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Claiming writerly agency : Black and Latinx college writers in a predominantly white institution

Author
Rosas, Raymond
Published
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2023.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Glenn, Cheryl
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Restricted (PSU Only).
Summary
In this dissertation, I investigate the distinctive ways Black and Latinx undergraduates use writing to activate their agency in pursuit of both academic achievement and attainment. Through a series of qualitative literacy history interviews and discourse-based interviews, I identify how fifteen Black and Latinx undergraduates draw on racially inflected tacit knowledges and strategies to realize a sense of agency through writing at a mid-Atlantic predominantly white institution. For instance, one study participant frames peer review as primarily a didactic, antiracist opportunity that challenges current perspectives regarding the purview of peer review activities. Cognizant of the hypervisibility of their essay drafts during peer review, this participant realizes their agency by selecting topics that educate white peers about the racial realities of campus and the surrounding community. Such topic selection fosters a sense of ownership that emboldens the writer to compose with greater purpose and attention to style that culminates in rhetorical force. What constitutes writerly agency for Black and Latinx writers, I find, is a generative union of tacit knowing and rhetorical strategies that allows these students to thrive and agitate for racial justice in an institutional context they perceive as only tepidly committed to educational equity. As a contribution to writing studies, this work contributes a nuanced understanding of how minoritized writers use writing to negotiate and construct contexts of racial belonging to successfully pursue academic credentials in a predominantly white institution. On the basis of such writing practices, I also contribute a data driven perspective on antiracist writing pedagogy and antiracist writing program administration.
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Dissertation Note
Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University 2023.
Technical Details
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
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