Core-Coursing Counterstory: On Master Narrative Histories of Rhetorical Studies Curricula

Abstract

This essay discusses the racialized politics, histories, and ideologies that inform the crafting and instituting of core curricula in rhetorical studies. As is the case in many rhetoric and writing studies undergraduate majors and graduate programs, core curricula can be counted on to contain survey courses that review the histories and theories of rhetoric and composition—sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping, and always subject to the ideological orientation of the program/department and the scholarly training of its professors. Through critical race counterstory, this essay explores what core curricula are intended to do within rhetoric and writing studies programs/departments.

Notes

¹ To all the Vs in my life, you all know who you are. In the tradition of Rhetoric Review’s founding editor, Theresa Enos, thanks, also, to my manuscript reviewers, Michelle Eble and Iris Ruiz, for providing astute and critically engaged feedback.

² A brief note concerning counterstory characters: All characters in this essay (Alejandra, V, and the various students) are composed as composite characters. Composite characters are written into “social, historical, and political situations that allow the dialogue to speak to the research findings and creatively challenge racism and other forms of subordination” (Yosso, Critical Race Counterstories 11). Because these characters are written as composites of many individuals, and are representative of various political ideologies, they do not have a one-to-one correspondence to any one individual (Delgado, The Rodrigo Chronicles xix).

³ See my syllabus in Appendix A.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aja Y. Martinez

Aja Y. Martinez ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University. Her scholarship, published nationally and internationally, focuses on rhetorics of racism and its effects on marginalized peoples in institutional spaces. Her efforts as a teacher-scholar strive toward increasing access, retention, and participation of diverse groups in higher education. Her writing has appeared in College English, Composition Studies, Peitho and other publications.