Notes on Rhet/Comp, Ideology, and the Classroom in Delhi and Buffalo

Notes on Rhet/Comp, Ideology, and the Classroom in Delhi and Buffalo Shantam Goyal I like to think that appending the word “Notes” to any title automatically absolves me of the responsibility of supplying a precise thesis or claim in my articles, which is bad writing advice but convenient for me here. My experiences in, and knowledge of, the landscape of rhetoric and composition concern India and the U.S., but they are also only pinprick deep into the breadth of knowledge which has been generated about rhet/comp in both these large, diverse, ungeneralizable places. There are only a few claims I can comfortably make, like the fact that in India, our oldest extant remnants of English composition instruction in college, and to a large extent also in school, are British. Or that the young writing centres I know of in India are in the process of finding a perch for themselves amid the common belief that good writing skills are a gift, or that good reading translates into good writing. Or that for many English department graduate students in the U.S. who are known to me, and who have completed their earlier higher education in India, the teaching of rhet/comp is a doozy. Almost all of them are Indian public university graduates, and most of them have not had the privilege of teaching in or learning from one of the newer private universities which have critical thinking or composition as general education necessaries in their curricula. Delhi University too included an Academic Writing and Composition paper some time ago into the syllabus for its B.A. (Honours) English students, along with compulsory writing instruction for all other courses. However, running on the examination model rather than on a continuous assessment model, students at the end of the year are expected to answer questions like “Compare and contrast the skills of synthesis and analysis in academic writing and discuss how these critical thinking skills are essential for effective writing”: a question to be answered in