FA23 Special Topic: Race, Writing & Composition Studies

What is race, and how does its socially constructed nature influence writing and rhetorical practice? Race, Writing, and Composition Studies examines how race and racial legacies in the U.S. and around the globe impact our social and scholarly conceptualizations of writing, language, and education. In this course, we will examine how race shapes the field of composition and rhetoric, and how the field has responded, with specific attention to understandings of racial minority students and their language practices.

Required Reading:

Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. The WAC Clearinghouse; Parlor Press.

Martinez, Aja Y. Counterstory. National Conference of Teachers of English/Studies in Writing and Rhetoric, 2021.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.

Prendergast, Catherine. Literacy and Racial Justice : the Politics of Learning after Brown V. Board of Education. Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.

Pritchard, Eric Darnell. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.