College Composition and Communication
596 articlesFebruary 2019
-
Abstract
In this article, I weave new materialist theories about assemblage, community, agency, and rhetorical responsibility to argue for pedagogies that foreground writing to assemble publics and offer direct rhetorical training in campaign organizing. In describing three student activist campaigns, I demonstrate how this pedagogy challenges students to create socio-material assemblages that entice bodies into collective action—a challenge that demands tactile agility, creative activism, and often metanoic revision.
-
Abstract
We suggest that literacy narratives can be an important part of a curriculum designed to encourage students to understand themselves as developing learners and students. We know that there is great potential for literacy narratives—for narrativizing—when invited within a scaffolded curriculum of collaborative narrative inquiry. We place literacy narratives in the service of documenting learning—that is, within a pedagogical scaffolding designed to lead students through a series of moves that feature inquiry and discovery (about literacy). As such, the literacy narrative that emerges as most important is the final reflective narrative: the one we have spent all semester preparing students to write. That act of deferral creates an opportunity to put the literacy narrative (LN) assignment to different earlier use as a means for creating an ongoing, experiential literacy-learning narrative that will be realized as a reflective narrative: one we call the experiential-learning documentary (ELD).
December 2018
-
Abstract
While scholars of writing have increasingly turned toward economic issues, the role of debt has remained largely absent from composition scholarship. This article takes stock of the material and ideological magnitude of student debt in the age of neoliberalism and proposes bringing the subject into the writing classroom.
-
Muscular Drooping and Sentimental Brooding: Kenneth Burke’s Crip Time–War Time Disability Pedagogy ↗
Abstract
This article argues for understanding Kenneth Burke’s linguistic pedagogy as a teaching practice rooted in the appreciation of disability. It explores connections between the Cold War cultural context and the present day, describing how a nuanced approach to disability pedagogy can resist impulses toward competition and conflict in the classroom and on the world stage.
-
Abstract
Building on studies of alternative rhetorics, this article envisions personal writing pedagogy as a relational endeavor that fosters rhetorical alliances among disparate communities. I detail a particular course design through which “personal reflection” becomes a means of enacting more radical forms of belonging.
June 2018
-
Revision and Reflection: A Study of (Dis)Connections between Writing Knowledge and Writing Practice ↗
Abstract
This essay brings to light new evidence about the relationship between revision and reflective writing in the first-year writing classroom. Based on a robust study of student work, we illuminate a variety of complex relationships between the writing knowledge that students articulate in their reflections—including how they narrate their course progress, approach teacher commentary, and make decisions about their revisions—and the actual writing practices they execute in their revised essays. The essay offers pedagogical innovations that help students use reflective writing in ways that support substantive revision.
February 2018
-
Abstract
Epideictic rhetoric reifies and reshapes the shared values of a community, and in this article, I reread William E. Coles Jr.’sThe Plural Ias showing forth a classroom built upon epideictic rhetoric, his own epideictic pedagogy asking that teachers of writing engage student work not expecting to be persuaded but as observers of rhetorical display.
December 2017
-
Abstract
Code-switching pedagogies do not consider that some features of African American Verbal Tradition (AVT) are rhetorically effective mainstream communication structures in academic writing. My research asserts that when teaching language/dialect difference in majority white school settings, contrastive analysis techniques such as these may have highly negative effects on AAL (African American Language) speakers. Thus, as an alternative to code-switching pedagogical practices, I introduce a comparative approach that may be applied across all minority language groups and that highlights African and African American contributions to standardized American written communication structures and demonstrates the value of AVT in academic settings. This comparative rhetorical approach may have a positive impact on student language attitudes toward AAL by illustrating that many academic writers from varied racial/ethnic backgrounds often use AVT in their writing for rhetorical purposes and to produce lively, image-filled, concrete, readable essays.
-
Abstract
This article shares findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of students with disabilities in college-level writing and writing-intensive classrooms. I argue that normative conceptions of time and production can negatively constrain student performance, and I offer the concept of crip time (borrowed from disability theorists and disability activists) as an alternative pedagogical framework.
September 2017
-
Abstract
This article analyzes a public memory pedagogical partnership that disturbed the public memory of a community organization as an egalitarian space. How students, community partners, and I negotiated privately and represented publicly this legacy of the United States’ worst shame required us—and me—to figure out what partnership and collaboration mean in this context, whose interests come first and why, and the ethical implications of my and our choices.
-
Abstract
Writing educators have long sought to disrupt academic convention. However, we currently know little about students’ affective experiences when they are asked to compose differently. This article explores the results of a research study to illuminate the feelings and attitudes students experience when convention is disrupted and offers pedagogical suggestions based on the results.
June 2017
-
Abstract
Whereas composition studies tends to use ethics and morality interchangeably, these terms may work better when explicitly distinguished, rearticulated as a topic, and kept in heuristic conflict. The more the tension between them is exploited, the closer our approach to a pedagogy not so much ethical as just.
-
Abstract
Whereas composition studies tends to use ethics and morality interchangeably, these terms may work better when explicitly distinguished, rearticulated as a topic, and kept in heuristic conflict. The more the tension between them is exploited, the closer our approach to a pedagogy not so much ethical as just.
February 2017
-
Abstract
This article theorizes teaching as accommodation and argues for a centering of disability in writing pedagogy. It examines how universal design can improve composition classrooms, applying inclusive principles to the syllabus in particular.
-
Abstract
This article uses systems and complexity theory to illustrate key characteristics of writing as a complex system. This illustration reveals how writing works on multiple levels of scale, and adds to the body of theoretical knowledge that can be taught within the discipline of writing studies. In so doing, it shows how a complex systems writing pedagogy can benefit both researchers and students.
December 2016
-
Veterans in the Writing Classroom: Three Programmatic Approaches to Facilitate the Transition from the Military to Higher Education ↗
Abstract
Drawing upon a two-year study of student-veterans in college writing classrooms, this article analyzes three types of courses developed in an effort to respond to increased military-affiliated student enrollments: veterans-only, veteran-focused, and veteran-friendly. The article concludes with recommendations for an asset-based approach to professional development for writing faculty
-
Abstract
Translingual dispositions, characterized by a general openness to plurality and difference in the ways people use language, are central for all users of English in a globalized society, and the fostering of such proclivities is an imperative to the contemporary composition classroom. In this article, we analyze student writing that emerged from a global classroom partnership between a US university and a Hong Kong university designed to facilitate the fostering of translingual dispositions. We show that an examination of writing provides a window into the varied ways in which students negotiate their linguistic identities and construct their ideological commitments to language difference. Although composition can become a space that facilitates opportunities for students to “do” translingual dispositions, these dispositions are constitutive of a constellation of highly complex sociocultural issues and experiences and therefore cannot be expected to be articulated in a preconceived and uniform manner.
-
Abstract
This article explores bodily movement practices as a foundational component of rhetorical awareness. Through ethnographic study of dance pedagogy, the author demonstrates how genre uptake is enabled by bodily experience; learned ways of moving produce inclinations toward certain rhetorical pathways over others.Enabling students to uptake new genres means teaching them to be aware of the intersection of bodily and intellectual resources.
-
Abstract
0Make, O Muse...0.1 Knowing I was speaking about disruption, I thought what's more disruptive than playing punk music for an academic talk? So I played punk for you. I'll play some more punk for you after the talk. It's hard to be complacent when you listen to punk. If you want, stick that in your head as the soundtrack for today's talk. Punk and disruption may also produce in your mind's eye the image of friends working in a garage or the basement, and I encourage you to keep that image in your head, because whether they're taking a new approach to rock and roll or inventing the Apple computer, the garage tinkerer and inventor is our muse today as we reflect on making disruptive and innovative action in our discipline and our organization.1CCCC1.01 I've been coming to the C's for a long time, since I was a graduate student in the '80s. For me (like many of you, I'm sure), the CCCC is a natural academic home. And it's easy to see why: a wide range of pedagogical approaches visible in the program, all our theories on display, varied interests (FYC, creative nonfiction, creative writing, linguistics, rhetorical theory, history, technical and professional writing), and a general concern about writing both in the classroom and in society. The convention has one of the friendliest and most helpful group of members in higher education. It's a culture of fun (witness C's the Day and its Sparkleponies), and a culture of sharing and learning, where most of us are like Chaucers Clerk in that would we [all] learn and gladly teach1.02 We have an acceptance rate that's stingy-but not too stingy- so that we can put a lot of people on the program. There are workshops on Wednesdays, and we serve as a magnet for other organizations such as TYCA, ATTW, and WPA-GO to meet at the same general time.1.03 And during this same span of time that I've been coming to our convention (which is, unbelievably, almost thirty years), I have seen the C's take steady and meaningful steps to become more than a guild of writing teachers and researchers, but also an organization committed to openness, access, inclusivity:We have established travel and research scholarships that are designed to enable travel to and participation in the convention for both international and domestic scholars who may not have travel support from their institutions. These awards, along with reduced registration fees, have benefited a host of traditionally marginalized scholars, including contingent faculty, graduate students, retired members, Latin American scholars, tribal fellows, LGBTQ scholars, among others. And the one that started it all, the Scholars for the Dream in 1993, includes membership in NCTE/CCCC, travel assistance, and mentoring to help foster future leaders in our organization.We have an inclusive leadership structure, where elected positions on the executive committee, nominating committee, and chair rotation are broadly representative of the diversity of our organization. And we continue to evolve in this respect. Did you know, for example, that we have in the last five years added elected positions on the EC for graduate students and contingent faculty?What sort of new discussions are possible in governance with broader representation?We have created and supported research throughout our organization, rewarding scholars at all levels, from our undergraduate posters to graduate students, our book and article awards, and our wildly successful research initiative.We have taken steps to ensure inclusivity without regard to rank, tenure, job title, or type of institution. We feature undergraduate research posters, a graduate student on the EC, a thriving cross-generational (XGEN) initiative, and SIGs for grad students and retired professors. The program includes papers and roundtables from graduate students, adjunct and contingent faculty, tenure-track faculty, non-academic or alt-ac practitioners-from private institutions, two-year, four-year, regional universities, and R1's. …
September 2016
-
Abstract
Drawing from a large qualitative study, we examine how students experience writing in college, focusing on the conditions that allow students to develop their authorship and those that encourage students to experience writing as a process of following rules and regulations. We situate students’ perceptions, and the assignments and practices that led to them, within what anthropologists call “audit culture”—accounting practices and their technologies, which have migrated across institutions, including higher education. We suggest our field’s institutional status and pedagogical complexities make us especially susceptible to audit culture, and we argue that students’ experiences in our writing classrooms, where they face an ever-increasing bureaucratization of literacy, is an urgent area of research. We ask readers to consider the extent to which audit culture encourages teachers to create closed systems that privilege outcomes rather than consequences with an end-inview. We conclude by calling for an artisanal identity for both teachers and students.
-
The Indianapolis Resolution: Responding to Twenty-First-Century Exigencies/Political Economies of Composition Labor ↗
Abstract
Since the adoption and subsequent fade of the Wyoming Resolution, we have seen the political economy of writing instruction change remarkably. Certainly, composition studies’ disciplinary viability seems more solid, but the proportion of contingent writing teachers has increased to almost 70 percent. The authors of this article attribute these trends to “neoliberal creep” and attempt to think through their effects on our work and our students.
June 2016
-
The Pop Warner Chronicles: A Case Study in Contextual Adaptation and the Transfer of Writing Ability ↗
Abstract
In this case study, an accomplished academic writer struggles to produce very brief game summaries for a local newspaper as part of the service requirements to his son’s community football team. An analysis of his experience demonstrates the universal challenge of transfer regardless of prior knowledge or meta-awareness of rhetorical strategies for writing in new or unfamiliar settings and argues for a more nuanced understanding of existing ability, disposition, context, and genre in the deployment of knowledge for writing.
-
Abstract
Geocomposition engages students in writing on the move in order to explore how such writing composes the multiple layers of public places. This article describes a collaborative, location-based composition project designed for students to rhetorically engage a responsive public through locative media: media that work in and through specific sites. View a brief video abstract: Geocomposition in Public Rhetoric and Writing Pedagogy
February 2016
-
Abstract
Drawing from cultural studies and social justice education, this essay argues for the productive potential of racial inquiry in composition scholarship and pedagogy. Ethical imperatives facing rhetoric and composition are also pedagogical opportunities:to rethink multiculturalism, politicize student affect, and develop student-centered writing processes predicated upon deliberative critical inquiry.
-
Abstract
This article shares our experience designing and deploying writing assessment in English Composition I: Achieving Expertise, the first-ever first-year writing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). We argue that writing assessment can be effectively adapted to the MOOC environment and that doing so reaffirms the importance of mixed-methods approaches to writing assessment and drives writing assessment toward a more individualized,learner-driven, and learner-autonomous paradigm.
-
Abstract
Around 1986, inventional researchers began to presuppose an externalist philosophy of mind, thereby ushering in the postprocess era. Ecological composition and posthumanism,now understood as postprocess inventional models, present direct pedagogical applications, allowing different objects (e.g., databases, search engines) to qualify as writing and favoring rhetorical impact over “originality.”
December 2015
-
Abstract
This essay explores content, a word and concept now often associated with writing in fields including marketing, journalism, publishing, and technical communication. Ipresent a definition of content appropriate to writing studies and explore a range of issues and practices that the content metaphor can bring to our professional, scholarly, and pedagogical attention.
-
Abstract
This essay explores the pedagogical project of integrating digital archival research into the undergraduate classroom. We contend that rather than simply asking students to
September 2015
-
Cultural Schemas and Pedagogical Uses of Literacy Narratives: A Reflection on My Journey with Reading and Writing ↗
Abstract
A literacy narrative.
-
Abstract
Reviewed are: Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms A. Suresh Canagarajah, editor Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations A. Suresh Canagarajah Shaping Language Policy in the U.S.: The Role of Composition Studies Scott Wible Other People’s English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African AmericanLiteracy Vershawn Ashanti Young, Rusty Barrett, Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, and Kim Brian Lovejoy
-
Abstract
There has been a remarkable surge of interest in creativity in a wide variety of disciplines in recent years. Taken in aggregate, this body of work now theorizes creativity as a—foundational aspect of human cognition and intelligence. If we theorize creativity as a highly sophisticated and valuable form of cognition, it must also then be regarded as a necessary—and indispensable part of the curriculum in the writing classroom.
-
Abstract
In this article, I turn to a grounded theory study that examines the experiences of students participating in an individual project-based FYW course, exploring up close the exploits,—practices, and products of one student “writing to assemble.” I question pedagogy stayed to theory that would treat writing as primarily a technology of representation, and in its place—introduce the concept of “writing as assemblage.” Positing a theory of the writing space that underscores writing’s more generative qualities, I call for a new definition of proficiency—for all manner of first-year writing courses.
June 2015
-
Abstract
We in composition studies have countered the suspicion that what we do is “simplistic in method and impoverished in content” by insisting on our own disciplinary expertise, an insistence that has gained us administrative support and, arguably, better working conditions. Yet this article explores a problem that arose for the author as a result of her own insistence on disciplinary expertise: she had great difficulty recruiting faculty from other disciplines to teach first-year writing classes. This article suggests a solution to this problem, a strategic disingenuousness derived from the strategy developed by popular sentimental women authors of nineteenth-century America to counter the disciplinary expertise of professional male orators and rhetoricians, who looked down on the untrained speaker. The stance of strategic disingenuousness that this article advocates is more radical than the denial of expertise touted by recent scholarship in WAC and WID: it requires WPAs to withhold their expertise in the absence of any assurancethat the faculty they are training already have within themselves the knowledge they need to teach writing. An admittedly inefficient and often exasperating stance, it nonetheless represents a way for WPAs to entice faculty to teach writing and build a strong community with them.
-
Tracing Transfer across Media: Investigating Writers’ Perceptions of Cross-Contextual and Rhetorical Reshaping in Processes of Remediation ↗
Abstract
This qualitative study examines how writers perceive the mobilization and adaptation of their print-based writing knowledge and multiple literacies when remediating written essays into digital stories. It also outlines a pedagogical tool that can help writers reflect on what they might transfer as they compose across media.
February 2015
-
Abstract
This article connects the pedagogy of the multimajor professional writing (MMPW) course with two important contemporary discussions in composition studies: the pedagogy called writing about writing (WAW) and the conversation about the transferability of rhetorical knowledge from school to work. We argue that the capaciousness of the WAW approach accommodates the best of genre-based and client-based pedagogies for the MMPW course and provides a framework for expanding the course beyond skill-based outcomes to include preparing students to be learning transformers. The article includes two iterations of what a writing about writing–professional writing (WAW-PW) course can look like.
-
Abstract
This essay details the pedagogical possibilities of incorporating archival research assignments in undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses. It uses Susan Wells’s concept of the “gifts” of the archives to explore a pedagogy for undergraduate research that emphasizes uncertainty and exploration—a pedagogy that has applications beyond undergraduate archival research projects.
-
Abstract
This essay examines James Britton’s role in the development of composition studies as an academic discipline and considers the relevance of his work in the field today. It contends that his influence arose, paradoxically, through his construction of an antidisciplinary theory of the role of language in teaching and learning. Finally, in response to calls for composition studies to move away from its longstanding focus on instruction, it argues instead for an increased emphasis on pedagogical inquiry.
December 2014
-
“The Worst Part of the Dead Past”: Language Attitudes, Policies, and Pedagogies at Syrian Protestant College, 1866–1902 ↗
Abstract
To underline the value of composition’s international and multilingual history, this article presents an account of language attitudes, policies, and pedagogies at Syrian Protestant College (Beirut) between 1866 and 1902, which also provides a historical dimension to contemporary conversations about international and translingual approaches to writing research and pedagogy.
-
Abstract
Reviewed are: From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957–1974 David Fleming Interests and Opportunities: Race, Racism, and University Writing Instruction in the Post–Civil Rights Era Steve Lamos Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave Pegeen Reichert Powell Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center Tiffany Rousculp Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times Patrick W. Berry, Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Vignette: (Becoming) At Ease: A First-Year Writing Class on a Military Post, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/66/2/collegecompositionandcommunication26218-1.gif
-
Abstract
Through an examination of archival texts produced at sites of suppressed local rhetorics, this essay situates Oklahoma as a location of writing at the intersection of ecocomposition theory, critical regionalism, and composition pedagogy to establish the need for using local texts and transrhetorical analysis in writing classrooms.
September 2014
-
Abstract
Reporting on a year-and-a-half-long study of Latina/Latino multilingual students transitioning from high school to a community college or university on the US-Mexico border, this article explores how writing instruction was shaped across the three institutional locations by a variety of internal and external forces such as standardized testing pressures, resource disparities, and individual instructors. In concluding comments, the author suggests ways for composition teachers, researchers, and administrators to build connections between different locations of writing and facilitate student transitions between institutions.
-
Review Essay: Locations and Writing: Place-Based Learning, Geographies of Writing, and How Place (Still) Matters in Writing Studies ↗
Abstract
Reviewed are: Placing the Academy: Essays on Landscape, Work, and Identity Jennifer Sinor and Rona Kaufman The Locations of Composition Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser, editors What Is “College-Level Writing”? Vol. 2: Assignments, Readings, and Student Writing Samples Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg, and Sheridan Blau, editors Teaching Writing in Thirdspaces: The Studio Approach Rhonda C. Grego and Nancy S. Thompson Generaciones’ Narratives: The Pursuit and Practice of Traditional and Electronic Literacies on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands John Scenters-Zapico
-
Daughters of the Seminaries: Re-landscaping History through the Composition Courses at the Cherokee National Female Seminary ↗
Abstract
Challenging histories of male-dominated composition instruction during the nineteenth century, this article recovers composition practices at the Cherokee National Female Seminary, locating the practices at the intersections of gender, race, and colonization. Through Indigenous storytelling and archival research methods, the author asserts that our cultural locations landscape our writing histories.
June 2014
-
Abstract
Sisters and Brothers of the Struggle: Teachers of Writing in Their Worlds Charles Bazerman Internationalization, English L2 Writers, and the Writing Classroom: Implications for Teaching and Learning Terry Myers Zawacki and Anna Sophia Habib
-
Abstract
Reviewed are: Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus, eds. Redesigning Composition for Multilingual Realities Jay Jordan First Semester: Graduate Students, Teaching Writing, and the Challenge of Middle Ground Jessica Restaino
-
Abstract
Dear Colleagues and Friends~~This month's issue includes various genres- articles, symposium contributions, review essay, exchange, and poster page-that tap both time and space. In these collective texts, we have historical perspectives helping us understand our own past and allowing us to update our present; linkages to other fields of endeavor so as to enhance our own; connections across spaces to other sites of writing around the world; and closer looks at our own sites-hence the title of this introduction. As represented here, our field includes a capacious view, and as we expand sites of inquiry and activity, we have a more robust and complex view. In this introduction, then, I'll summarize each of these contributions before taking up two other tasks: (1) outlining the treat in store for us, in the combined September and December special issue of College Composition and Communication, we will learn from colleagues about various and diverse Locations of Writing; and (2) sharing with readers our new policy on rememberingIn our first article, Expanding the Aims of Public Rhetoric and Writing Peda- gogy, Writing Letters to Editors, Brian Gogan takes up how the conventional assignment of the letter to the editor can be located in what he calls an ap- proach to public rhetoric and writing pedagogy that is conducted according to the tripartite aims of publicity, authenticity, and efficacy. Drawing on his work with students, Gogan expands on these single-concept aims to situate them in relationships: publicity-as-condition and publicity-as-action, authenticity- as-location and authenticity-as-legitimation, and efficacy-as-persuasion and efficacy-as-participation. Gogan also argues that we should separate and emphasize the participation the letter-to-the-editor genre entails from the persuasion that may be its aspiration: when the efficacy of the letter-to-the- editor assignment is expanded so that it is understood in terms of participation that may lead to persuasion, public rhetoric and writing pedagogy embraces the fullness of the ecological model [of writing] by seeing the wide range of effects-persuasive or not-there within.Continuing recent work recovering our collective writing pasts, our next article details the experiences of several 19th century women, some of them from the U.S., making their educational way at Cambridge University. In 'A Revelation and a Delight': Nineteenth-Century Cambridge Women, Academic Collaboration, and the Cultural Work of Extracurricular Writing, L. Jill Lam- berton focuses on the writing these women engaged in, especially outside the classroom, in order both to succeed in the classroom and to affect wider spheres of influence. Defining this writing as a form of collaborative peer activity foster- ing agency, Lamberton identifies three benefits accruing to her 19th century subjects: (1) use of extracurricular writing that augmented and enriched cur- ricular learning; (2) use of writing to develop social networks and circulation; and (3) use of such writing to shift public opinion, looking outside the college or university for broader audiences to voice support and agitate for change.Mya Poe, Norbert Elliot, John Aloysius Cogan Jr., and Tito G. Nurudeen Jr. return us to the present as they consider how our writing programs can be enhanced: by adapting a legal heuristic used to determine what in the law is called impact. In The Legal and the Local: Using Disparate Impact Analysis to Understand the Consequences of Writing Assessment, these col- leagues first distinguish between inequities produced by intent from those produced unintentionally-the latter called disparate impact-before outlin- ing a three-part question-driven process that can identify such instances and work toward ways of changing them:Step 1: Do the assessment policies or practices result in adverse impact on students of a particular race as compared with students of other races? …
-
Abstract
This article outlines a three-part pedagogy capable of responding to the risks, rewards, and headaches associated with public rhetoric and writing. To demonstrate the purchase of this pedagogy, I revisit one of the oldest and most misunderstood public rhetoric and writing assignments: the letter-to-the-editor assignment.
February 2014
-
Abstract
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton Inside the College Gates: How Class and Culture Matter in Higher Education Jenny M. Stuber Going North, Thinking West: The Intersections of Social Class, Critical Thinking, and Politicized Writing Instruction Irvin Peckham Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education Mike Rose The Persistence and Complications of Class Sharon Mitchler The Unseen Weight of Class Bradley Dilger When Institutions and Education Reproduce Social Class Inequities: What Else Factors In? Or, The Problem of Stinky Skin Sue Hum For Whom Does It Profit? Lisa Mahle-Grisez
-
Abstract
This essay argues that multiculturalism-inflected composition classrooms often “flatten” or efface radical alterities with which students—and teachers—should be encouraged to grapple. The authors demonstrate some of the limitations of such pedagogies, offer examples of provocative texts that celebrate difference—not identity—as a powerful critical and compositional tool for exploring subjectivity and justice, and call for a shift toward acknowledging our potential incommensurability and unknowability as a fruitful way to engage issues of social justice.