Mentoring–and (Wo)mentoring–in composition studies

I am a woman who began graduate school in the early 1970s with no place in or access to the master-apprentice model of mentoring. And I have been, at various points in my career, more of a maverick than a model of traditional practice in academe. So it is ironic to find myself now a role model for female (and male) students and probationary faculty in my department's graduate program in rhetoric and composition and the author of this chapter on mentoring in composition studies. What I would like to do here, though, is suggest some ways we can put the roles of maverick and mentor in apposition, rather than opposition, in order to bring about change in the ideology of power that underlies typical mentoring relationships.