The twenty-three selections in this volume are essays, research studies, and personal narratives by the "silent majority" in composition studies: teachers and researchers with viewpoints that Sheryl I. Fontaine and Susan Hunter note are often voiced in private conversations but seldom printed in scholarly journals or aired at professional conferences.
Rather than focusing on the traditional categories of pedagogy and research, Fontaine and Hunter organize the essays into four sections: the invisible pedagogue of the discipline, the model of power that dominates composition, the ever-present but seldom heard student voice, and other voices excluded from professional development in composition studies.
Contributors discuss the barriers they face as teachers, of being overwhelmed by the reality of some of their students’ lives. Essayists raise questions about teaching practices that are sometimes homophobic and the effects on gay and lesbian students of the canonization of mainstream heterosexual texts. They probe the exploitation of untenured, part-time faculty—"second-class professionals" whose work is not taken seriously by their colleagues.