by Evelyn Beck

English professor Cynthia Selfe has distinguished herself in a niche that puts her colleagues to sleep. In a 1999 essay that appeared in College Composition and Communication, Selfe writes, “A central irony that has shaped my professional life for as long as I can remember goes something like this: the one topic I actually know something about—that of computer technology and its use in teaching composition—is also the single subject, in my experience, best guaranteed to inspire glazed eyes and complete indifference in those portions of the CCCC [Conference on College Composition and Communication] membership, which do not immediately open their program books to scan alternative sessions or sink into snooze mode.”

Selfe’s career path didn’t initially focus on technology. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a M.Ed. and a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Texas, Austin. But lack of funds in graduate school set her in a new direction: “[Someone] showed me how to code my dissertation on the university mainframe because I didn’t have enough money to have it typed,” she says. “So in 1980 that made me a specialist. At my first job, PC’s were just coming in; I’ve had a career contemporaneous with personal computers in education.”

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