Identity Papers

by Williams, Bronwyn T.

• ISBN13: 9780874216493
• ISBN10: 0874216494
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-30
• Publisher: Utah State Univ Pr

Summary

How do definitions of literacy in the academy, and the pedagogies that reinforce such definitions, influence and shape our identities as teachers, scholars, and students? The contributors gathered here reflect on those moments when the dominant cultural and institutional definitions of our identities conflict with our other identities, shaped by class, race, gender, sexual orientation, location, or other cultural factors. These writers explore the struggle, identify the sources of conflict, and discuss how they respond personally to such tensions in their scholarship, teaching, and administration. They also illustrate how writing helps them and their students compose alternative identities that may allow the connection of professional identities with internal desires and senses of self. They emphasize how identity comes into play in education and literacy and how institutional and cultural power is reinforced in the pedagogies and values of the writing classroom and writing profession.

Author Biography

Bronwyn T. Williams is associate professor of English at the University of Louisville. He writes and teaches about issues of literacy, identity, popular culture, and cross-cultural communication. His books include Tuned In: Television and the Teaching of Writing and Written on the Screen: Representations of Literacy in Popular Culture with Amy A. Zenger. He also writes a column on issues of Literacy and Identity for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Table of Contents

Introduction : literacy, power, and the shaping of identity	p. 1
Social class as discourse : the construction of subjectivities in English	p. 17
Excellence is the name of the (ideological) game	p. 29
The feminist WPA project : ear and possibility in the feminist "home"	p. 42
When "Ms. Mentor" misses the mark : literacy and lesbian identity in the academy	p. 57
She toiled for a living : writing lives and identities of older female students	p. 77
Literacy, identity, and the "successful" student writer	p. 92
Speaking from the borderlands : exploring narratives of teacher identity	p. 109
"Who are they and what do they have to do with what I want to be?" : the writing of multicultural identity and college success stories for first-year writers	p. 122
Migratory and regional identity	p. 141
Some trouble with discourses : what conflicts between subjects and ethnographers tell us about what students don't/won't/can't say	p. 154
Composing (identity) in a posttraumatic age	p. 170
Conclusion : working bodies : class matters in college composition	p. 182
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