1st Edition

Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness

By Wendy Ryden, Ian Marshall Copyright 2012
    210 Pages
    by Routledge

    210 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this volume, Ryden and Marshall bring together the field of composition and rhetoric with critical whiteness studies to show that in our "post race" era whiteness and racism not only survive but actually thrive in higher education. As they examine the effects of racism on contemporary literacy practices and the rhetoric by which white privilege maintains and reproduces itself, Ryden and Marshall consider topics ranging from the emotional investment in whiteness to the role of personal narrative in reconstituting racist identities to critiques of the foundational premises of writing programs steeped in repudiation of despised discourses. Marshall and Ryden alternate chapters to sustain a multi-layered dialogue that traces the rhetorical complexities and contradictions of teaching English and writing in a university setting. Their lived experiences as faculty and administrators serve to underscore the complex code of whiteness even as they push to decode it and demonstrate how their own pedagogical practices are raced and racialized in multiple ways. Collectively, the essays ask instructors and administrators to consider more carefully the pernicious nature of whiteness in their professional activities and how it informs our practices.

    Contents  Introduction: Where Has All the Whiteness Gone? Reading and Writing Race in a "Post-Race" Era, Wendy Ryden and Ian Marshall  1: Confessing Whiteness: Performing the Anti-Racist, Liberal Subject, Wendy Ryden  2: Whiteness (as) in Basic Writing, Ian Marshall  3: The Kitsch of Liberal Whiteness and Bankrupt Discourses of Race, Wendy Ryden  4: Whiteness, Composition, and Enthymemes of Institutional Discourse, Ian Marshall  5: Moving Whiteness: Rhetoric and Political Emotion, Wendy Ryden  6: Encountering Whiteness as Resistance: Dialogue and Authority in the Composition Classroom, Ian Marshall  Afterword: "Washing the White Blood from Daniel Boone", Ian Marshall and Wendy Ryden

    Biography

    Ian Marshall is Assistant Professor of English at William Patterson University.

    Wendy Ryden is Associate Professor of English at Long Island University--C.W. Post.

    "Recommended" --Choice