IN MEMORIAM
MAXINE COUSINS HAIRSTON
Maxine Cousins Hairston, professor emerita of English, died
on July 22, 2005, at the age of 83. In a remarkable career, Hairston
examined the role of rhetoric and writing programs across the
country and challenged assumptions about the roles women might
play in the academy. Indeed, she considered the undervalued position
of writing teachers in English departments analogous to the status
of women in general. She succeeded in bettering the condition
of both.Maxine Hairston was born on April 9, 1922, in Ironwood,
Michigan, where she attended public schools. She earned a B.A.
in English at the University of Michigan in 1944. Shortly thereafter,
she met and married James Walter Hairston, moving to the Hairston
farm at Rice’s Crossing, Texas and raising two children,
Coles and Lucy.
The ranch gave Hairston a practical perspective on life and
labor that would inform her later academic work. With her children
growing, Maxine Hairston returned to school, earning an M.A.
in English at The University of Texas at Austin in 1958 and a
Ph.D. in 1968. Her dissertation focused on the work of Texas
writer George Sessions Perry. What some regarded as a late start
for a scholarly career, Hairston saw as a suitable trajectory
for many women. Although she retained an interest in literature
throughout her life, her employment as an instructor in the Department
of English following graduation led her to take a serious interest
in rhetoric, a field then in the early stages of intellectual
renewal.
Hairston soon established her reputation nationally as an advocate
for professionalizing the teaching of writing. Throughout her
career, she would remain committed to two constituencies. The
first was students of all ages and backgrounds, whose ideas and
writing she respected deeply and for whom she developed writing
programs and wrote a series of successful and influential textbooks.
Her second community was the graduate students, lecturers, and
part-time instructors, most of them women, who taught the bulk
of writing classes across the country. She labored to give these
teachers more power over their careers and subject matter. In
a series of highly pragmatic essays, she challenged writing instructors
to rethink the nature of their pedagogy and to understand its
importance. In Texas, she was elected president of the
Conference of College Teachers of English (CCTE) in 1983. Active
nationally in both the National Council of Teachers of English
and the Conference of College Composition and Communication,
she chaired the latter organization in 1985, and, in a much-quoted
convention address, entitled “Breaking our Bonds and Reaffirming
Our Connections,” called for the separation of writing
programs from departments of English.
Hairston waded into controversy again in 1991 with “Ideology,
Diversity, and the Teaching of Writing,” an essay published
in College Composition and Communication just prior
to her retirement. In it, Hairston repudiated a growing disciplinary
movement to make first-year writing courses political in their
orientation and design. Provoking more response than any article
in the history of the journal, Hairston’s essay reprised
her commitment to students, whose education as writers, she argued,
should not be subordinated to the political visions of instructors.
At UT, Hairston rose from instructor to full professor. She
served as director of freshman English and later as associate
dean of liberal arts. Active in both graduate and undergraduate
writing programs, Hairston served as a mentor to young scholars
and, in particular, helped many women develop successful academic
careers, guiding them both intellectually and personally. A persistent
advocate of independent writing programs, she saw that vision
fulfilled at UT with the establishment of a Division of Rhetoric
and Composition shortly after her retirement in 1992.
Her retirement, however, did not mark the end of her intellectual
or academic endeavors. She traveled extensively with her second
husband, David Cooper, a retired professor from Hunter College,
whom she had married in 1987. She remained committed to Democratic
Party politics, local and national, and served on the board of
trustees for both Planned Parenthood of Austin and the First
Unitarian Universalist Church. She continued to work on her textbooks,
seeing The Riverside Reader into its eighth edition,
the Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers into its seventh,
and Successful Writing, its fourth. She returned to
graduate school in 1999 to pursue a master’s degree in
European history, which she earned in 2003. In 2002, former graduate
students honored her by publishing Against the Grain: A Volume
in Honor of Maxine Hairston, a collection of her major articles,
as well as essays recounting her achievements and scholarly life.
Anyone who knew Maxine Hairston understood the vitality of her
intellect, her delight in learning, and her eternal goodwill
and optimism. Even as she faced surgery in June 2005, Maxine
looked forward to a recovery speedy enough for her to attend
classes again in the fall. Nothing would have pleased her more.
<signed>
William Powers Jr., President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
Sue Alexander Greninger, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee
consisting of Professors John J. Ruszkiewicz (chair), Lester
L. Faigley, and Anthony C. Hilfer.
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