CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR)

“Salt of the Earth” is an autoethnography and cultural rhetorics case study that examines white supremacy in the author's hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, a community long marred by its racist culture. James Chase Sanchez investigates the rhetoric of white supremacy by exploring three unique rhetorical processes—identity construction, storytelling, and silencing—as they relate to an umbrella act: the rhetoric of preservation. Sanchez argues that we need to better understand the productions of white supremacy as a complex rhetorical act and that in order to create a more well-rounded view of cultural rhetorics as a subfield, we need more analyses of the way cultures of the oppressor survive and thrive.

How might writing instructors dedicated to community-writing or service-learning courses take into account and even mobilize the lived experiences of all their students? Veteran community-writing instructor Glenn Hutchinson charts the history of his understanding that the conventional goal of such courses, to engage students in their communities and help them become more active citizens, doesn't acknowledge the reality of the many college students who are prohibited from becoming US citizens, despite long years of residence in this country. “Writing Accomplices with Student Immigrant Rights Organizers” argues for a pedagogical shift toward centering the public-writing classroom on students' work as organizers and rhetoricians. Instead of focusing only on community partnerships, the writing classroom can foreground the work of student organizers and how they can better inform the field's teaching practices. Each chapter focuses on students' rhetorical skills through petitions, op-eds, and campaigns to stop deportations. Hutchinson emphasizes teachers' responsibility to act in solidarity with immigrant students, pointing to a new role for the writing teacher in changing anti-immigrant and white supremacist laws and policies.