1 - In his essay Bazerman
says that “the meaning writers
and readers work to make of a given text at hand, then, is a function of the interplay
of texts from their near and distant pasts as well as their anticipated futures”
(45). While it is easy to understand how a text can obtain meaning from the
texts that exist around and before it, the concept of a text developing new
meaning in the future is an interesting one. How might we work with our
students to better understand this relationship between the present text and
its future meanings? How do we situate the writing they do for our classrooms
in contexts outside of our assignments?
2 – In her address to the CWPA Asao Inoue criticizes
the way that whiteness has manifested itself, particularly in academia, as not
a race but as an objective position – a default so to speak – that allows the
person performing it to invoke some kind of social assumption of impartiality
when in reality whiteness carries with it racial associations just as much as
any other race does. In your own classrooms how might you act to decentralize
the course around whiteness? Would you be willing to accept work written in
other vernaculars than standard American English (reads standard academic English)?
2. As someone who is half white, I oftentimes have issues navigating where I stand in the ongoing issues surrounding racial discourse. That, in itself, is another issue entirely. However, in the classroom, I feel as though decentralizing the course around whiteness would be best approached by presenting a wide array of texts by a number of authors and not automatically defaulting to "white" as many of my past courses I've taken have done. Of course I would be willing to accept work written in other vernaculars as I feel many are underrated and under appreciated. Some that come to mind are Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Showing students the acceptance of a multitude of vernaculars is very important to me because I know how important it was for me to be exposed to work such as those mentioned above when it came to finding my own place and belonging in the literary canon.
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