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- Editor's Note
Authors: Susanne E. Hall
Abstract: The editor's note for issue 6.1.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.133
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Guest Editors' Note
Authors: Ann Green, Wiley Davi, Olivia Giannetta
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.134
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Interrogating the "Good" Muslim
Authors: Haleema Welji
Abstract: In this assignment, students learn to critique the frequently stereotypical and problematic depiction of Muslims in media sources. Based on their own linguistic analyses of TV shows, movies, or political speeches, students build arguments about the messaging and judgment of Muslims in the United States. Close linguistic analysis is a powerful method to practice critical-thinking skills as students select and analyze evidence in order to construct original arguments. I select sources that challenge students to question and critique not just Orientalist and racist stereotypes of Muslims but also representations that seem to be positive on the surface but subtly reinforce inequitable expectations of Muslims. This assignment allows students to explore some of the social justice issues facing Muslims in the U.S., such as the reinforcement of Islamophobia, the expectations to prove their allegiance to the nation, and the demand to conform to “good Muslim” expectations. Based on an exploration of their thesis statements, my analysis demonstrates that students used evidence from their sources to build arguments that condemn the perpetuation of stigma associated with Islam and Muslims. Additionally, many students critiqued media sources for subtly encouraging expectations that Muslims need to continually demonstrate patriotism and particular kinds of assimilation in order to be deemed “good” Muslims. Through this and similar assignments, students practice more critical perspectives on media and explore the challenges of representation through the perspectives of marginalized populations.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.82
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Building Students' Literate Agency through Makerspace Activities in a
Two-Year College
Authors: Soyeon Lee
Abstract: This makerspace-based assignment is designed to cultivate students' literate agency and their awareness of semiotic resources in two-year college contexts. The maker movement in education has been predominantly studied in business, science, and engineering fields and in four-year colleges. Networking translingual and transmodal scholarship and the maker movement, I devised a makerspace-based writing assignment as a scaffolding project to support students' analysis on their digital practices in the corequisite developmental writing courses and the composition courses in a community college. Although students' responses varied, I argue that this assignment can benefit two-year college students and offer social implications in multiple ways: it can promote students' access to the emerging trend of the maker movement and DIY fabrication culture; it encourages students to employ their multilingual and multimodal resources with an awareness of their changing literate ecologies; it can help them build their literate agency and transfer the maker mindset to other rhetorical environments such as their workplace or discipline-specific writing situations.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.90
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Languages of Power and Resistance
Authors: Beth Buyserie
Abstract: This research assignment asks preservice undergraduate secondary education teachers in an applied grammar class to engage in a two-prong research project: a multimodal, interactive “poster” and a research paper that together explore the pedagogical possibilities for engaging with World Englishes in middle and high school classrooms. The prompt invites students to consider social justice and equity at the level of language. The assignment draws on both antiracist and queer pedagogies and examines the relationships among language, power, and resistance to linguistic oppression in the classroom. As students work through the assignment, they enact real-life stories of historical and contemporary figures from around the world who were forced to speak a colonizer’s language and resisted linguistic oppression. They then read articles focusing on Black Language, Indigenous languages, and World Englishes, which serve as touchstones for their own research. Although designed for a grammar pedagogy class, the assignment can be modified for multiple disciplines; at the end of the article, I provide several examples of how teachers outside English might modify the assignment for their own disciplinary contexts.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.88
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Widening the Lens of Business Education
Authors: Oscar Jerome Stewart, Geoff Desa, Ian Dunham
Abstract: This article describes and reflects upon a student art project assignment and accompanying issue-advocacy written piece that allows students to explore topics of social justice and environmental sustainability in a business and society senior seminar course. The process of producing art and creative writing allows students to critically reflect on current business ethics concepts that are relevant to their interests. The art is displayed in a gallery exhibit, allowing for further intellectual exploration as students explain their work to others. The learning outcomes of this art project are two-fold. First, students and faculty develop a greater sense of liberatory consciousness, a social identity-shaping mechanism that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. Importantly, as faculty, we learn a great deal from our students, particularly during the art exhibit. Second, students develop competency in, and a passion for, issue advocacy about important social and environmental issues. Ultimately, this assignment inspires students to become future leaders in professional organizations that are ethical, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.93
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Reading and Fighting Patriarchy
Authors: Deanna Chappell
Abstract: In a course whose goals are to unmask patriarchal structures and understand the difference between patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism, students read young adult (YA) feminist novels and critiqued them in light of their new knowledge of issues in education, gender, and politics. In the context of a term-long project, students were asked to write a synopsis of their chosen book, and an analysis of how the author illustrates gender-based oppression and young people’s resistance. Using Manne's (2018) definition of patriarchy as an overarching structure, students recommended their books in a series of reviews for distribution to local middle and high school libraries.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.80
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Socialization and Social Justice
Authors: Keisha Goode
Abstract: Students are often told that social justice is both the ideal and the reality to which they should be striving, and contributing to, as scholars and as citizens. However, they are often not given the space-and the challenge-to grapple with what social justice means to, and for, them. This paper shares the design of an upper level sociological theory assignment, Socialization as an Investigation of Social Justice Response Papers, that aims to do just that. The course units and theoretical texts are detailed, along with the response paper scaffold assignments, with special emphasis on a structured peer review process aligned with the assignment rubric. Now, having taught the course eight times to date, memorable student contributions to the course, along with an excerpt from the most memorable student response paper, are shared with the aim of inspiring faculty modification, particularly in the Social Sciences.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.92
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Integrating Metacognitive Practice as a Strategy for More Equitable
Storytelling in Community-Based Learning
Authors: Marisa Charley
Abstract: Storytelling is a practice which is critical for the communication of lived experience, the development of empathy, and for the creation of a rich sense of collective being. While essential, it is also deeply complex and fragile—wrought with potential for marginalizing and stereotype-confirming rhetoric. In community-based learning, and throughout the field of Poverty and Human Capability Studies, storytelling is often employed in the context of reflective practice. Understanding student reflection as a pivotal opportunity for the exploration of more equitable storytelling resulted in the development of an assignment which employs a metacognitive approach to student learning. This prompts students to call to the center their more difficult experiences and assumptions, as well as the social and political structures impacting the ways they understand these encounters. Expanding on foundational literature on reflective practice in service and community-based learning, this assignment points to a need for the addition of metacognitive practice as a widely implemented tool for exploring inequality and bias in narrative reflections. The assignment resulting from integrating metacognitive reflective work produced student writing that was increasingly rich, complex, and appropriately self-critical of their narrative approaches.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.89
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
- Writing as Memory Work
Authors: Jill Swiencicki, Barbara Lowe
Abstract: Social justice goals are usually sought in civic or community settings in which stakeholders represent competing frameworks about what is just, good, and true. Modeling for students a way to identify these competing frameworks, and then intervene in deliberations to achieve just ends, is the focus of our assignment sequence. We examine civic deliberations over removing racist public symbols in this assignment for first-year students enrolled in linked rhetoric and philosophy courses. We read broadly in theories of public memory and civic identity, examine in depth one community’s deliberation, and reflect on public symbols in our home communities. The final joint assignment asks students to identify the principles that should guide deliberations about contested public symbols. We found that the assemblage of ideas that the students select from these pre-drafting activities shapes what they think is possible in the work of social justice; in other words, their own standpoint enables and limits what they see in the assemblage of ideas, sometimes limiting the arc of social justice insights and solutions, and sometimes unleashing it. For this reason, reflective writing is a necessary entwined process, one that can develop better awareness of how students’ epistemic norms shape their ability to imagine social justice ends. To most fully realize social justice knowledge, students must not stay bound within the contours of particular deliberations, or inward reflection. Instead, assignments must enlarge the context, asking students to make bigger inquiries into history, context, and relations of domination.
PubDate: 2022-01-30
DOI: 10.31719/pjaw.v6i1.86
Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2022)
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