The Research Project

Open admissions emphasized writing courses as sites of difference and power (Bosquet 1999; Parks 1999). We find ourselves in national (Skinnell 2018; Roberts-Miller 2017) and local moments (Milo Yiannopoulos’s September 2017 UC Berkeley appearance) that highlight the roles FYW can play in diversity learning. Presenters from three institutions in “liberal” California report on an inter-institutional study of diversity learning in required writing courses that asks: how are local contexts influencing diversity learning in writing courses taught in “progressive” areas? How is difference conceptualized and determined at neighboring institutions with radically different student populations? What does situating FYW diversity learning in terms of regional culture tell us about our institutions and how to improve them?

 

Our inter-institutional study assesses diversity learning on each campus via FYW classroom artifacts (drawing on traditions of instructional artifact analysis--cf. Balester 2012; Melzer 2014; Womack 2017), contextualized by self-reported student and faculty experiences and institutional profiles of an increasingly international public university, a social justice-focused Jesuit university, and an HSI LaSallian university focused on “inclusive excellence.” We describe how diversity is conceptualized, addressed, and performed relative to language (Horner et al 2010; Perryman-Clark et al 2015), accessibility (Yergeau et al 2016; Wood 2017), and race (Hurlbert 2012; Inoue and Poe 2012; Inoue 2015; Condon and Young 2017), ultimately arguing for more intentional use of “interest convergence” (Lamos 2011) within writing program design and assessment to temper arguments about “standards” (Fox 1999; Stanley 2014; Inoue 2017) that can discount diversity learning within FYW.