Preview this article: Formalized Curiosity: Outcomes of an Empirically Based Research Methods Course for English Majors, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/84/6/collegeenglish31989-1.gif

This article sheds light on moments when educators affirm and when writers assert their epistemic rights— the rights to knowledge, experience, and earned expertise. Affirmations and assertions of epistemic rights can work to counter epistemic injustice, or harm done to people in their capacities as knowers. Though an understanding of rhetoric as "epistemic" or "epistemological" is not new (e.g., Berlin; Dowst; Scott; Villanueva), I argue that we need to bring attention to the related terms and conceptual frameworks of epistemic rights and epistemic injustice. Together, these terms help to explain the wrongs (micro-inequities leading to macro-injustices) that manifest when writers are stripped of language, experience, or expertise and their attendant agency, confidence, and even personhood. This study highlights both the social stakes involved and the interactional work needed for putting one's words into the world. Hence, this project contributes empirical research in addition to an understanding of epistemic rights that can counter epistemic injustice.

Reviewed are Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process, edited by Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan, and Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition, edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa S. Mastrangelo.

In reporting their research, historians of rhetoric and composition should be more explicit and specific about their investigative methods.