Opening a Dialogue about Religious Restraint in Graduate Professionalization

Abstract

Evangelical-Christian graduate students negotiate identities that separate their religious and academic communities of practice. Drawing on bell hooks's notion that marginalized groups must speak for themselves, this essay argues that evangelical graduate students in composition studies must seek involvement in formal conversations on writing, through journal articles, presentations, and appropriate venues in ways that embody rather than restrain their evangelical identities. In order for these students to seek such involvement, it is imperative that graduate instructors begin a dialogue about the potential ways in which restraint impacts students in our efforts to acculturate them into composition.

Notes

¹My sincerest thanks go to RR reviewers of this essay, Stuart Brown and Duane Roen, for their invaluable comments and thoughtful suggestions.

²All graduate student names are pseudonyms and the research presented here has IRB approval.