Interanimating voices: Theorizing the turn toward reflective writing in the academy.

Abstract

This dissertation, which considers academic writing as a social practice, examines in particular two increasingly popular writing practices within the academy--autobiographical writing by contemporary scholars, and writing portfolios assembled by undergraduate students. By considering these two groups of texts together this project situates the increasingly popular educational practice of portfolio assessment within larger institutional dynamics, dynamics manifested in the growing trend toward writing scholarly autobiography, in the growth of interdisciplinary studies, and in the institutional debate on clarity in academic writing. This dissertation theorizes the ways in which current examples of these two writing practices resist and reproduce particular notions of what constitutes 'good' academic writing, both affirming and questioning the assumptions, ideologies and ethics underlying such notions; and suggests the possible gains and losses (for both students and teachers) of such changing conceptions of academic writing. This theorization focuses on the ways in which scholarly memoir, and examples of writing included by students in their portfolios, comprise instances of what I am terming reflective writing--that is, writing which is explicitly reflexive with regard to the subject position of the writer, and which also functions to establish a relationship between the writer and her or his (often times multiple) audience(s), in a way that underscores literacy as a social practice. I argue that these reflective practices illustrate how the academy, at least to some degree, has shifted toward valuing models of literacy more closely tied to epistemologies which acknowledge and value the 'personal.' A second major argument of this dissertation has to do with what I term a feminist ethics of accountability, which sees the work of scholars and teachers as politically accountable to diverse constituencies within and outside the institution, and as intellectually accountable to epistemologies which value the 'everydayness' of people's lives. A third major argument which runs through this dissertation is that these texts themselves reflect on the practice of academic literacy, critiquing that practice along with the related practices of learning, teaching (including teacher education and assessment) and scholarship, in ways which can serve to strengthen these central practices of academic life.