Graduation Semester and Year

2012

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in English

Department

English

First Advisor

James E. Warren

Abstract

My dissertation argues for a different approach to implementing service-learning into composition pedagogy. I argue that because critical pedagogy has long been the primary vehicle for incorporating service-learning initiatives into the composition classroom, and because this pedagogy--despite claims to the contrary-- is still deeply committed to the tenants of modernism, service-learning's potential has also been confined to this narrow world view. I further argue that the confrontational strategies employed by critical educators often work to undermine not only their own pedagogical goals, but also any benefits students might receive from their service experience. In making my argument, I examine closely social-epistemic rhetoric, the rhetoric devised by James Berlin and the radical feminist pedagogies it has engendered. In doing so, I point out the enormous accomplishments of this immensely popular rhetoric, as well as discuss at length what I believe are its failures. Chief among these are the rhetoric's allegiance to a monolithic worldview, its privileging of the rational over the irrational, its proclivity for constructing binary oppositions, and its belief in the ability of language to accurately represent reality. These are in fact the same failures that Berlin so harshly and--- justly---- criticized in Current Traditional Rhetoric. My project is an effort to think otherwise; that is, to think outside the confines of modernist theory and the constraints such a worldview imposes on pedagogy. Thinking otherwise involves interrogating the relationship between the Same and the Other and laying bare the false promises offered by this dichotomy along with exposing all the false choices represented in binary oppositions. It means abandoning any notions of a monolithic worldview, whether that worldview is the American Dream or a Marxist Utopia. It means adopting a theory of language that allows for all manner of expression and it means employing inventional techniques and pedagogical strategies that allow for the accident. It's my belief that if service-learning can be re-configured as a postmodern concept it can create the conditions of possibility for thinking otherwise.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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