College English - Volume 63, Issue 4, 2001

Addresses the hundreds of web sites devoted to the memory of Diana. Provides a thick description of the way in which people are writing and using the Internet in everyday life, with a special emphasis on the way in which this writing brings them into a public sphere. Concludes that hypermedia offers the immediate sense of audience and community.

Maps out two simultaneous and mutually reinforcing phenomena: (1) the material conditions that have given rise to hierarchically arranged writing programs; and (2) the attendant cultural values that have made possible the feminization as well as the racialization of composition teaching. Argues that writing programs have emerged by way of divisions in labor, separating mental labor from mechanical labor.

Begins with a quick history of the English profession’s response to the prospect/specter of the computer as reader of student writing. Describes two programs that are now being heavily marketed and publicized nationally. Sketches out some of the implications of these programs for members of the profession of English in America.