| This dissertation consists of a historical investigation of the required composition and rhetoric course at Bryn Mawr College, a women's college, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The purpose of the study is twofold. First, it is to determine how composition and rhetoric were taught to women during a period when higher education for women was rare and educational institutions often compromised their curriculum and instruction to accommodate conservative ideas about women's place in society. Second, it is to trace the influence of utilitarian ideas and practices related to current-traditional rhetoric in a college that advocated the primary value of a liberal arts education. Through college publications, administrative records and correspondence, teacher publications, and student papers, the development of the two-year required course in composition and rhetoric at Bryn Mawr is traced. The dissertation discusses how M. Carey Thomas and Mary M. Gwinn first designed the course in the late nineteenth century. It also analyzes the writings by one student, Margery Scattergood, who studied at Bryn Mawr College from 1913–1917. Composition and rhetoric instruction at Bryn Mawr was closely linked to the required lectures in the history of English literature and foregrounded practice in literary criticism. An analysis of instructors' comments questions the dominance of composition practices associated with current-traditional rhetoric at the beginning of the twentieth century. The comments emphasized focus and development of argument, and were, to a considerable extent, based on audience considerations. In addition, instructors foregrounded the writing process through the extensive use of revision. A re-organization of the composition work in 1916 under Howard J. Savage, a recent Harvard graduate, heralded the advent of more utilitarian-based composition course, separate from the literature course. |
