When I was asked to edit this anthology and got my first look at the Reflections archives, I'll admit that the whole project had me a bit daunted. The sixteen issues of Reflections in Writing, published by the Writing Program between Fall, 1986 and Spring, 1993, grew out of historical circumstances completely unfamiliar to me, contained within them debates and tensions for which I (as an instructor relatively new to the program) had no context. The earliest issues seemed especially alien. Produced in elite type without the use of computers, they reminded me of my father's graduate school manuscripts from the 50's. (We grow so used to computer-generated texts, we forget that the days of white-out and gummed reinforcements aren't far behind us.) What became clear after not too long, however, was that Reflections, the premier issue of which was published in the program's first year, served a vital function right from the start. At a time when teachers and administrators were wrestling with new concepts in writing instruction, working within the broad guidelines of the Spiral Curriculum to figure out what, exactly, a writing studio should look like, Reflections provided a much-needed forum through which the controversial and exciting work of remaking a program from the ground up could happen.
Ten years later, as we get ready to revive Reflections after a four year hiatus, it seems clear to me that the need for such a journal is as great as it ever was. In fact, it is precisely because the program is well established that an in-house journal devoted to the exchange of ideas becomes invaluable. Change in the Writing Program has traditionally occurred on a grass-roots level. Instructors innovate within the classroom, share those innovations with one another, and eventually the program itself appears to take on a new shape. Even at a time when many of us feel that the writing studio is a fairly well-established phenomenon, this innovation and grass-roots change continues to happen every day. Often the dissemination of knowledge happens through hall and office talk and during fall and spring conferences, but for the last four years, there has be no formal written document, no published venue through which this organic program development might be recognized.
To initiate this process, and in the spirit of celebrating and reexamining the program on its ten-year anniversary, we offer Reflections 17, a retrospective issue including articles from past Reflections and commentary and contextual material from current program instructors. Of the sixteen issues of Reflections, all but two have been represented in this collection. (Issues 10 and 15 are devoted to undergraduate student voices, and since the mission of the anthology is to reexamine our development as teachers and as a program, we chose not to include selections from these.) I would encourage people to see this retrospective issue not as a "best of" collection, but rather as a document which tracks developmental moments in the program's history, and in the history of individual instructors. Though I am very pleased with all of our selections, many excellent articles couldn't be included in the interest of space. Other factors that helped to determine selection were the need to represent each of the fourteen issues as evenly as possible, and to publish the work of full-time faculty, Professional Writing Instructors, and TAs alike (many current PWIs and administrators were TAs when they wrote the articles featured in these pages). As a PWI whose service in the program began the semester following the publication of the last issue of Reflections, I came to this editorship without any early- or mid-program history of my own, and thus without specific memories of the circumstances surrounding each issue. For this reason, my selections were made with two purposes in mind: to showcase developmental moments in program history in a way that would make these moments intelligible for program members who didn't actually experience them (and even for those who did); and to feature articles that stand on their own, independent of their historical circumstances, that seem relevant and interesting years after they were written. These two purposes may seem to contradict one another. On the one hand, I hope to construct an anthology whose historical context is clear; on the other hand, I would like that anthology, or parts of it anyway, to transcend that historical context. Ultimately, though, perhaps these purposes aren't so at odds with one another. What I would like most of all is for this anthology to allow us to see where we've been as a program, to take the issues that arise out of these historical circumstances and to interrogate and recast them in terms of our own current teaching issues, our own moment in program history.
The commentary that current program instructors have provided as a supplement to these articles constitutes the chief means through which this might be accomplished. In a series of extraordinarily varied responses, the twelve teachers who comment on their own (and others') articles provide invaluable historical context for their readers, reflect on their own teaching transformations, and ask some vital questions about teaching practices, curriculum, the state of the profession, technology, even the university itself. If an anthology such as this one can accomplish anything, I hope it would be to facilitate our engagement in such reflection and questioning, and in the productive dialogue that should be its inevitable result.