What is genre theory a theory of? This paper argues that genre theory is an inquiry into the formation of fundamental categories of interpretation in history, where even the question of whether literary and rhetorical genres are in themselves fundamental is left open. Efforts to theorize genre are therefore beset by paradox since the categories that matter at any given time may not be literary or rhetorical genres. "Mauvais Genres" explores the paradox of genre through an analysis of the historical transition from a late Neoclassical poetics based upon genre to a modern system of philosophical aesthetics based upon trans-generic categories of the beautiful, the ugly, and the sublime, categories that fulfill the genre-function even as they marginalize genre as a means of classifying and evaluating texts. Principal figures are Locke, Shaftesbury, Hartley, Berkeley, Hume, Reynolds, and Baillie.

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Pedagogies for teaching high school English and college composition often divide between so-called student-centered approaches and their opposite, variously labeled teacher-centered, traditionalist, or product-based. Where students collaborate in the discovery of knowledge, learning is said to be student-centered. Where teachers impose their knowledge on students, as in the "banking model of education" described by Paulo Freire, the teacher-centered approach holds sway. 1 Implied in this distinction is good will on the part of those who take their students' side, and something less than good will on the part of those who impose their authority on them.Because teachers work for students, every instructor should take his or her students' side; every teacher should ask which assignments in which order will foster the best results; every educator should make the classroom a lively place where students learn to think for themselves. The claim that one approach to teaching is more student-centered than another therefore carries a polemical charge. It sets an educational philosophy that favors the advancement of students against another that holds them back. But what if a misunderstanding arose as to what "student-centered" means, and, as a result, a pedagogy passing for progressive actually inhibited progress? What if this misunderstanding unfolded, like the internally consistent logic of a bad dream, and became policy, ruling high school English and college composition programs across America, gaining dominance over the

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