“They Want to Tell Their Story”

This paper uses interviews with five publicly engaged, university-employed sociologists or folklorists in Houston to illuminate ways that rhetoric and composition scholars studying composition history can connect our research projects to nonacademic communities near our campuses. Drawing from covenantal ethics, it argues that we stand to re-see our work’s significance if, starting with general education classes like first-year composition, we share our research with members of nearby nonacademic communities and allow members of those communities to give our research new interpretations and uses.