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xiiIntroductionCompeting and RetreatingCollege teachers react in a variety of ways to this wealth of perspectives,but at least two ways stand out. At a minimum, some teachers compete.They seize on a theory, advocate for it, let it inform their teachingalthough some theories implicitly trivialize teaching, in which case"inform" is not the right word.Meanwhile, other teachers retreat, seeing the wealth of perspectivesnot as a wealth but as a confusion-producing impoverishment. Theymay fall back on how they have always operated in the classroom,doing whatever seems to work, imagining themselves to be theoryfreeandglad to be sobecause they rarely attend colloquia, read ajournal, or go to a conference. They take what they assume to be acommonsensical, jargon-free approach to their everyday work.Those who seize on theory can seem officious, offering up the newest,the best, the ONLY radish, seemingly talking always and only aboutradisheswhen those around them want only to get on with it. Thosewho retreat, however, can be just as alarming. For they revel in whatthey imagine to be their theory-free status (no radishes, no radishes atall) but may in fact operate on the basis of strongly held, if unacknowledged,theoretical assumptions.Teachers of "creative writing," ac: the subject is generally defined,may well make up a disproportionate share of those who retreat fromtheory. I want to turn now to explore some causes and effects of suchretreat.Wendy Bishop's and my perceptions about this retreat, its causes,and its effects spring from our own experiences teaching literature,composition, and creative writing for some fifteen years each at avariety of universities in California, Florida, Alaska, Washington, Arizonaaswell as in Nigeria and Germany. They also result from ourexperience with a Special Interest Group and postconvention workshopsat CCCC during the past several years. They come from the processof soliciting material for this collection and arise out of reading essaysand books in an area of inquiry that integrates creative writing, pedagogy,rhetoric, composition studies, literary theories, and cultural studies.(We have included a substantial bibliography that suggests the contoursof this blending.)Our sense is that the retreat fromor at least resistance totheorymay spring in part from teachers seeing themselves as writers first andteachers second: a distant second, as in "it (teaching) pays the bills."If pedagogy is not considered important enough to conceptualizetobother with intellectuallythen the notion of theory is in a sense4