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Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities

Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities Nancy Mack Vivyan Adair and Sandra Dahlberg (2001) advocate in the first issue of Peda­ gog y that American literature teachers need to help students interrogate representations of social class, especially working and poverty classes, as a means to complicate students’ reading, writing, and thinking about their own subjectivities. To a similar end, Amy Robillard (2003) calls for composi- tion teachers to encourage students to complicate their narrative writing by considering how time is a class-based concept that affects the selection and interpretation of past experiences. For working-class students in particular I suggest that issues of subjectivity present an immediate conflict in all aca - demic writing assignments as these students struggle to compose a legitimate identity within the university. Working-class students frequently have problems imagining them- selves as scholars. A rhetorical indication of this conflict is the self-effacing commonplaces that working-class students feel obliged to incorporate into their writing to the effect that theirs is only an opinion or just their per - sonal belief about a topic. Nick Tingle (2004) draws from both composition and psychology scholars to explain how readers associate these self-effacing statements with assumptions http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Pedagogy Duke University Press

Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities

Pedagogy , Volume 6 (1) – Jan 1, 2006

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Copyright
© 2006 Duke University Press
ISSN
1531-4200
eISSN
1533-6255
DOI
10.1215/15314200-6-1-53
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities Nancy Mack Vivyan Adair and Sandra Dahlberg (2001) advocate in the first issue of Peda­ gog y that American literature teachers need to help students interrogate representations of social class, especially working and poverty classes, as a means to complicate students’ reading, writing, and thinking about their own subjectivities. To a similar end, Amy Robillard (2003) calls for composi- tion teachers to encourage students to complicate their narrative writing by considering how time is a class-based concept that affects the selection and interpretation of past experiences. For working-class students in particular I suggest that issues of subjectivity present an immediate conflict in all aca - demic writing assignments as these students struggle to compose a legitimate identity within the university. Working-class students frequently have problems imagining them- selves as scholars. A rhetorical indication of this conflict is the self-effacing commonplaces that working-class students feel obliged to incorporate into their writing to the effect that theirs is only an opinion or just their per - sonal belief about a topic. Nick Tingle (2004) draws from both composition and psychology scholars to explain how readers associate these self-effacing statements with assumptions

Journal

PedagogyDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

References