Framed by historic developments-from the Open Admissions movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the attacks on remediation that intensified in the 1990s and beyond-Basic Writing traces the arc of these large social and cultural forces as they have shaped and reshaped the field.

George Otte is a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center in the PhD Programs in English, Urban Education, and Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. He served as coeditor of the Journal of Basic Writing from 1996 to 2002. Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk has taught basic writing at the City University of New York since 1974. She is currently professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and Kingsborough Community College, where she codirects the ESL program.