Abstract
This study addresses the work of James McNab McCrimmon and his significance to the discipline of composition studies. James McCrimmon has attracted the attention of composition historians and theorists largely because he is the founding author of Writing with a Purpose, one of the longest running first-year writing textbooks in United States history. With some notable exceptions, a majority researchers describe McCrimmon as an advocate for current-traditional rhetoric and, therefore, as a detriment to progress in composition pedagogy. Although some of McCrimmon’s work appears to support this thesis, a close inspection of McCrimmon’s textbooks, articles, and speeches reveals his consistency, not with current-traditional rhetoric, but with expressivist pedagogy. Therefore, this study provides an alternative narrative to existing accounts of McCrimmon’s work and shows, among other things, McCrimmon’s concept of student agency and the right of students to their own ideas, his emphasis on writing assignments that rely on personal experience, his promotion of writing as a meaning-making activity, and his subjective stance toward the rules of usage. These concepts grow out of his commitment to expressivist principles and are present to some degree in all of his work. Thus, this study offers a revised explanation of McCrimmon’s relationship to composition studies and the significance of his role in the development of the profession.
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