Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

Bibliographical footnotes

In an essay in "College English," Cheryl L. Johnson argues that whether or not a female teacher considers herself a feminist she must at some point confront, at least within herself, the material conditions of herself as subject in the classroom. Three options are available for the woman composition teacher who wants to or has been forced to confront her own subjectivity as a teacher. One approach grows out of what Elizabeth Flynn, in her recent review "Feminist Theories/Feminist Composition," identifies as "cultural feminism"--feminism that "focuses on differences between women and men and promotes 'women's ways,' ways that often result from women's biological and social roles." One version of this approach invokes the teaching-as-mothering metaphor and emphasizes the nurturing and guiding roles of the teacher. This approach has been most fully articulated by theorists like Nancy Hartsock, Cynthia Caywood, and Gillian Overing. Another type of approach that grows out of cultural feminism is represented in the work of feminists like Catherine Lamb, Susan Osborne, and Susan Hunter, who define classroom practices that highlight feminism and feminist modes of expression such as mediation rather than argumentation in the writing class. A third type of feminist approach in the classroom seems most closely allied with what Flynn calls "radical feminism." This perspective, characterized by Susan Jarratt, Dale Bauer, and Bell Hooks, advocates using the classroom as a sometimes uncomfortable space to "help...students locate personal experience in historical and social contexts." (Contains 22 references.) (TB)

A year-long departmental evaluation at one college English department revealed that most sections of both pre-college English and regular English 101 emphasized form over content, structure over ideas, surface features over global, and this, at the expense of meaningful intellectual growth. When freshmen are plied with basic grammar books and with a series of disconnected readings, they are being deprived of the kind of learning that allows for abstraction and analytical thinking. Whether upper level literature courses or pre-college courses for developmental writers, the questions remains the same: How does an instructor provide a relevant context for composition with readings that serve as more than models of rhetorical modes, that have substance and coherence? The "role of social pressure and self-awareness" is the unifying theme that drove the selection of the reading in one thematically oriented course. It allowed for treatment of many "isms," such as racism, sexism, ageism, and challenged reductive thinking about them. Since most incoming freshmen are highly concerned with peer pressure and self-discovery, this thematic approach seemed to hold the most promise. At first readings served as a vehicle for subjective responses in journals; excerpts from these journals shows a level of personal engagement. Later such responses were fashioned into essays. (Contains list of course thematic readings, other course materials and 19 references.) (TB)