Dissertation

Literacy and identity: The writing histories of undergraduate reentry women

Aronson, Anne Louise

1991

Overview

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how women's gender, race, class, and other identities shape their histories as writers. The project emerges at once from compositionists' recent explorations of how ideology influences writing practices and communities, and feminist concerns with how oppression and resistance are constructed within women's subjectivities. The central question informing the research is the following: Why is it that women feel empowered in certain writing situations and disempowered in others? The study focuses on one group of writers--eight undergraduate reentry women of diverse class and race identities at a Catholic women's college in the Midwest. Case studies were generated from an interpretation of the following data: (1) transcripts of ethnographic interviews with each student; (2) select samples of their academic and non-academic writing; and (3) background interviews with faculty, staff, and students at the college. The ethnographic interviews asked study participants to talk about their histories as writers, to review their educational autobiographies, and to discuss in depth two or three completed writing projects. Interpretation of the data focuses on thematic content, interpersonal dynamics (i.e, between interviewer and interviewee), and narrative structure. Cases studies of these eight writers suggest that experiences of disempowerment occur in three recurring contexts: when participants feel that their writing is derided or unfairly judged; when the boundaries they have set for their writing are violated; and when their expression is severely restricted. These experiences of disempowerment typically occur when participants' gender, class, race, age and other identities place them in unfavorable power positions with respect to their audiences. Cases studies also suggest, however, that participants find means of resisting the damaging effects of these episodes in their writing histories by (1) learning to value and write from their multiple identities; (2) choosing supportive audiences whenever possible or choosing to withhold information about the self from potentially harmful audiences; and (3) finding \"safe\" spaces for writing--e.g., journals and memoirs.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Higher education / Language / Language arts / Womens studies
• ISBN: 9798207650685