ABSTRACT
Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 19791994: A History, written by Gail E. Hawisher, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe (1996), has often been read as the most prominent history of computers and writing, although the authors seemingly did not mean it to be read as such. Indeed Hawisher, LeBlanc, Moran, and Selfe carefully qualify their project, acknowledging that other histories might go back further in time or go beyond American higher education. In the margins of History, for instance, the authors provide important technological advancements and life events of the 1960s and 1970s, and in her preface to the book, Lisa Gerrard points to K-12 innovations of those decades as especially valuable to know. Beyond the specific focus of History and how it might be expanded, I also note that the book’s defining computers and writing to be a subfield of composition studies represents a limitation as well. A community view that spans many fields and disciplines invites much broader histories.
