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February 10, 2005
Pitching a Propsal
My work in education has largely centered around an examination of critical pedagogy and its relation to whiteness studies. I am interested in white identity formation, privilege, and the disruption of the invisibility that surrounds it all.
With this project, I would like to look at how issues of race and identity (with a particular focus on whiteness) have been or could be addressed in the composition classroom. This is particularly relevant to our situation at Syracuse considering the work being done with the diversity grant. I am also drawn to this topic because of the controversy surrounding it. The issue of doing “diversity work” in FYC (as a mandatory class) is hotly contested. Thus, I’ll have a number of questions to consider.
How and when did race first enter the composition classroom as a topic?
How has the comp classroom incorporated race as a topic of inquiry?
How, if at all, does the discussion of race take up questions of whiteness and privilege?
What debates surround the effectiveness of FYC as the place to do “race work”?
Ideally, I would like this project to accomplish two things:
-Trace a trajectory for the development of this topic in the field.
-Offer some insight for potential pedagogical directions in the future.
My concerns are many. The immensity of the project (even after having focused in on a more specific area) is daunting. It would seem to entail some sort of archival work and/or rhetorical analysis of mission statements and syllabi. I guess what challenges me most is finding a starting point. After looking at the source list for readings on activism and critical pedagogy, I’ve identified the following texts as potentially helpful.
Aronowitz, Stanley. "Towards Radicalism: The Death and Rebirth of the American Left." Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship, and the State. Ed. David Trend. New York: Routledge, 1996. 81-101.
Bell, Sandra, M. Morrow, and Evangelis Tastsoglou. "Teaching in Environments of Resistance: Toward a Critical, Feminist, and Antiracist Pedagogy." Meeting the Challenge: Innovative Feminist Pedagogies in Action. Ed. Maralee Mayberry and Ellen Cronan Rose. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research." College English 61.3 (1999).
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change." College Composition and Communication 47.1 (February 1996): 7-28.
Ellsworth, Elizabeth. Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address. NewYork: Teachers College P, 1997.
Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering? Working Through the
Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy." Harvard Educational Review 59 (1989): 297-324.
Gallagher, Chris. "'Just Give Them What They Need': Transforming the Transformative Intellectual." Composition Studies 28.2 (Fall 2000): 61-83.
Harris, C.I. "Whiteness as Property." Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. Ed. Kimberlé Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K. Thomas. New York: The New Press, 1995. 276-291.
Jay, Gregory, and Gerald Graff. "A Critique of Critical Pedagogy." Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities. Ed. Michael Bérubé and Cary Nelson. new York: Routledge, 1995.
Pough, Gwendolyn D. "Empowering Rhetoric: Black Students Writing Black
Panthers." College Composition and Communication 53:3 (February 2002): 466-486.
Seitz, David. "Hard Lessons Learned since the First Generation of Critical Pedagogy." College English 64.4 (March 2002): 503-512.
Trainor, Jennifer Seibel. "Critical Pedagogy's 'Other': Constructions of Whiteness in Education for SocialChange." College Composition and Communication 53.4 (June 2002): 631-650.
Posted by jwthom01 at February 10, 2005 01:23 AM
Comments
Jeremiah, please go back into this entry and use the "extended entry" function.
Posted by: senioritis at February 10, 2005 07:42 AM
How has the comp classroom incorporated race as a topic of inquiry?
How, if at all, does the discussion of race take up questions of whiteness and privilege?
What debates surround the effectiveness of FYC as the place to do “race work”?
These are terrific questions for historical research, and they are well worth answering. The whiteness studies focus is a potentially rich one. (Personally, I'd like to see someone interrogate whiteness as privilege; isn't it actually a handicap, especially when perceived as privilege? Just wondering. And I'm not referencing the nauseating argument that affirmative action discriminates against white men; rather, I'm wondering whether white people's sense of privilege doesn't blind them to a rich, complex, destabilized understanding of their own lives and the lives of those around them.)
The movement from "multiculturalism" to "diversity" in comp studies is definitely worth tracing. You'll find, as you work, that contact zone and contrastive rhetoric are two fairly well-developed constructs for addressing whole sets of race-related issues.
Much of what you have in your preliminary bibliography is race studies per se, which would take you off target for this project. You've already read extensively in that field (Aronowitz, Ellsworth, et al., and of course you will build from that base to accomplish this project, but your analysis needs to be focused on the history of CRT in composition, in precisely the terms that your research questions suggest. Consider some of the following texts, in addition to the comp-focused ones already on your list. This is a long list; pick and choose as you please, but I would urge you to include Brodkey; Hairston; and essays from Severino, Guerra, & Butler; Gilyard & Nunley.
Baca, Damian Patrick. "Contesting U.S. Cultures of Authorship." An Introduction to Authorship. Ed. Tracy Hamler Carrick and Rebecca Moore Howard. New York: Heinle. Forthcoming.
Behling, Laura L. "'Generic' Multiculturalism: Hybrid Texts, Cultural Contexts." College English 65.4 (March 2003): 411-426.
Bender, Daniel. "Diversity Revisited, or Composition's Alien History." Rhetoric Review (1993) 108-124.
Brodkey, Linda. "Making a Federal Case out of Difference: The Politics of Pedagogy, Publicity, and Postponement." Writing Theory and Critical Theory. Ed. John Clifford and John Schilb. New York: Modern Language Association, 1994. 236-61.
Brodkey, Linda. Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1996.
Casanave, Christine Pearson. Writing Games: Multicultural Case Studies of Academic Literacy Practices in Higher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.
Chordas, Nina. "Classroom, Pedagogies, and the Rhetoric of Equality." College Composition and Communication 43.2 (May 1992): 214-24.
Cliett, Victoria. "Between the Lines: Reconciling Diversity and Standard English." Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on the Official English Movement. Ed. Roseann Dueñas González. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 297-317.
Dean, Terry. "Multicultural Classrooms, Monocultural Teachers." The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. Ed. Gary Tate, Edward P.J. Corbett, and Nancy Myers. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 105-119.
Flower, Linda. "Intercultural Inquiry and the Transformation of Service." College English 65.2 (November 2002): 181-201.
Flower, Linda. "Talking across Difference: Intercultural Rhetoric and the Search for Situated Knowledge." College Composition and Communication 55.1 (September 2003): 38-68.
Fox, Helen. Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.
Fredericksen, Elaine Freedman. A New World of Writers: Teaching Writing in a Diverse Society. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Friend, Christy, and Marc Minsker. "Merit vs. Diversity? A Simulation Exercise Introducing Students to Ethical Arguments." Kairos 7.2 (Summer 2002). .
Gilyard, Keith, and Vorris Nunley, eds. Rhetoric and Ethnicity. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2004.
Grobman, Laurie. "'Just Multiculturalism': Teaching Writing as Critical and Ethical Practice." JAC 22.4 (2002).
Hairston, Maxine. "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing." College Composition and Communication 43.2 (May 1992): 179-93.
Hum, Sue. "'Yes, We Eat Dog Back Home': Contrasting Disciplinary Discourse and Praxis on Diversity." JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 19.4 (1999): 569-588.
Janangelo, Joseph. "Theorizing Difference and Negotiating Differends: (Un)naming Writing Programs' Many Complexities and Strengths." Resituating Writing: Constructing and Administering Writing Programs. Ed. Joseph Janangelo and Kristine Hansen. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. 3-22.
Jarratt, Susan C. "Teaching Across and Within Differences." The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. Ed. Gary Tate, Edward P.J. Corbett, and Nancy Myers. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 92-4.
Klein, S. "Language and Diversity." Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing. Ed. Irene L. Clark. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003.
Lan, Haixia. "Contrastive Rhetoric: A Must in Cross-Cultural Inquiries." Alt Dis: Alternatives Discourses and the Academy. Ed. Christopher Schroeder, Helen Fox, and Patricia Bizzell. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2002. 68-79.
Liu, Yameng. "Contrastive Rhetoric/Comparative Rhetoric." Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. Ed. Linda K. Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert A. Schwegler. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2000. 71-75.
Liu, Yameng. "Self, Other, In-Between: Cross-Cultural Composition Readers and the Reconstruction of Cultural Identities." (Re)Visioning Composition Textbooks: Conflicts of Culture, Ideology, and Pedagogy. Ed. Xin Liu Gale and Fredric G. Gale. Albany: SUNY UP, 1999. 69-92.
Lu, Min-Zhan. "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone." College Composition and Communication 45.4 (December 1994): 442-58.
Lyons, Greg. "Validating Cultural Difference in the Writing Center." The Writing Center Journal 12.2 (Spring 1992): 145-58.
Matalene, Carolyn. "Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China." College English 47.8 (December 1985): 789-808.
McLeod, Susan. "Celebrating Diversity (in Methodology)." Composition Studies in the New Millennium: Rereading the Past, Rewriting the Future. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.
Miller, Richard E. "Fault Lines in the Contact Zone." College English 56.4 (1994): 389-409. Rpt. Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together. Ed. Janice M. Wolff. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2002. 121-146.
Moss, Beverly J., and Keith Walters. "Rethinking Diversity: Axes of Difference in the Writing Classroom." Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing: Rethinking the Discipline. Ed. Lee Odell. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993. 132-185.
Nakata, Martin. "History, Cultural Diversity and English Language Teaching." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 106-120.
Okawa, Gail Y., et al. "Multi-Cultural Voices: Peer Tutoring and Critical Reflection in the Writing Center." The Writing Center Journal 12.1 (Fall 1991): 11-33.
Ostrom, Hans. "Access: Writing in the Midst of Many Cultures." The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students. Ed. Wendy Bishop. 2nd. ed. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999. 62-72.
Redfield, Karen A. "Opening the Composition Classroom to Storytelling: Respecting Native American Students' Use of Rhetorical Strategies." Perspectives on Written Argument. Ed. Deborah P. Berrill. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1996.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones. "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." College Composition and Communication 47.1 (February 1996): 29-40.
Sadarangani, Umeeta. "Teaching Multicultural Issues in the Composition Classroom: A Review of Recent Practice." Journal of Teaching Writing 13.1-2 (1994): 33-54.
Schieffelin, Bambi B. "Introduction: Literacy in Multiethnic and Multilingual Contexts." The Future of Literacy in a Changing World. Ed. Daniel A. Wagner. Rev. ed. Cresskill, NJ: Hampden P, 1999. 175-182.
Schmid, Carol L. The Politics of Language: Conflict, Identity, and Cultural Pluralism in Comparative Perspective. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.
Severino, Carol, Juan C. Guerra, and Johnnella E. Butler, eds. Writing in Multicultural Settings. New York: MLA, 1997. (Be sure to include the Jamieson essay.)
Soliday, Mary. "Towards a Consciousness of Language: A Language Pedagogy for Multicultural Classrooms." Journal of Basic Writing 16 (1997): 62-75.
Spack, Ruth. "Teaching across Cultures." College English 58.5 (September 1996): 592-7.
Thompson, Dorothy Perry. "Rescuing the Failed, Filed Away and Forgotten: African Americans and Eurocentricity in Academic Argument." Perspectives on Written Argument. Ed. Deborah P. Berrill. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1996.
Vandenberg, Peter. "Taming Multiculturalism: The Will to Literacy in Composition Studies." JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 19.4 (1999): 547-568.
Williams, Bronwyn T. "Speak for Yourself? Power and Hybridity in the Cross-Cultural Classroom." College Composition and Communication 54.4 (June 2003): 586-609.
Woodson, Linda. "Imaginative Literature: Creating Opportunities for Multicultural Conversations in the Composition Classroom." Teaching Writing: Landmarks and Horizons. Eds. Christina Russell McDonald and Robert L. McDonald. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. 184-192.
Posted by: senioritis at February 11, 2005 10:05 PM