Locating place in writing studies: an investigation of professional and pedagogical place-based effects

Abstract

Locating Place in Writing Studies: An Investigation of Professional and Pedagogical Place-Based Effects explores how place affects (1) doctoral candidates conducting a job search in Rhetoric and Composition (or Writing Studies) and (2) writing teachers who self-identify as interested in place-based pedagogies.^Using the theory of individual terroir--a claim that place (as a location, a locale, and a sense of place) affects who academics are and what they do--and quantitative and qualitative research methods (surveys and interviews), McCracken describes how the participants incorporated their varied and complex relationships with place into their professional lives in spite of lore which suggests that academics are placeless and rootless.^The study's major findings include data which suggests that place is a determining factor for doctoral candidates when they apply for jobs and when they accept job offers, a finding which contradicts conventional wisdom and published advice for job seekers in English. The national survey of place-based pedagogues offers an overview of the perceived benefits of place-based pedagogy according to writing studies teachers.^Using a case study method, McCracken profiles six writing teachers' whose use of place in the classroom expands previous conceptions of a critical pedagogy of place. This study demonstrates that as much as places may be stereotyped and are often arranged hierarchically by social discourses, an awareness of place (as a category of difference) in academe by academics can push against perceptions about who academics are and what they value.^McCracken encourages academics to use a "matrix of difference" when talking about cultural categories of difference (such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability). This "matrix of difference" may encourage students and teachers to see difference as context-dependent.^This increased awareness to individual terroir can also create opportunities for a critical pedagogy of place in writing studies, allowing writing teachers to assert that writing is a social activity dependent on local discourses and that texts--much like places--are context-bound and context driven.