In recent years, debates about the role of language, culture and identity in the teaching of writing—especially as these factors inform how we approach difference and diversity—have simultaneously enriched and complicated our ideas about how we can make productive use of them in our curricular and pedagogical practices. This course will review emergent literature that focuses on theoretical and pragmatic efforts to reimagine their place in the teaching of writing by reconstituting them as dynamic conceptions that RosiBraidotti calls figurations: languages-in-motion, cultures-in-transition and identities-in-practice. Our analysis and discussion of writing across difference will be further enhanced by introducing a fourth dynamic concept, citizens-in-the-making, to the mix. These figurations will frame our conversations about ways to create conditions in the writing classroom under which disenfranchised students can empower themselves by acquiring the rhetorical and discursive tools they need to navigate the ever-changing terrain of their everyday lives in and beyond the academy. You’ll be required to write three short critical response essays (3-to-4 pages each) during the quarter, as well as a longer scholarly essay (12-to-15 pages) on a topic of your choice due at the end of the quarter.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Goldblatt, Eli. Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College
Curriculum. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007.

• Flower, Linda. Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois UP, 2008.

• Feldman, Ann M. Making Writing Matter: Composition in the Engaged University. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008.

• A collection of essays on writing across communities, language, culture, identity and citizenship will be made available through the UW Library’s course reserves.