Invisible Impacts on Identity

We know that writing is intimately connected with issues of authority, identity, power, and confidence, and that if students are to become more sophisticated thinkers and writers, they should be both challenged and taken seriously. (Brueggemann et al., 379, emphasis mine) While I would have to question some of the ethics and ideologies concerned with […]

El Aleph

I would like to see as close to a full spectrum of diversity represented in writing studies as possible. I don’t understand why monofocal teaching methods are acceptable since it is clear that no one learns exactly the same as anyone else. I recognize this is a huge change to pedagogy as it currently exists, […]

Identity-based activities, brave and safe spaces, audience awareness discovery draft

Research question: Does the introduction of identity-based activities and conversations in the FYW classroom lead to a classroom that can be more aptly navigated as a brave and safe space? Does the introduction of identity-based activities and conversations in the FYW classroom lead to more awareness of the rhetorical situation of a written piece? As […]

Internalized Routines & “The Writer”

In our reading for today, Mike Rose accurately writes that “people don’t proceed through problem situations…without some set of internalized instructions to the self, some program, some course of action that, even roughly, takes goals and possible paths to that goal into consideration” (5). This might seem rather obvious and can seemingly be applied to […]

Who Offers You the “Writer” Identity?

The myth of genius authorship pervades, always. From the moment students are taught the basics of writing—the standard structures in which to say something in their writing—they are faced with a kind of unconscious model to mimic. Be that example essays of “ideal” scholarship or the supplementary literature they are given to think about and […]

Identity, Expression, & Worldview

In their very first letters that my students wrote to me, I noticed a surprising divide between experiences of political discourse in previous English classrooms. Some expressed discomfort in the inclusion of real time political events while discussing literature, and others claimed that that very inclusion is what served to make their discussions immediate and […]

intersections of our lives, my shifting identity, and what I decide to share

In Krista Ratcliffe’s Rhetorical Listening Theory: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, she discusses something called a “dysfunctional silence” which centers around the idea that a silence (of voices in different contexts) is no longer “merely the absence of speaking voice(s); it is also the absence of hearing ears” (85). “Silence” or the absence of voices is something […]

“Theory In/To Practice: Addressing the Everyday Language of Oppression in the Writing Center” by Mandy Suhr-Sytsma

Suhr-Sytsma, Mandy. “Theory In/To Practice: Addressing the Everyday Language of Oppression in the Writing Center.” Writing Center Journal, vol. 31, no. 2, 2011, Web. Summary The focus of this article is to bring attention to the ways that language in the day-to-day work of writing centers can be oppressive and try to give those who […]