"I Don't Want to Hurt Anyone's Feelings": Using Race as a Writing Prompt in First Year Writing

314 Pages·2015·3.07 MB·English

by  Dianna Shank

Southern Illinois University Carbondale
OpenSIUC
Dissertations Theses and Dissertations
12-1-2014
"I Don't Want to Hurt Anyone's Feelings": Using
Race as a Writing Prompt in First Year Writing
Dianna Shank
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected]
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Shank, Dianna, ""I Don't Want to Hurt Anyone's Feelings": Using Race as a Writing Prompt in First Year Writing" (2014).Dissertations.
Paper 970.
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“I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS”: THE USE OF RACE PROMPTS
IN FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITON

by

Dianna Rockwell Shank

B.A., Saint Martin’s College, 1991
M.A., Central Washington University, 1995

A Dissertation
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English
in the Graduate School
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
December 2014
Copyright by DIANNA ROCKWELL SHANK, 2014

All Rights Reserved
DISSERTATION APPROVAL

“I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS”: THE USE OF RACE PROMPTS

IN FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITON

By

Dianna Rockwell Shank

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the field of English

Approved by:

Dr. Lisa J. McClure, Chair

Dr. Ronda L. Dively

Dr. Gerald Nelms

Dr. Robert E. Fox

Dr. Judith Ann Green

Graduate School
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
September 26, 2014
AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF

DIANNA ROCKWELL SHANK, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in ENGLISH,
presented on SEPTEMBER 26, 2014, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

TITLE: “I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS”: THE USE OF RACE
PROMPTS IN FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITON

MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Lisa J. McClure

First Year Composition (FYC) is one of the most important courses for any incoming
college student. This course (often designated as English 101) provides students the
rhetorical tools to fully engage in critical thinking and writing on the college level. One
of the most common methods of organizing FYC is to use a topic as the center of all the
reading and writing prompts. The use of outside subject matter to teach FYC is a
common practice that is rarely interrogated for its effectiveness. However, the Hairston
debate in the early 1990s opened up a public discussion of how FYC should be taught.
I am arguing that this debate was never fully resolved. Instead of using this historical
moment in our field to discuss how topics impact FYC instruction, the use of topics has
continued to be normalized during the last twenty years with little attention given to
interrogating what actually happens in a FYC course that focuses on a topic. This
dissertation study examines the result of using a controversial theme like race as the
primary organizing principle of both a day and night FYC course in a metro-St Louis
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area community college. Using discourse analysis, I analyze student writing to
determine how the students’ writing is impacted by the subject matter of the course.

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DEDICATION

There are three people in this world who have everything to do with me being
able to complete this dissertation. First, my husband, James W. Shank, has been there
from the start, encouraging me even when he has no idea what I am talking about in
terms of composition theory. Second, my first academic mentor, Dr. Leslie G. Bailey,
treated me like I was his daughter when I was an undergraduate at Saint Martin’s
College; without his enthusiasm for rhetoric and language, I don’t think I would have
become a teacher. And last, but not even close to being least, my graduate mentor
here at SIUC, Dr. Lisa J. McClure, has taught me how to be an academic and a
teacher, as well as reminding me that every now and then I might have something
clever to say. Without her guidance, this dissertation would have never happened.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Besides Dr. Lisa J. McClure, I must also acknowledge Dr.Charles Bazerman, Dr.
Christiane Donahue, and the entire group of participants at the 2012 Dartmouth
Summer Seminar for Composition Research. Each of these folks helped me “birth” the
coding categories for analyzing the sentences my students wrote while we worked at
the beautiful campus of Dartmouth College during a very hot July and August. I also
acknowledge the willingness of my committee members, Dr. Ronda L. Dively, Dr.
Gerald Nelms, Dr. Robert E. Fox, and Dr. Judith Ann Green, for agreeing to serve on
this committee and helping me to shape this research into something useful.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... i
DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... x
CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 1 – Introduction................................................................................... 1
Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
Organizing First Year Composition (FYC) .................................................. 6
Understanding Our Past ............................................................................ 9
The Context and Organization of This Study ........................................... 16
CHAPTER 2 – Literature Review ....................................................................... 21
Introduction .............................................................................................. 21
The Hairston Debate: “A Spirited Discussion” ........................................ 22
The Hairston Debate, Take Two .............................................................. 40
Reasoning Behind a Topic Approach ...................................................... 49
Conclusion ............................................................................................... 57
CHAPTER 3 – Methodology ............................................................................... 59
Introduction of Research Question .......................................................... 59
Research Setting: Community ................................................................. 62
Research Setting: Institution .................................................................... 67
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Research Setting: Campus ...................................................................... 69
Research Setting: The English Department............................................ 70
Research Setting: Race-Themed Course ................................................ 73
Participants .............................................................................................. 79
Data Collection ........................................................................................ 81
Data Analysis ........................................................................................... 86
Conclusion ............................................................................................... 91
CHAPTER 4 – Results ....................................................................................... 93
Introduction .............................................................................................. 93
Survey One and Survey Two: Demographic Information ......................... 94
Description of Essay One ........................................................................ 99
Data Categorizing of Essay One ............................................................ 101
Description of Essay Four ...................................................................... 103
Data Categorizing of Essay Four ........................................................... 108
Survey Two ............................................................................................ 109
Survey Three ......................................................................................... 117
Conclusion ............................................................................................. 125
CHAPTER 5 – Analysis .................................................................................... 126
Introduction ............................................................................................ 126
Treading Writing .................................................................................... 129
Observing Writing .................................................................................. 136
Being Writing ......................................................................................... 139
Defending Writing .................................................................................. 141
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