The Art of Queering Voices: A Fugue

This article, based on a roundtable discussion at the March 2007 Conference on College Composition and Communication in New York City, examines the question of CUNY's multiple identities within the legacy of Mina Shaughnessy, who coined the term "basic writing" and founded the Journal of Basic Writing in 1975.Composition theory (and practice) owes much to her groundbreaking work at CUNY's City College in the 1970s against the backdrop of the University's experiment with Open Admissions.Although much has changed since then, CUNY is still associated with that rich historical moment, and with the questions Shaughnessy and others at the time confronted.These questions, which deal with the very nature of literacy and democracy, need to be reframed for our times.