Complete Record: Harper, Michael (1998). Revolution Or Colonialism: The Role of English Departments in the Writing Across the Curriculum Movement.
Degree: PHD
Institution: University of Louisville
Advisor: Brian Huot
Source: DAI, 60, no. 04A (1998): p. 1113
Publication Number: AAG9924983
Full Text Available: No
As Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) enters its third decade, it is faced with the challenge to advance collaborative models of program development. Older models, characterized by a missionary zeal to spread the Gospel of writing-based pedagogies, have recently been criticized by scholars as imperialistic. Susan McLeod, Catherine Blair, Christine Farris, and Mary Minock all have argued that these models ignore important differences in how writing is taught within the disciplines. Moreover, they charge, the missionary zeal that characterizes much of WAC scholarship also ignores the cultural differences of the disciplines. Needed is a multi-cultural model of WAC that fosters rather than inhibits disciplinary interaction.
In this dissertation, I Theorize a “contact zone” model for WAC program development. In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt describes the indeterminate space where cultures come in contact. She notes that this space can either be a site of colonialism or a site of dialogic exchange. While Pratt neither addresses WAC nor disciplinary cultures, her model of the “contact zone” provides a useful analogue for conceiving a dialogic exchange among disciplines. In order to apply Pratt's model to WAC, I rely on the work of Julie Thompson Klein who has Theorized the various types of multi-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary exchanges among the disciplinary cultures that can be collaborative and productive. Klein provides the disciplinary antecedent to Pratt's multi-cultural Theory. In addition, I suggest Donald Schon's reflective practices as a methodology for negotiating these exchanges. Schon's Theory focuses on the experiential knowledge of professionals that contributes to their expertise. By linking Pratt, Klein, and Schon, I Theorize WAC as a space where disciplinary cultures come in contact to reflect upon and to discuss writing-based pedagogies. The outcomes of this activity, I argue, are various forms of multi-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary knowledge that help build on WAC's foundation.
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