Students Playingas Scholars and Selves: Academic Synthesis as Conversation Game

In his classic article “Inventing the University,” David Bartholomae argues that writers

entering the university find themselves submerged in a number of new communities,

each replete with its own language and customs. In significant ways, these students

are outsiders, working at the periphery of the community as they “try on peculiar ways

of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing” (2003, p. 623).

At least part of our role as teachers of composition, then, is to help these students