Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

English

Advisor

Carmen Kynard

Committee Members

Carrie Hintz

Mark McBeth

Subject Categories

Accessibility | Community College Leadership | Curriculum and Instruction | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Disability Studies | Higher Education and Teaching | Language and Literacy Education | Rhetoric | Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Keywords

disability studies, fan fiction, community-building in education, first-year writing, critical race theory, trauma and learning

Abstract

Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I ask, when we dismantle deficit-model pedagogies in our classrooms and frame our students, instead of as automatically lacking, as being, themselves, capable of creating profound literature? These questions are fundamentally wrapped in both dis/ability studies and trauma theory; in composition-rhetoric theories and in critical race studies. Fan fiction is the literary glue I will use in this book, helping me string together theories of young adult writing with dis/ability and trauma studies. Through this book, I use composition studies as a framework through which to help bridge exigent tensions between dis/ability studies and trauma studies. By building on the works of my CUNY LaGuardia Community College students, José Esteban Muñoz, Margaret Price, Nirmalla Erevelles, Carmen Kynard, and Ann Cvetkovich, composition classrooms become my incubator for models of healing that can occur through writing in first-year writing classrooms. These models of healing call into practice fandom pedagogy and consent-based pedagogy, both of which are developed from dis/identificatory practices and decolonizing ethics in the classroom. With these models of teaching, I argue that a fundamental re-valuing of student/young adult writing as itself young adult literature subverts the tendency for first-year composition classes to emerge from oppressive deficit-based thinking about student writing.

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