College Composition and Communication Sep 2023

Assimilation/Appropriation: What Jewish Discourses in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies Tell Us about the Limitations of Inclusion

Mara Lee Grayson

Abstract

Drawing upon original post-structural phenomenological research, this article explores how Jewish discourses are pathologized and marginalized in rhet/comp spaces in ways that impact theorizing, pedagogy, professional interaction, and disciplinary knowledge production and how the academy’s white Christian hegemony reifies itself through these processes. As the limited assimilative success of Jewish people demonstrates, inclusion is not inherently equitable, nor does it necessarily change the structures of white supremacy. Ultimately, I suggest that cultural rhetorics contributes a more critical conceptualization of “inclusion” for the academy that acknowledges the limitations and dangers of assimilation into whiteness.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2023-09-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc202332667
Open Access
Closed
Topics
race and writing multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Fiss (2026)
    “No Mining Engineer Could Be a Lady”: A Historical Case Study of Drag and Humor…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Aguilar (2025)
    AI Writing Is Always Embodied: Building a Critical Awareness of the Invisible L…
    College Composition and Communication

Cites in this index (2)

  1. Fernheimer (2010)
    Talmidae Rhetoricae: Drashing Up Models and Methods for Jewish Rhetorical Studies
    College English
  2. Spack (1997)
    The (In) Visibility of the Person(al) in Academe
    College English
Also cites 15 works outside this index ↓
  1. Ahmed (2007)
    A Phenomenology of Whiteness
    Feminist Theory  ↗
  2. Benor (2009)
    Do American Jews Speak a ‘Jewish Language?’ A Model of Jewish Linguistic Distinctiveness
    The Jewish Quarterly Review  ↗
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     ↗
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    American Speech  ↗
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    Antisemitism on College Campuses: A Phenomenological Study of Jewish Students’ Lived Expe…
    Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism  ↗
  7. Grayson (2023)
    Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary: Conflations and Contradictions in Compo…
     ↗
  8. Laitman (2022)
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CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →

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