Juxtapositions: Ideas for College Writers

Juxtapositions is an interdisciplinary text designed to help students develop critical reading, writing, thinking, and speaking skills. It fits into traditional composition programs as well as interdisciplinary programs, while heading a trend in composition studies away from personal, subjective writing oriented around current events and toward the kind of traditional academic writing considered a prerequisitite skill in upper-level courses.

The units in the text pair a variety of canonical readings in the humanities with an equally wide array of autobiographical essays and short stories. One disciplinary essay representing an important insight in the history of ideas — as well as a basic type of argument — is grouped with two shorter selections: a short story and a nonfiction essay, usually autobiographical. The lead essay demonstrates a theory, and the two following pieces give a social context for the theory.

The task of the student is to make an argument placing the theory in each unit within a social context by juxtaposing at least two texts from the unit. These pairings of texts help student writers learn to move between the abstract and the concrete — a necessary component of successful college writing. In this way, Juxtapositions works surprisingly well with both underprepared urban students and students in the Ivy League, which also now has writing programs.