Introduction
    Joan Marcus

    I'll admit it – I'm one of those last minute teachers. Two days before classes start I'm still tinkering with my syllabus, still gathering my readings together, then rushing off to Campus Copy where the harried clerk tells me that, once again, the packet won't be ready in time for the start of classes. Then it's back up the hill to rework my reading schedule accordingly. And of course there's the little matter of ordering textbooks. The good folks at Follet's Orange Bookstore try to get me down there earlier in the season. They send chipper reminders, even provide me with my very own order forms sent straight to my mailbox. Nothing works – I'm always down there two weeks before classes start, putting in a request for a rush order. Occasionally I'll call a few days later to add a book or even cancel an order. Why? Why can't I make a simple decision? Is it my birth sign? My bohemian upbringing? My tendency to be distracted by the smallest things (TV sitcoms, Vanity Fair articles, infant toys, cats on the street, flies)?

    Okay, it's all of those things, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm rarely happy with the books that I use in my classes, and I'm always searching for something better, usually right up until the eleventh hour. I've never found a textbook that thrilled me. I tend to use a small portion of the readings and an even smaller portion of the instructional materials, which results in the inevitable complaints from students that they've wasted their money. More often than not, I toss together a reader and let that stand as my central course text. My readers are filled with tried and true essays and excerpts, but even these have a shelf life. By their third semester of use, the process of discovery is gone for me and I approach class discussions with a kind of inevitability – I know how my students will respond, or at least how I want them to respond. And where's the fun in that?

    The articles that follow are my attempt to find out what all of you are using in your classes. I know that I'm not the only one out there agonizing over text use, and I thought the community as a whole might benefit from a collection of book reviews and reflections – a print version of the sort of sharing that we already do in the halls and over email. When I first put out the call for submissions, the question of what we are using was uppermost in my mind. I wanted to hear about textbooks and anthologies and book-length works of non-fiction, critical studies and films and student-authored texts. Eventually, however, what we are using became less interesting to me than how and why we are using it.

    The authors included in this issue make use of texts in an extraordinary number of ways, which I think is typical of our program. Some of us use texts as models – models of writing conventions and other rhetorical strategies, but also models of inquiry, analysis, and research methodology. Or, we use texts to help students exercise their critical skills by questioning these same things – authorial strategies, methods, analytical approaches. We use texts to help students gain an understanding of their own writing processes, practices and choices. And we use them as inspiration – they inspire inquiry and reflection, and they provide fodder for students' own theories about the way their world works and the way this plays itself out in language. Often we use texts to provide a critical lens through which to read the world, or a new perspective on the nature of writing or the University or the workplace. Finally, we use texts as a way of getting students to reflect on the reading process itself, on their own ability to engage with and react to texts, to question and challenge texts, to read texts in relation to one another and in relation to what they have already come to understand about the world. And we are not in agreement about this. For every instructor who uses reading to provide a critical lens for her students is another who finds this practice restrictive, even tyrannical. For every teacher who uses reading to model rhetorical conventions is another who questions the value of this practice.

    If anything, this collection shows that we're a complicated and dynamic bunch of instructors, and my initial failed attempts to organize these works into a cohesive volume are further proof. I had at first planned to organize according to studio level or type of text (essay collection, critical study, textbook), but these categories proved shallow and dull compared to the complex issues raised in these articles. Then I thought I'd separate out the articles that theorize about text use, but this, too, proved artificial; the line between theory and practice is, after all, a vague one, and separating one from the other seems not only pointless, but antithetical to the practice of reflective teaching. In the end, I grouped these articles into categories according to how texts are offered up within the classroom or presented to fellow instructors. In the first section, "Book-length Texts and Course Design: Ideas from Three Studio Levels," three teachers describe how a specific book acts as either a centerpiece or a pivotal text within their course plans. "Student Writing as Shared Text" includes articles on making use of student-authored works, both in-process texts produced by class members and published texts available in the Odyssey reader and on the Odyssey web site. In "The Politics of Texts Use," teachers explore ways of using politically charged material; in one case, the political implications of classroom text use itself are explored. Finally, we include a section of textbook and anthology reviews for honors and professional and technical writing courses.

    Readers of this issues will find articles that focus on all four studio levels (a table of contents organized according to studio level is available on page 5) and many different types of texts. While no articles on the use of computer-mediated texts are included, an upcoming Reflections issue devoted entirely to computers in the studios is due out next spring. The use of web and other virtual documents is certainly a compelling topic, and I invite any of our readers to contribute articles dealing with the question of how these texts might be taken up in the classroom.