On Cultural Studies and Writing Assignments

Cleaning out my Journals (and giving you the best bits)

"Postmodern Cultural Studies and the Politics of Writing Instruction" by McComiskey, TETYC 1998

"The following guidelines for developing postmodern cultural studies writing assignments inform every cultural studies composition course I teach. In each essay (or series of essays), students should:

1. Critique
a. dominant representations indigenous to a single discourse community in a particular institution
b. subjectivities implied in (and constructed by) these dominant representations
c. communal forces that legitimate these dominant representations and delegitimate other representations
2. Compose
a. alternative representations that challenge and revise dominant representations
b. politically significant subject positions through rhetorical participation in discourse communities
c. discourses that are acceptable (not “irrational”) according to existing communal narratives and structures of legitimation 

These guidelines aid in the development of writing assignments in which students not only critique from postmodern perspectives the institutions and communities about which they write, but they also become writing members of the institutions."