Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words

by Susan C. Jarratt (Editor), Lynn Worsham (Editor)

Overview

The fifteen essays and six responses in this volume of the MLA's Research and Scholarship in Composition series "push the boundaries of knowledge in both feminism and composition", as the coeditor Susan C. Jarratt writes, "by exploring the productive intersections and tensions of the two". She goes on to say, "Composition at its best works against the grain of conventional institutional practices .... Both feminist inquiry and post-current-traditional composition studies/styles challenge assumptions and seek to transform ways of thinking, teaching, and learning". Both are complex, containing different agendas and different voices.

The essays in part 1, "Feminisms for Composition", give the terms and theories of different feminisms; the essays in part 2, "Specifying Locations", look at the practices of feminisms in various institutional, cultural, and historical contexts; and the essays in part 3, "Exploring Discontinuities", show how the discourses of feminism and composition may part company in the classroom, in administration, in writing across the curriculum. In an afterword, the coeditor Lynn Worsham reflects on generational differences among feminists and looks optimistically to the future.

Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words is a feminist project that boldly places at its center differences among women. Topics discussed include American history, politics, language, racism, pedagogy, contingent labor in the teaching of writing, e-mail behavior, and the need for educational and institutional reform.

Teachers, graduate students, program administrators, and feminists will find valuable the critiques, theoretical as well as personal, contained in this unusuallyhonest and thought-provoking volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873525855
Publisher:	Modern Language Association of America
Publication date:	06/01/1998