First-Year Composition
at UT Austin, 1940
“English 1: Aims and Methods was written by a "Committee
on English 1" and approved by the English Department, University
of Texas at Austin, in May of 1940. English 1 was a two-semester required
writing course for first-year students, with a "research paper"
distinguishing the second semester. To us today, seventy years later,
it stands as a useful historical document—describing a fairly common,
middle-of-the-road syllabus for first-year composition at a large state
university. The interest is in what ways current post-secondary composition
practice and curricular aim, seventy years later, has departed from this
model and in what ways stuck to it. The kinds of departmental oversight
of teachers is especially insightful.
The faculty authoring this report are not named and today not known.
The present copy has the name "M. M. Crow" at the top, perhaps
a member of the English Department at the time.
The copy was discovered a few years back in the office of the Division
of Rhetoric and Composition at Austin (now the Department of Rhetoric
and Writing) by Susan "George" Schorn, Writing Coordinator of
the School of Undergraduate Studies. She made a PDF file and donated it
to CompPile archives in December of 2010, and we thank her for her foresight
and generosity.
—Rich Haswell, December, 2010
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