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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterTeaching against the TideCamille AlexanderCurrent student populations suggest that the composition classroommust become a contact zone in which Self and Other engagerather than one in which they wage war for cultural, racial, gender,or any other type of supremacy. This objective can be reached wheninstructors assign works by Other writers, which are typically excludedfrom the canon. While striving for the inclusion of the textsof the Other, the composition classroom must also address issues ofexclusion. McKenna (1990, p.31) writes, exclusion is “eurocentrism,ethnocentrism, sexism, classism and…racism”, factors that “underliechoices of what to teach and where to teach it; what to publishand what not to anoint as literature”. Twenty years later, McKenna’s(1990) observation is still relevant as identifying those texts“worthy” of being included in the canon is still a point of contentionin the academy. The questions still remain: What are the goalsof composition? and How can instructors meet these goals whiletransgressing the course’s norms?The goal of the composition classroom is to produce not onlyacademic writers but critical thinkers. I identify an academic writeras someone with the ability to produce research-based scholarlytexts reflecting an in-depth analysis of any given topic. The term“critical thinker” is multi-definitional, but for the purpose of thisessay I define it as someone with the ability to question assumptionsand to interpret information. Critical thinkers and academicwriters are produced in courses that include texts reflecting broaderperspectives and by instructors who allow students to discussand wrestle with the theories posed in each text. Subjects that werepreviously avoided or works that were excluded from the canonshould be brought into the composition classroom and given asmuch credence as their canonical predecessors. Inclusionary textselectionpractices in the composition classroom provide readerswith broader perspectives. In moving toward a more inclusivecomposition classroom, instructors can select texts penned by internationalwriters. Schaub (2003, p.94) suggests that instructorswork to “internationalize our classrooms” which he defines as“providing students, within the mission parameters of a particularwriting course, with reading, writing, and research assignmentsthat foster in them a more global vision for their writing and theirconception of writing”. Schaub (2003, p.94) also describes internationalizingthe classroom as taking the additional step of “rede-Volume03 69