In its first issues, more than a quarter century ago, fBWwas organized by theme: "Error" was the very first, followed by "Courses," "Applications," and "Programs," among others."Uses of Grammar" proved so popular that it sold out, and even our own archive has a gap where that issue belongs.These early issues convey not only the excitement of a new and challenging enterprise offering the compelling possibility of genuine social change, but also a sense of solidity now long gone from most serious work as the field has moved from basic skills through process to post process.For nearly �enty years, fBW editors have eschewed pre-determined themes and have instead used this column to trace connections among essays that were randomly submitted and randomly selected.This enterprise is not entirely haphazard, however, for particular questions, terms, and concepts have currency in the field at any one time.Key authors and writings provide a conceptual framework or set of touchstone references that recur again and again.Although a verifying search has not been conducted, it seems entirely safe to claim that no issue of JBW has been without at least one essay that cites Mina Shaughnessy.Indeed, the first issue of fBWthat fails to have any reference to Errors and Expectations or "Diving In" will mark a milestone not only in the history of this journal bu tin the field ofBasic Writing.Similarly, Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone," a touchstone since it first appeared in Profession 91 in 1991, continues to speak so tellingly that four of the five articles in this issue cite it.Bartholomae, Bizzell, Bishop, Smitherman, Villanueva, and a list of other familiar-powerful-names provide language, concepts, or images that authors continue to quote, stand on, or contest.Moreover, submissions to journals are often prompted by questions or con cerns that arise contemporaneously across colleges and universities.In rereading the essays to prepare these introductions, we sometimes feel as if we are checking the pulse of the field: Where are the tensions?The complacencies?How have the lines shifted?Writing critically about critical pedagogy, fluid contact zones, and shifting political fortunes, authors sometimes convey the impression that the only certainty in Basic Writing is that everything is at all times contested.A more accurate statement, however, might be that everything will at some time be contested.This interest on the part of authors, who are after all academics, in the evidently problematic-or the about to be problemati zed-masks the presence of the currently uncontested, the sometimes unacknowledged com mon ground.
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