This dissertation examines the histories of the University of Arizona (UA) and the University of New Mexico (UNM) before 1910. This project brings a trans-hemispheric approach to composition history by developing a theory of "frontier rhetoric" as a lens for analysis. Used to describe the rhetorical strategies that emphasize narratives of progress to disenfranchise others, frontier rhetoric allows us to examine the ways in which colonialism is embedded within institutions and reproduced by curriculum and policies. In the case of UA, institutional stakeholders envisioned their university as an Americanization project that both opened up Arizona’s natural resources to profit, while creating a citizenry devoted to defending their country. In the case of UNM, we see a subtler manifestation of frontier rhetorics, such as in the way Spanish was emphasized for the purposes of sending multilingual teachers out into the primarily Spanish speaking regions of the territory. An analysis of the students' curricular and extra-curricular writing from this time shows that students had the opportunity to challenge and resist frontier rhetorics through newspaper writing. The curricular and extra-curricular use of public genres such as newspapers allows students to take a more active role in negotiating their own understandings of citizenship and community engagement. Finally, this dissertation connects these histories to the present by discussing the ways in which writing program administrators can use frontier rhetoric to assess the inclusivity of their programs and adopt a translingual orientation in an effort to combat monolingual mentalities. This history makes visible the ways in which colonial legacies are embedded within our educational institutions, challenges the Eurocentric tendencies of composition histories, and offers new perspectives on the ways in which rhetorical education can both reproduce and resist oppressive attitudes about language, race, and culture.

Suresh Canagarajah, John Trimbur, Bruce Horner, and others argue that U.S. scholars must begin imagining their academic institutions as part of larger global English conversations, which would involve expanding Western perceptions of "good writing" to allow for the cultural and ideological differences implied by the term "global." Horner and Trimbur, for instance, urge compositionists to take an "internationalist perspective" to writing instruction, to ask, "whose English and whose interests it serves" in relation to the "dynamics of globalization" (624). To better understand what it means to write internationally in English, I conducted ethnographic research at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), a self-identified "Indonesian, international, interreligious Ph.D. program," in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. My ten-month ethnographic project, which drew from teacher research, interviews with students and faculty, and student texts, suggests that English, though linked to Western cultural imperialism--and thus Western ideology-- can no longer be considered solely a Western language, useful only for Western purposes and audiences. The first section of this dissertation focuses on institutional and individual identity construction in relation to ICRS's local-global goals and what the program's language policy terms the "painful decision" to adopt English despite being "aware of the imperialism of English." By placing Indonesian language history in conversation with faculty and student interviews, this section suggests that language, whether local or global, is never entirely "authentic" or "imperialist"--that English, despite its imperialist implications, is also capable of representing Indonesian identities. The second section of this dissertation shifts from identity negotiation to frictions involved with the actual writing process, particularly in relation to culture, audience, and rhetorical choice. Drawing from Bakhtin's notion of diachronic audience, this section explores the complexity involved in determining "whose English" is appropriate given ICRS's Indonesian, yet international intentions and the multiple audiences, both local and global, suggested thereby. This section highlights cultural and material frictions students reported when moving between Indonesian and Western rhetorical traditions--and thus audiences-- while also highlighting how students re-articulate English as both local and global, Indonesian and international as they write to the multiple audiences suggested by English as an international language.

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