Dappled Discipline at Thirty: An Interview with Janice M. Lauer

Abstract

2014 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Janice M. Lauer’s “Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline,” in which Lauer looks back to the field’s “pioneering efforts” at cobbling together a disciplinary identity—as she articulated, the field of rhetoric and composition’s most important questions “would have remained isolated and unexplored as they had been for decades if it were not for … a shared trait of these early theorists—their willingness to take risks, to go beyond the boundaries of their traditional training into foreign domains in search of starting points, theoretical launching pads from which to begin investigating these questions” (21). This interview reengages Lauer’s suggestion that the field’s early boundary-crossing transformed rhetoric and composition into a multifaceted and dappled discipline composed of a manifold of theoretical and onto-epistemological perspectives.

Notes

1 We would first like to thank Janice Lauer for taking the time to respond to our interview questions. From her annual guest lectures at Purdue University to informal conversations, Janice remains an impactful and generous teacher. We would also like to thank Theresa Enos for her encouragement in marking the thirtieth anniversary of “Dappled Discipline” as well as Louise Wetherbee Phelps for reading and providing us with thoughtful comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyle P. Vealey

Kyle P. Vealey is a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. His research interests include professional and technical writing, digital rhetorics, and research methodology, particularly in the context of disaster response and infrastructure studies. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Nathaniel A. Rivers

Nathaniel A. Rivers is an assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University. His current research addresses new materialism's and object-oriented ontology's impacts on public rhetorics such as environmentalism and urban design. He is at work on a book project currently titled The Strange Defense of Rhetoric and an edited collection exploring the impact of Bruno Latour on rhetoric and composition. His work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Kairos, Technical Communication Quarterly, Enculturation, Janus Head, O-Zone, and Present Tense. He can be contacted at [email protected].