Letter to Shedden (6/28/12)

Hi David:

Just a few words about the latest packet you sent. In short, the packets you send continue to provide me with lots of really interesting information. Thank you! Keep them coming! 

1. Faculty Annual Reports: I will take as many of these as you can find. College faculty usually write one annual report detailing their work of the previous year. They provide important information about the year to year work Don did, corroborate other sources of information, and often contain really interesting passages that convey Don's sense of both UNH and his department. For example, there was an aside reference in this report to an English Department "writing group"--I now would like to learn more about this...it corroborates an important point I am coming to about the English Department as a place that valued writing and sharing writing "in process"--even among themselves--and not just the teaching of literature, which was and still is the emphasis in many English Departments. UNH is unique in that there are probably not too many places where faculty would sit down to actually share and talk about writing--especially if it's non-academic writing (too many egos). If I want to make this case for UNH's uniqueness, I need to be able to explain it and knowing that there was a faculty writing group back in 1971 (!) is one way to do so. 

2. "A draft of an interview with myself on writing fiction for Sondra Perl's class." (7/12/81)--this document, in itself, is not all that interesting. What is interesting is the information in the header. 

Sondra Perl is a well-known researcher of the cognitive process of writing in the field. In the early days of Don's writing on writing, there was virtually no empirical research into the composing process. This started to change in the 1970s and by the early 1980s, lots of folks were studying writers' composing processes, including Perl, who wrote a very famous article on a study of the composing process of a "basic writer" from CUNY named "Tony." 

What's interesting to me is that Don had no Ph.D. and he came to all of this from the perspective of a journalist and practicing writer. By the late 1970s, Ph.D. programs in composition were first beginning to appear. In the 1970s/80s, Don suddenly found himself no longer one of only a few "experts" on writing in this newly burgeoning field. He had spent most of his career in the university studying his own writing process (obviously, this can only get you so far). Now folks were coming along and studying writing from a more rigorous experimental/naturalistic perspective. 

One of my enduring interests is how Don shifted his professional orientation over the years. It's easy to be an expert (regardless of your credentials) when there are very few other voices out there saying what you're saying. It's a bit different when you begin to find that there are folks who are studying writing in more rigorous ways and who have academic credentials that are more "advanced" than your own (Don had a Pulitzer, but his highest academic degree was a bachelor's). So it's interesting to see, with this Perl interview, that in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Don was engaged with this "new class" of composition scholars (with bona fide academic credentials). He co-wrote another article with a woman named Carol Berkenkotter, another well-known academic researcher in composition (1983). It appeared that he evolved with the times and was able to shift his role in the field a bit from "expert" to "fellow researcher" or (with limitations, as Don never conducted original research on anything or anyone other than himself). So, I welcome any additional documents you can provide which shed light on his relationships with colleagues in the field.

3. There are, of course, different "episodes" or "scenes" in any career. You've sent me a few documents now that help me to understand a trip Don made to Wyoming to teach in fall 1982. I welcome any further materials you find on this "episode" in his career. It appears to have been a really interesting and productive and BUSY time. 

4. In addition to annual reports, syllabi are very interesting to me. You included a syllabus in this packet from the fiction writing course Don taught at Wyoming. I would welcome additional syllabi or classroom materials.

Finally, letters, letters, letters...letters (to colleagues, to bosses, to friends, to...whoever, no matter how mundane they may seem) continue to be a really interesting and revealing source of information. I welcome more letters! :)