Additional entrants in the Lindemann v Tate conversation

Although the debate between Lindemann and Tate took center stage, others entered the conversation. Erwin Steinberg and Michael Gamer both had articles in the March 1995 issue of College English, the issue that featured Lindemann’s and Tate’s second installments mentioned above. Steinberg, in his article, “Imaginative Literature in Composition Classrooms?” focuses on the history of the use of literature in the composition classroom. He rejects Tate’s assertion that literature has recently been ejected from composition classrooms. Using Albert Kitzhaber’s 1963 report, “Themes, Theories, and Therapy,” he states that there is no typical composition classroom because the content of the courses varies so greatly from one institution to the next. Gamer, in his article, “Fictionalizing the Disciplines: Literature and the Boundaries of Knowledge,” rethinks Tate’s dilemma by replacing the concept of writing beyond the disciplines, writing from inside of the academy to outside, with his own alternative which focuses on writing that moves from outside the disciplines to inside the academy. He suggests that because academic discipline’s boundaries, as do the real world ones, overlap that students would be well served by reading, such as literature, that reflects that overlap.

Later, in 1996, Mariolina Salvatori, enters the conversation with her article, “Conversations with the Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition.” She moves away from focusing on the presence of literature in the classroom to the actual reading of the literature. To support her claim that that reading and writing are interconnected, she details theories such as that put forth by John Clifford and John Schilb in their 1985 essay, “Composition Theory and Literary Theory.” She offers discussion on her approach to teaching which stems from the assumption that reading and writing—literature and composition—are interconnected.