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Who's cheating whom in college writing instruction? This book argues that through binary privileging of the real author (the inspired, autonomous genius) over the transgressive writer (the collaborator or the plagiarist), composition pedagogy deprives students of important opportunities to join in scholarly discourse and assume authorial roles. From Plato's paradoxical dependence on and rejection of Homer, to Jerome McGann's dismissal of copyright as the hand of the dead, Standing in the Shadow of Giants surveys changes and conflicts in Western theories of authorship. From this survey emerges an account of how and why plagiarism became important to academic culture; how and why current pedagogical representations of plagiarism contradict contemporary theory of authorship; why the natural, necessary textual strategy of patchwriting is mis-classified as academic dishonesty; and how teachers might craft pedagogy that authorizes student writing instead of criminalizing it.
List of contents
Preface
Epigraphs
Introduction: Toward a Pedagogy of (Re)Formative Composition
I. Agiarists: What A Mess!The Problems of Plagiarism
The Anxieties of Authorship and Pedagogy
Autonomous Collaboration
II. Authors: How Did We Get Into This Mess?Historical Models
Modern Authors
III. Collaborators: How Can We Get Out Of This Mess?Contemporary Alternatives
Pedagogy for (Re)Formative Composition
Reforming Plagiarism Policies
Afterword
Reference
Author Index
Subject Index
About the author
REBECCA MOORE HOWARD chairs and directs the Writing Program at Syracuse University. She is co-author of Standing in the Shadow of Giants (1999), The Bedford Guide to Teaching Writing in the Disciplines (1995), and co-editor of Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum (2000 forthcoming).
