The 1980s were a consequential decade for universities. The marketization of higher education the adjunctification of labor and culture wars over curriculum transformed the landscape in a short period of time. The Battles of Texas traces the lived consequences of this upheaval by focusing on one influential institution the writing program at the University of Texas at Austin.Drawing from university records newspaper archives and presentday interviews Nate Kreuter and Mark Garrett Longaker provide an ontheground perspective of the radical creation of UT Austins writing program and the subsequent events that made national headlines the mass firing of lecturers in 1985 the national debate over multicultural content in the firstyear curriculum and the divorce of the writing program from the English Department in 1992.