By: Doug Hesse, NCTE Past President
Peter Elbow, a towering figure in writing studies, whose accolades included receiving the CCCC Exemplar Award, passed away February 6, at the age of 89.
Peter burst into composition with his 1973 book Writing without Teachers. His assumption there and in several other works (notably, Writing with Power) was that individuals possess profound writing resources they should recognize, respect, and cultivate—and so should their peers and teachers. He was our field’s foremost advocate of freewriting and pedagogies like “the believing game/the doubting game,” writers alternatively proceeding with great confidence and with intense skepticism.
Peter was cast, not of his choosing, as the avatar of expressivism, a teaching/writing philosophy (mis)characterized as privileging effusions of personal feeling, experience, and opinions. Expressivism was often contrasted with cognitive and social theories of writing, and for some, Elbow’s famous exchange with David Bartholomae in the 1990s set contrasting compass points.
To be fair, some thought him naïve. But Peter’s views were always more sophisticated than their glib caricature, grounded in a Romantic philosophy that centered individuals in writing processes, whether they were arguing political positions, explaining ideas, or trying to figure out the world.
Peter held his professional colleagues in similar high regard. He was a generous man who showed up for events and for others, soft spoken but also with great intensity. He would process ideas with a furrowed forehead and squint-closed eyes, usually in a turtleneck and brown sports coat, free-thinking his way to breakthroughs, a capacious mind at work.
In the past century of composition studies, only a scant handful of people have sustained new schools of writing instruction. Peter Elbow was one of them.