http://hdl.handle.net/10027/7308 Sun, 19 May 2013 22:33:00 GMT 2013-05-19T22:33:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9596 Other People's Students: Elaborated Codes and Dialect in Basic Writing English teachers, especially those in the field of basic writing, have long debated how to teach writing to students whose home language differs from the perceived norm. This thesis intervenes in that stalemated debate by re-examining “elaborated codes” and by arguing for a type of correctness in writing that includes being correct according to a vernacular dialect. Elaborated codes were first theorized by British sociolinguist Basil Bernstein in the 1960s, but American educators have by and large neglected his code theories, often on the erroneous assumption that Bernstein’s project is hostile to the working classes. I examine Bernstein’s work and some key responses to it, and I show how teaching the elaborated codes solves some of the dilemmas faced by basic writing instructors. Basic writing teachers also struggle with how to teach basic literacy while respecting students’ home languages. I carefully analyze some key arguments about error and correctness, language difference, code-switching, and code-meshing to show that it is possible to respect students’ home languages even while encouraging better and more rigorous language use. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9596 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9580 Violent Fronteras: The Neoliberal State of Latina/o Bodies in Contemporary Narratives My dissertation explores the relationship between the nation and a “free market” economy in 20th- and 21st-century Latina/o Literature and film. Although new political theories pronounce the “withering away of the state”—once a Marxist dream and now a neoliberal one—I challenge these theories by arguing that contemporary Latina/o literature and film reveals and exemplifies the remaining centrality of the nation even with neoliberal efforts to transcend it. My dissertation explores how Latina/o literature and film exposes and embodies an interdependent, albeit contradictory, relationship between the nation and a privatized economy, where free markets relies on nationalisms to operate. Violent Fronteras approaches the relationship between the nation and the neoliberal economy through representations, first, of nationalisms (chapters 2-4) and, second, of the nation-state (chapters 5-6). Analyzing figures like one of Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s Latina heroines who performs the stereotypical role of a “spicy Chicana” for her job in The Dirty Girl Social Club, I argue this emblematizes an interlocking relationship between economic institutions and cultural nationalisms in the equal-opportunity workplace. Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban is another novel that builds upon the way the economy normalizes nationalisms, as Pilar, a 1.5 Cuban-American teen who buys punk albums to pay homage to her idealist vision of socialist Cuba, portrays how nationalisms are a mechanism for economic consumption and also uneven development. My dissertation ends on the way the nation-state continues to maintain the border while simultaneously promoting policies such as NAFTA, where capital is mobile but people are not. For instance, Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer imagines a future where the capitalist needs of cheap labor in the U.S. are fulfilled without physical migrations or citizen outcries of an “alien invasion”: the border (and thus the nation) remains intact, while Mexican laborers stay in Mexico operating U.S. machines through a Matrix-like virtual reality. The film’s speculative premise demonstrates a compatibility with the maintenance of national difference, labor and immigration laws, and the creation of international/global markets. Ultimately, I show that Latina/o cultural production uncovers and exemplifies mystifications, contradictions, and the violence at the heart of the neoliberal state’s unprecedented rule. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9580 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9511 Dialogic Relevance Pedagogy: Encouraging Complex Reading Connections through Memoir Research This dissertation seeks to expand teacher conversations about “relevance” in English classrooms. To develop a practical pedagogy inclusive of relevance for teachers of literacy, I describe “dialogic relevance” and “dialogic relevance pedagogy,” and ultimately emphasize a broad definition of relevance. I distinguish both dialogic relevance and the pedagogy from an understanding of relevance that assumes that readers have one relevant path to the text. Teachers attempting to motivate and engage their students make assumptions about relevance based on content connections, thematic connections, or perceived background knowledge. As students engage in more direct inquiry about relevance, we create potential for developing relevance strategies that are increasingly reader/student-centered. Dialogic relevance pedagogy accommodates the expansion of each student’s worldview that occurs through reading and supports experiences that students can apply to other texts and contexts. In this dissertation I develop bridges among transactional reading theory, strategic reading, inquiry based research projects that highlight alternative constructions of relevance for students. Through narrative inquiry, multiple stories come together. Included are stories from my own teaching as well as from observations and collaboration in a colleague’s classroom. Taken together, the individual stories and their relationships provide an account of my experiences exploring the meaning of relevance in a dialogic context. The study suggests a strong connection between relevance and literacy that calls for a shift in teacher practice. Teachers considering this shift in pedagogy to dialogic relevance recognize students’ ability to discover and explore relevance as an essential literacy skill that gives students more choice in developing relevance relationships. Research papers about memoirs emerged through my study as one invitation for students to develop what John Dewey refers to as habits connected to dialogic relevance. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9511 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9499 Unattainable Manhood: Masculinity and Folk Culture in Late 20th Century American Fiction My dissertation, Unattainable Manhood, argues that late-20th century American authors as varied as Cormac McCarthy, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth portray the recuperation of masculinity within the domain typically assigned to women’s empowerment. Whereas critics like Hazel Carby describe the fictional representation of folk culture as the evocation of fundamentally feminine, domestic lifeways, the novels in my dissertation imagine that folk culture’s distinctive practices confer masculinity. Participation in kin networks, the cultivation of community, labor practices which stress the handmade and homespun, and folktales, themselves, are all deployed to enhance what is understood as a faltering masculinity. In Unattainable Manhood, I argue that this impulse to imagine folk culture as invigorating manhood stems from what scholars ranging from Michael Kimmel to David Popenoe understand as a masculinity crisis. My dissertation focuses on novelists who grapple with two crucial factors in this crisis: men’s changing roles in the family and the transformation of the labor market. I begin by examining novels which depict dramatic shifts in gender roles within the family, imagined to result from the interworking of capitalism, Second Wave feminism, and the Civil Rights Movement. The next two chapters dissect the representation of the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy and its impact on male workers. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9499 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z