Synopses & Reviews
In this volume, Ryden and Marshall bring together the field of composition and rhetoric with critical whiteness studies to show that in our post race era whiteness and racism not only survive but actually thrive in higher education. As they examine the effects of racism on contemporary literacy practices and the rhetoric by which white privilege maintains and reproduces itself, Ryden and Marshall consider topics ranging from the emotional investment in whiteness to the role of personal narrative in reconstituting racist identities to critiques of the foundational premises of writing programs steeped in repudiation of despised discourses. Marshall and Ryden alternate chapters to sustain a multi-layered dialogue that traces the rhetorical complexities and contradictions of teaching English and writing in a university setting. Their lived experiences as faculty and administrators serve to underscore the complex code of whiteness even as they push to decode it and demonstrate how their own pedagogical practices are raced and racialized in multiple ways. Collectively, the essays ask instructors and administrators to consider more carefully the pernicious nature of whiteness in their professional activities and how it informs our practices.
Synopsis
Ryden and Marshall bring together the critical lenses of whiteness studies and the field of composition and rhetoric in this timely co-authored study about recent developments in whiteness studies and what these developments mean for literacy practices, critical education, and the academic profession.
Looking back at the recent decadesa (TM) interdisciplinary work in this area, the authors apply the foundational insights of critical whiteness studies (the constructed nature of race and the invisible normativity of whiteness, for example) to rhetoric, the teaching of writing, and critical pedagogy to reveal the imbeddedness of whiteness in American cultural practices and attitudes. Similarly, Ryden and Marshall use rhetoric to analyze the disciplinary study of whiteness itself. Specifically, they examine the antiracist agenda that critical whiteness theory has foregrounded and consider its application to writing studies and critical pedagogy. From the standpoint of cultural rhetoric, the two review how whiteness scholarship both advances and limits the project of antiracism.