College Composition & Communication - Volume 53, Issue 4, 2002

This article examines the contradictory representations of whiteness in the literature on critical pedagogy and argues that a deeper engagement with these contradictions can help critical educators in their work with white students. The essay explores a number of sites--the rhetoric of critical pedagogy, the literature on whiteness that has surfaced in the past five years--and concludes by analyzing portraits of white students as they read texts that challenge them to think about race and racial identity in new ways.

The fiftieth anniversary issue of CCC included a call from Geneva Smitherman for compositionists to renew the fight for language rights. In this article, we take up Smitherman’s call by situating the theory of language rights in composition studies in a brief history of rights rhetoric in the United States.

This chapter seeks to add to our understanding of literacy as it relates to African Americans, with a focus on African American female literacies. Primarily, I argue that mother tongue literacy is central to literacy education.

I analyze the public and professional discourse of learning disability, arguing that medical models of literacy misdirect teaching by narrowing its focus to remediation. This insight about teaching is not new; resurgent demands for behaviorist pedagogies make understanding their continuing appeal important to composition studies.