Date of Award
2005
Degree Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Nedra Reynolds
Abstract
Nonwhite students have limited access to and limited success in graduating from US institutions of higher education. First-year required composition courses and other writing requirements can act as barriers to college matriculation. Yet composition studies, which has as its focus writing students and student writing, has yet to commit to a thorough examination of all the factors that affect the experience of nonwhite students in composition classes. In order to engage in inquiry into the difference that race makes in students' classroom experiences, composition teacher-researchers must represent the race of those involved in classroom scenes because, as race studies (whiteness studies and critical race theory) demonstrate, racial difference has continuing effects on the experiences of whites and nonwhites despite the dominance of a post-racism ideology. Using critical discourse analysis, this dissertation investigates the presence or absence of racial representations of teachers and students in texts in three areas of composition studies: teacher stories, basic writing, and collaborative learning. In each of these areas, stories and studies in which race is visible are discussed in terms of the insights about power and relationships that they offer. However, texts in which race is visible are decisively outnumbered by those in which race is not visible. In these texts, a discourse of racelessness is achieved through the discursive practices of colorblindness, conflating ethnic and racial difference, denial of racism, construction of nonwhites as inferior, and construction of nonwhites as alien. This dissertation argues that student-present studies and stories should be encouraged because they contribute important pedagogical knowledge. The race of teachers and students can be ethically represented in studies and stories through practices that actively involve students and teachers in the research and writing process and a research focus on the role of the teacher's race in the classroom dynamic. In addition, composition should recognize and valorize the practice of counterstorytelling as a means of investigating racialized experiences.
Recommended Citation
Center, Carole Eileen, "The representation of race in composition studies and stories" (2005). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 2054.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/2054
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