Social philosophy at the end of the twentieth century must be prefixed by what it follows. It has become commonplace to describe our moment as postmodern and post-structuralist, perhaps also post-Marxian. While true enough, our situation more specifically must be post-Lacan, post-Althusser, post-Foucault, and post-Critical Theory. A number of theorists highlight the context this dissertation places itself in, but Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler should be emphasized in this regard. The positive project of this dissertation begins with radical doubts about the operation of epistemic truth in subjectivity and in language (of a sort first raised by Nietzsche). The dissertation is a series of case studies in the modes of failure of truth, and of the manner in which ideology functions within the void left by the necessary absence of truth. It has a political project of determining what forms counter-hegemony can take absent a traditional assumption of a solid ground for veracity.

A Kenneth Burke Lexicon is a lexiconographical study of select terminology in Kenneth Burke's nine major works published during the period from 1931 to 1972: Counterstatement, 1931; Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 1935; Attitudes Toward History, 1935; The Philosophy of Literary Form, 1941; A Grammar of Motives, 1945; A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950; The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology, 1961; Language as Symbolic Form: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 1966; and Dramatism and Development , 1972. This study is intended to be used as a pedagogical tool to assist in the teaching and reading of Kenneth Burke. It is comprised of a lexicon of 755 terms and their definitions derived from 4236 textual references. The terms have been selected on the basis of the degree of difficulty they present to the reader. The definitions of these terms are largely composed of Burke's own words in order to more objectively and authentically elucidate and define his complex terminology. In addition to defining terms, the lexicon has employed a methodological approach suggested by Dr. Jane Blankenship of “charting terms.” Such charting provides a fourfold definition: (1) after a summary definition, it (2) undertakes an extended definition to (3) present a history of definitions which (4) charts the evolution of the term over time. By so doing, the lexicon allows the reader the opportunity to look up any given term encountered in reading Kenneth Burke and contextualize it in relation to all of Burke's other major works.

My dissertation explores an approach to the teaching of college writing that coordinates expressivist and social constructionist pedagogies. An expressivist orientation, usually associated with Peter Elbow and Ken Macrorie, foregrounds individual experiences of invention, sensitizing teachers to the nuances of students' motivations and creativity. A social constructionist orientation, which enjoys wide consensus in contemporary composition studies, foregrounds the ways in which the oral and written practices of discourse communities, and the broader contexts of power in which they occur, construct identity and knowledge, so that the solitary writer's text is actually dialogical because of the social nature of language. In my dissertation, I turn to theatrical metaphors and practices in order to coordinate these orientations. From the works of Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, Victor Turner, and a variety of feminist theorists, I borrow a dramatistic rhetorical approach that values the dynamic interdependence of individual and context. This orientation guides my teaching, and helps me explore the results. I turn to theater practices themselves, such as role-play and dialogue, in order to provide writers a range of oral and textual experiences, in a way that allows for group inquiry into what Burke called the "scenic" or contextual, cultural dimensions of communication. To establish a context for my work, my Introduction traces parallel tensions in both composition and theatre about the nature of agency and identity, represented in the works of Peter Elbow, David Bartholomae, Bertolt Brecht, and Constantin Stanislavski. Chapter One seeks a solution to these tensions in contemporary community theatre and solo performance art, which provide both metaphors of transactional agency and dialogic identity, and actual practices adaptable to a college writing context. My remaining chapters explore in more detail various teaching approaches predicated upon my introductory, theoretical material. In Chapter Two, I narrate and analyze three classroom events of role- and voice-play, and conclude with a larger view of composition, role-play, and student and teacher roles. Chapter Three considers the social and interpersonal dynamics of a dialogue written by two students, analyzed according to the "interpretive theme" of adversarial and non-adversarial argument. In Chapter Four, I try to maintain a productive tension between expressive and social dimensions of one student's writing by sharing ideas about voice with her in a tutorial setting, especially Bakhtinian ideas about dissonance and negotiation. And finally my Conclusion attempts to enact or "perform" the very tensions I have explored throughout the dissertation, through a playful, multi-voiced dialgoue on dialogue. In effect, this dissertation tries to open a conversation between theory and practice, and between composition and theatre disciplines. My main thesis, which I explore through practice, is that college writers can benefit from highly contextualized, expressive play.

This dissertation contextualizes and analyzes community/university partnerships through which college writing is paired with community action. Over the past few years a range of community-based and service-learning initiatives have been launched in departments of English. While some research is available on particular projects, little considers the wider movement. In response, I propose a typology for programs, distinguishing between those that write for, about and with the community; further, I investigate three exemplar programs. Throughout the study I explicate how such practices are situated within (and extend) the discourse of rhetoric and composition. The opening provides an overview of community-based writing initiatives at a range of colleges and universities, and how these programs position themselves in relation to current disciplinary discourses. I then propose a typology which sorts community-based writing pedagogies into three paradigms: those that write for the community, about the community, or with the community. These paradigms are distinguished according to the different aims, literacies and discourses most valued by each. The typology is intended not as a rigid means of categorization, but as a heuristic. John Dewey and Paulo Freire are established as the primary theoretical frames of reference for through a survey of their respective educational philosophies and pedagogical approaches. The places where Dewey's liberal progressivism and Freire's critical pedagogy overlap are emphasized, as are the issues on which they diverge. To put such theoretical discussions in dialogue with lived experience, the dissertation includes three empirical case studies. A junior-year writing-across-the-curriculum course at the University of Massachusetts is studied as an example of "writing for the community." A first-year service-learning composition course at Bentley College offers an example of "writing about the community." And the Community Literacy Center (CLC), a collaboration of Carnegie Mellon and a community center, stands as a representative of "writing with the community." An in-depth and comparative analysis of each results in a sharper understanding of their distinct theoretical, rhetorical and ideological assumptions. To close, this study looks forward, suggesting how community-based and service-learning programs both draw upon and enrich significant disciplinary debates in composition studies.

In this dissertation I investigate resistance to private writing (especially in the form of journals and diaries). My goal is to understand the nature of resistance to writing in general. I choose private writing as my focus for three reasons: (1) Most people equate private writing with freedom and safety, thereby seeing it as the most resistant-free genre; (2) I have always been confused about the distinction between the public and the private when it comes to my own writing practices. I do not feel free, safe, or particularly private when trying to write a journal or diary; (3) If I can understand resistance to private writing, I can apply my findings to the resistance students experience towards all writing. When I speak of diary or journal writing (and I use the terms interchangeably), I am referring to a genre used for private reflection and self-discovery. Throughout the dissertation I make distinctions between the concepts of public and private, especially as they relate to the four major categories of my study: identity, audience, time, and genre. But since the distinctions are by no means universal, I show how and why the boundaries between them need to be acknowledged as flexible, fluid, and dependent on the inventive imagination of each writer. Chapter one focuses on how people's conceptions of identity often interfere or clash with the practice of private diary writing. In a second chapter I examine student experiences of resistance or attraction to private journal writing based on long-held audience expectations and needs. I devote a third chapter to a study of Virginia Woolf's diaries in which she articulates how ideas about time complicate, and sometimes diminish, her ability to continue keeping a diary. In my fourth, autobiographical, chapter I explain how expectations and assumptions about genre (public or private) influence a writer's sense of safety and overall ability to embrace writing in any form. My conclusion examines the implications for pedagogy. In articulating the reasons for people's resistance to private writing, I show how unexamined assumptions about identity, audience, time, and genre provoke resistance to all forms of writing.

The focus of this study is to understand how students in one second-grade class utilized the social justice principle that they had been taught, to help them negotiate social tensions during Writing Workshop time. I studied the interactions and the writings of children while they composed and they shared their writing with their peers. Although there may be many types of tension present within an elementary classroom, I studied issues related to gender, culture, and friendship and trust. Theoretical constructs supporting this study were derived from grounded theory and sociolinguistic theory. Data collected during daily writing times throughout the school year included: personal student profiles; participant observer field notes; video and audio taped student conversations and student interviews; photographs of student interactions; and photocopies of students' writing. There were three principal findings about students' writings and social interactions during Writing Workshop times. First, students demonstrated within their writing the inclusion of a social justice principle that they were taught, but not in respect to culture. Although there were no negative cases of cultural stereotyping within the students' writing, there were also no cases of positive cultural images displayed. Second, students did not utilize the social justice principle in their conversations to help them negotiate tensions. Third, students' social status among peers influenced their behaviors and their decisions when they were faced with tensions during Writing Workshop. Norms associated with student social status had a stronger effect on their behavior than those from the social justice principle which they were taught. This study suggests the importance of including a social justice component within the Writing Workshop model. It further suggests that objectives be included that bring to the attention of all members of the community the presence of children's social status. It was the influence of student status within this classroom that affected the ways that children have access to learning and that limited participation for some of the students. Direct teacher instruction in social justice may insure that the Writing Workshop is positive and productive for all members of the classroom.

This qualitative study evaluates design and delivery of technology-integration professional-development programming delivered through a hybrid distance-delivery model involving telecasts, online, and on-site instruction. The study analyzes perceptions of learning shared by ten veteran urban high school teachers who completed a graduate course delivered through the model. Research questions ask if teachers found gains achieved were commensurate with learning challenges, what factors of school and district affected the value of staff-development, whether perceptions changed over time, and what learning profiles were a best fit for the model. The study also examines the larger contexts of a Professional Development School technology-infusion initiative and a district-level technology-training program. Research methods include content analysis applied to data collected longitudinally through written program evaluations and interviews conducted over a four-year period. Analyses of email messaging and other electronic communications provide further triangulation of data. The study provides cross-case and case study treatments, the latter providing small-scale maximum variation sampling of learning profiles. The study reports teachers entered the program preferring informal, on-site workshop instruction to all other technology-training options, and that this preference proved durable. Teachers dismissed graduate coursework and district-level training, citing issues of trust and expressing themes regarding respect and lack of respect, and the value of local knowledge. Teachers differentially perceived the pace of the course and relationships with instructional staff, according to their self-assessed computing skill levels. Teachers' perceived video-based instruction as valuable but felt synchronous video was not valuable, and found web-based learning challenging and frustrating but believed educational resources on the web are bountiful. Overall, cohort members expressed satisfaction with the course, attributing their satisfaction primarily to participation in project work. Findings suggest characteristics of a design process for customizing instruction to needs of individuals and cohorts. The literature review addresses constructivist and adult learning theory and principles of instructional design. The researcher examines the role of the Professional Development School and the school district in technology training and addresses Cynthia Selfe's concerns regarding the digital divide and the “technology-literacy link,” advocating continued research on teachers' perceptions of technology-integration staff-development and positing new roles for teachers in program design.

This dissertation is based on a qualitative case study of four adults who attend a literacy center where they are learning to read and write better. My primary goal was to investigate how newly literate adults use writing to articulate their relationships to dominant ideologies of literacy. I examined the possibility that different kinds of agency might be enacted within and outside of dominant literacy narratives. The study was conducted at the Read/Write/Now Adult Learning Center. Participants represented a range of learners from various experiences who had been in the program for differing lengths of time. Methods of narrative inquiry were used to collect and analyze data, including: observation of classes, interviews with teachers, extensive interviews with case study members, and collection of all writing produced by participants during their time at the center. Participants' remarks and writing demonstrated that they articulate four dominant literacy narratives: functionality, economic gain, an ethic of self-improvement, and citizenship---having a voice in culture. My analysis revealed that people did not express just one narrative; they expressed as many as four narratives simultaneously. Participants' interview transcripts and writing suggested that they already have the critical awareness theorists believe they must be taught. As they increase their literacy, participants articulate four alternative literacy narratives: naming power, particularly in regard to "illiteracy" as a social violence; critiquing material conditions that have forced them into oppressive subject positions; expressing pleasure as exceeding the range of dominant narratives; and enacting critical citizenry by repositioning themselves as resistors. This study suggests that writing can be a more radical act than speech because people can speak back to culture as well as reach out to affect multiple audiences. Through writing, people can be critical and become activists by circulating their texts publicly. They can critique, analyze, and rework situations. I submit that writing fosters a specific form of agency that people create through their interaction with text---textual agency. Writing offers the potential for self-transformation and social-transformation. The writing process enables people in the study to: alter their subject position, affect others, and circulate texts among various audiences.

The work of play theorists such as W. D. Winnicott, Gregory Bateson, and Erving Goffman suggests that the element of play has intriguing potential for the teaching and learning of writing: repositioning students in relation to dominant discourses, providing an avenue for risk-taking and experimentation, and offering students and teachers a subtle means to negotiate social roles. However, play as a discrete subject has drawn little attention in composition studies, and as yet there has been no attempt to enact a curriculum that deliberately foregrounds the element of play in all aspects of a composition course. The study described in this dissertation fills this gap. In Chapter 1, I discuss interdisciplinary theories of play in relation to work done in composition studies and develop a provisional definition of “play.” In Chapter 2, I present the methodology I used in this study, which focuses on three sections of a first-year composition course I taught during a single semester. In Chapter 3, I describe the curriculum I designed in light of the theories discussed in Chapter 1. I also relate my observations on how the curriculum was received, comment on my own experiences of play, and discuss spontaneous play initiatives. In Chapter 4, I present and discuss student reactions to the play activities as expressed in written reflections, individual and group interviews, and other artifacts. In Chapter 5, I focus on the identity negotiations of three students as these negotiations related to play in classroom discourse and their formal essays. Finally, in Chapter 6, I draw together, complicate, and extend the central themes of the previous chapters by discussing them in the context of the key questions that guided the study.

This project explores the relationship between literacy and immigration. It claims that the ideological imbrication between literacy and immigration is problematic because it articulates literacy with raceless, American citizenship and illiteracy with a raced, immigrant/outsider subject position. As a result, the notion of “becoming literate” serves as a racializing force in our culture. It supports an “ethnicity-based paradigm of race” that suggests that if an individual is not a “raceless,” middle-class American citizen, (if s/he does not see him/herself this way or if others do not see him/her this way), then s/he does not belong in the world and culture of the “literate.” Chapter 1 explains the rationale for this study both theoretically and in terms of the work in the field of composition. It demonstrates the ways that literacy narratives prominent in the field of composition are bound up with tropes, metaphors, and images of US immigration in the 20th century and contends that reliance on these tropes and images ultimately works to perpetuate static, homogeneous, hierarchized images of identities and cultures. Chapters 2 and 3 examine Mary Antin's The Promised Land. Together, they demonstrate that in order to argue against the biologically based ideologies of race underlying the arguments for immigration restriction, Antin needed to represent race as something that was “assimilable.” Therefore, her immigration narrative constructs literacy as a means of cultural assimilation. Chapters 4 and 5 address Richard Rodriguez' autobiography, The Hunger of Memory. Chapter 4 explores how the dominant image of immigration is embedded in the educational debates on desegregation, bilingual education, and affirmative action in ways that maintain the link between literacy and raceless, American citizenship and illiteracy and racialized immigrant others. Chapter 5 demonstrates that an intertextual reading of Rodriguez' narrative problematizes these articulations in promising ways. The concluding chapter points to teaching practices that might begin to deconstruct the racialized literate/illiterate binary that has prevented us from making literacy, in Linda Brodkey's words, “an offer that people cannot refuse.”