the relationship between English studies and writing studies?
I like the idea of literature and writing studies together. I think they are mutually enriching. We would welcome more writing classes at Holy Cross, with different genres and different perspectives, but right now Im the only one who could teach many of them. But I do appreciate the way literature and rhetoric work together. For example, I recently taught a seminar called American Womens Writing where we looked at Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Childs Letters from New York, and Elizabeth Cady Stantons oratory; its a mixed genre course that brings both literary and rhetorical tools to these texts.

I think there should be a balance of creative writing courses, literature courses, and writing studies courses. I like this broad approach. I think we are getting too compartmentalized and too specialized in the academy. I favor a post-disciplinary movement that breaks down the barriers between departments and specializations, where a sort of intellectual bricolage towards solving problems exists.

Doug: Thinking of the expression, composition/rhetoric, I never heard the slash, but lately I have now, and maybe it is just a result of composition becoming more specialized. What are your thoughts on this?
Both fields have burgeoned and proliferated, and they have developed different but overlapping agendas.

Im over-generalizing here, but composition studies has become more practical-minded in teaching undergraduates how to communicate effectively. Everything from assignment design to graphic literacy, writing center work to writing program administration is how composition has become more diversified -- all moves to improve the teaching of communication.

Rhetoric feels itself to have much less of a disciplinary obligation to the classroom. Rhetorical studies are either highly theoretical or historical. When you go to the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, that is what you will find on the program.

Rebekah: In the newest editions of The Rhetorical Tradition, you have worked to include the work of many female and minority rhetoricians. What further rhetorical additions would you include in a future edition of The Rhetorical Tradition?
When we decided we were going to do a second edition, Bedford Books, which has always supported this project, surveyed 20 or 30 people who were using the first edition of the book and asked them what they would like. Nobody said throw anything out. Everybody had suggestions for whom to add. Its a powerful question. It is still the only book in its field, and it has a lot of influence.

We were on a Cs panel back when we were working on the first edition of the book that was actually called Canons, where we were debating with Cy Knoblauch and Lil Brannon who said that we shouldnt do it because it would create the canon and would reify the tradition. We have since been often critiqued for the title, The Rhetorical Tradition, instead of Rhetorical Traditions. Well, Bedford had already published a book called The Critical Tradition, and they wanted a companion book. People still critiqued us for not standing up to the publisher.

Admittedly, The Rhetorical Tradition comes out as a sort of a book report of rhetoric, but in some cases, we had to reach pretty far afield to find scholarship to support some of what was included in the book. My personal favorite was Phoebe Palmer who nobody seems to be excited about except me.

I dont have the energy for a third edition, but if I were to choose what to include in the future, I would like to include more authors of color and more women. African American preacher testimonies might be an interesting addition. I probably wouldnt go global. We know a lot more about Asian rhetorics and Asian American rhetorics now, but I also understand that the book cant be all things to all people. Its enough to just focus it on the western rhetorical traditions.

Doug: Whats a rhetoric and whats not?
Plato and Aristotle didnt write rhetoric treatises. Aristotle might be the closest, but Aristotles rhetoric is a mishmash of stuff that is overlapping and contradictory. And Plato wrote closet drama. My interest was that anything that uses or discusses persuasive language should be considered rhetoric.

Rebekah: Can you divorce pathos from rhetoric? Whats pathoss place in criticism, scholarship, and research?
Your own allegiances and values will relate to your subjects of study and scholarship. You cant avoid bringing the whole self into your scholarship. You cannot divest yourself. I dont think you can avoid letting pathos affect your scholarship. In fact, I think you are more responsible if you acknowledge your position in your research. We learn more if everybody brings everything to their scholarship.

Doug: You dont have a compulsory composition course at Holy Cross, but you do teach an elective composition course. Could you tell us about that?
I always have a reading, and we work on understanding the authors arguments through that reading. We look at how the reading is enhanced by the moves or ornaments the writer is making. Students write in response to readings, both from the students perspective or as a frame of reference about person As argument and contrasted with person Bs argument. Students can revise from parts of earlier papers they wrote when they read new works. Ive been using a textbook called, Whats Language Got to Do with It?, that offers a number of different discourses, genres, and perspectives about language use, and it has been very successful. I do teach some grammar, often through mini-lessons, but if they cant argue, it doesnt matter. We dont have a basic writing course, but those students who need extra help get herded to my section; I dont mind, and I actually enjoy working with those writers. But I dont spend a lot of time on their grammar.

Doug: Theres been a lot of discussion about academic discourse or discourses lately; what are your thoughts about this?
When we first started talking about academic discourse communities, we thought we could do this anatomy of discourses and a set of characteristics that we could teach to people, but that didnt happen. The problem is that you cannot take it out of context. You cannot really teach academic discourse as an abstract entity detached from the actual intellectual work of a specific discipline or discourse. There are some general principles that I use in my courses -- writing in response to reading and the importance of argument and organization of that argument. What we realized about academic discourse is the dream of a one, overarching academic discourse wasnt possible. Even more importantly, students are bringing their own discourses with them, and they have the possibility of enriching the academy, but I have not seen a pedagogy that would enable the students to really explore and consider these individual discourses and their varieties. Some disciplines have changed, and some disciplines are using first person more, or there is some diversification and reflection.

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